On April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair opened in New
York City. The opening ceremony, which featured speeches
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (below) and New York
Governor Herbert Lehman, ushered in the first day of
television broadcasting by RCA in New York.
A TV camera (right) at the New York World’s Fair.
1946
Charlie McCarthy and his ventriloquist partner Edgar Bergen
made their radio debut on NBC‘s The Royal Gelatin Hour in
1936, where they proved such a hit that the following year
the network gave them a starring role on The Chase and
Sanborn Hour, where they were initially supported by emcee
Don Ameche, singer Nelson Eddy, actress Dorothy Lamour,
and comedian W. C. Fields. The following year, Charlie would
be joined by a much dumber dummy, Mortimer Snerd” (below).
WC Fields (right) with Edgar Bergen And Charlie McCarthy.
President George Washington was inaugurated as the first
president of the United States on this day in history, April 30,
1789.
In his address, which he delivered at New York City’s Federal
Hall, Washington expressed his anxiety over the prospect of
leading a new nation.
At the time, New York City’s Federal Hall served as the U.S.
Capitol, according to the National Archives.
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799)
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee
On April 30, 1993, four years after publishing a proposal for
“an idea of linked information systems,” computer scientist
Tim Berners-Lee (above) released the source code for the
world’s first web browser and editor. Originally called Mesh,
the browser that he dubbed WorldWideWeb became the first
royalty-free, easy-to-use means of browsing the emerging
information network that developed into the internet as we
know it today.
Berners-Lee was a fellow at CERN, the research organization headquartered in Switzerland. Other research institutions like
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford
University had developed complex systems for internally
sharing information, and Berners-Lee sought a means of
connecting CERN’s system to others.
He outlined a plan for such a network in 1989 and developed
it over the following years. The computer he used, a NeXT
desktop (below) became the world’s first internet server.
Berners-Lee wrote and published the first web page, a
simplistic outline of the WorldWideWeb project, in 1991.
