22 May 1973: Internet invented.
Well, sort of. Before Al Gore there was evidently a certain Mr. Robert Metcalfe, a researcher at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California. According to Wikipedia, Metcalfe and a few of his co-workers at Xerox filed a patent for a “multipoint data communication system” in 1973. One of Metcalfe’s Selectric-typed memos from this year contains a description of “Ether Acquisition” and a diagram showing “boosters” interconnecting branch cable, telephone and radio ethers, foregrounding what we have come to know as the internet.
