December 9

1879: The first U.S. patent was issued for an automatic telephone switching system. 1886: Clarence Birdseye, inventor of deep freezing food, was born. 1906: Navy Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, credited with coining the term "bug" in computers, was born. 1914: The Edison Phonograph Works was destroyed by fire. 1921: American electrical engineer Charles Kettering first tested tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock additive to gasoline fuel. 1968: The first demonstration of the use of a computer mouse was given by its inventor, Doug Engelbart. 1993: At Princeton University in New Jersey, scientist produced a controlled fusion reaction equivalent to 3 MW. 1993: Shuttle astronauts inserted a corrective lens in the Hubble Space Telescope to fix its optical flaw.