December 18

1856: Sir J.J. Thomson, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on cathode rays, was born. 1890: American electrical engineer Edwin Armstrong, a pioneer in radio communications and electronic theory and inventor of the CW transmitter, regenerative & superheterodyne circuits, and frequency modulation, was born. 1926: G.N. Lewis coined the word "photon." 1957: The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in PA, the first civilian nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went online. 1958: Project SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment), the first American communication satellite, was launched on an Atlas booster. 1977: Voyager 1 took the first photograph of the Earth and the moon together. 1997: The 9.3-mile toll expressway, Tokyo Bay Aqualine bridge and tunnel that spans the narrowest gap of Tokyo Bay, opened to traffic after 31 years of studies. 1998: ICANN, the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers, was formed.