Let’s hop in the TIME Wayback Machine to see which notable tech-related stories were published on December 14 between 1923 and today.
If you’re a TIME subscriber, you can click each headline to read the entire story.
Tube (Dec. 14, 1925):
Boarding-school boys are often very ingenious. They will work for hours to save themselves ten minutes of routine. Among them an invention has been perfected whereby, when an alarm clock rings, pulleys and weights are set in motion which in turn close a window, turn on a radiator, light an electric light and open drawers.
Mystery Engines (Dec. 14, 1925):
The passion of motor makers to improve their product, and do it in a hurry too, has created in Detroit deep interest in an alleged “mystery car,” which is said to be revolutionary in design and about to be produced by a Detroit motor concern.
Science: Shift on Shift (Dec. 14, 1936):
The brilliant, whimsical popularizing of Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington has made ”the expanding Universe” almost a household word. But the telescopic observations of a universe which seems to be blowing up like the fragments of an explosive shell have come mainly from Mount Wilson Observatory’s brilliant Astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble.
Science: Coaxial Debut (Dec. 14, 1936):
Dr. Frank Baldwin Jewett, Bell Telephone’s president, proudly explained in Manhattan last week that for radiotelephony between fixed points, Bell’s coaxial cable provides “a piece of the ether which has been segregated from all the other ether in the world.” Because it can carry a frequency band 1,000,000 cycles wide and can “pipe” tele vision underground for hundreds of miles.
Science: New Gadgets (Dec. 14, 1953):
For doing both heavy and delicate jobs under remote control, General Electric has built a monstrous, sensitive machine it calls “OMan” (for “overhead manipulator”). OMan is not beautiful; he looks like a Brobdingnagian dentist’s drill. But he is a remarkable mechanical man.
Astronomy: View from the Second Window (Dec. 14, 1962):
The burgeoning science of radio astronomy has created a second window in the sky. And astronomers anxious to examine the far reaches of the celestial landscape are busily constructing the strange tools of their new trade.
Space: Revving Up for New Voyages (Dec. 14, 1987):
The explosion of the shuttle Challenger nearly two years ago threw the U.S. space program into such staggering disarray that officials have shied away from predicting when the program would get back on track, much less undertake new ventures. Though the shuttle’s return to service is still at least six months away, NASA officials last week managed to look beyond that crippling disaster and announced plans for two ambitious programs for the next decade. In 1989, the space agency declared, it will finally launch its long-delayed unmanned Galileo project to Jupiter, a 2.3 billion-mile mission that is expected to last eight years. NASA also awarded four contracts for the construction of the long-planned space station that will serve as the nation’s first permanent outpost in space.
500 Channels and Nothing to Watch (Dec. 14, 1992):
THE CABLE COMPANIES THAT FILL OUR HOMES WITH more TV channels than we know what to do with have been threatening for years to adopt technology that could compound the problem tenfold. Now one of them is poised to actually do it.
Booms, Boings and Wisecracks (Dec. 14, 1992):
[N]o corner of the customization market is booming quite like the one for booms, zooms and wisecracks. There are already more than a dozen programs offering a wide variety of sounds for Macintosh computers and Windows-equipped PCs, and more are on the way.
Cinema: The Wizard Of Pixar (Dec. 14, 1998):
Boasts Steve Jobs, Pixar’s CEO and Lasseter’s understandably proud boss: “John Lasseter is the closest thing we have to Walt Disney today.” Could be. Toy Story, Lasseter’s first computer-animated feature, released in 1995, has reaped an estimated $1 billion for Pixar and its production-partner Disney in box-office, video and licensing revenues.
Just Browsing? (Dec. 14, 1998):
The best things on the net, as in life, are free. That’s especially apparent to those of us milking the cow that Microsoft and Netscape are fighting over. The cow, in this case, is the browser–that vaunted piece of software that allows one to navigate the Web. Control the browser and you get to influence the experience of anyone using it. That’s why Netscape and Microsoft have been competing so strenuously for your patronage. And that’s why we’re getting some of the most exciting and useful tools ever created, for absolutely nothing. If only carmakers behaved this way.
Your Technology (Dec. 14, 1998):
More and more, PC-game companies are peddling their properties outside the virtual realm. The result: toys like this creature from StarCraft, the year’s top-selling CD-ROM game. And move over, Barbie: a Lara Croft doll debuts this month.