The Google IPO ( initial public offering ) raises US$1.67 billion. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin just 6 years earlier in 1998 while they were students at Stanford University and because of the use of new ranking algorithms and it's clean uncluttered home page it quickly became the most used search engine in the world. The IPO in 2004 offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of US$85 per share ( current share price $ 482.13 August 2008 ) but they have traded up as high as $700 in 2007.

Louis Daguerre announced the invention of the daguerreotype photographic process, the first process to allow an image to be chemically fixed as a permanent picture. On 7 Jan 1839 an announcement was made of the discovery, but details were not divulged until 19 Aug, when the process was announced publicly, and the French government having bought the rights to the process from him, freely gave them to the world. However, this process had also been patented in England and Wales on 14 Aug 1839, only five days previously.