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Items by Tony Long

Oct. 3, 1947: Birth of Palomar's 'Giant Eye'

Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1947: After 13 years of grinding and polishing, the Palomar Observatory mirror is completed at Caltech. It was, at the time, the largest telescope mirror ever made in the United States, measuring 200 inches in diameter. Following its completion, the disk was mounted in Palomar's Hale Telescope and first used in January 1949 to take pictures of the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble was the first astronomer to make images using the new scope. The mirror began as a 20-ton piece of molten Pyrex, a new glass blend, at the Corning Glass Works in upstate New York. Pyrex expands and contracts far less than regular glass, making it less prone to distortion, a problem that plagued the 100-inch mirror already in operation at Palomar. After being heated to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, the Pyrex was poured into a ceramic mold. It was carefully cooled at an average rate of one or two degrees per day for 11 months, then allowed to reach room temperature.1 After that it was shipped west to Caltech in Pasadena, where the glass was painstakingly ground to perfection in a process lasting more than a decade. The era of giant telescopic lenses began in the 1700s, when astronomers recognized that the bigger the lens (or reflecting mirror), the better the image. In 1774, English astronomer William Herschel mounted several 9-inch mirrors in a 10-foot-long telescope and recorded, with satisfaction, that he had spent the first night looking at "Saturn's rings and two belts in great...

Wired.com

Oct. 1, 1957: Thalidomide Cures Morning Sickness, But ...

Posted: September 30th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1957: Thalidomide, a drug developed to help women overcome the symptoms of morning sickness during pregnancy, is first marketed in West Germany. Forty-six countries approve its use before thalidomide's terrible side effects become apparent. Thalidomide is a powerful synthetic tranquilizer, originally developed by Ciba, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. Unable to make it commercially profitable, Ciba gave up on the drug. A German company, Chemie Gruenenthal, took over and eventually began marketing thalidomide as a "completely safe" method for warding off morning sickness. Except thalidomide wasn't "completely safe." In fact, it was quite the opposite. Inadequate testing procedures were to blame for what followed. Had the pharmaceutical labs done a better job of testing thalidomide, they would have discovered that the drug's molecules were able to penetrate the placental wall, especially during the first trimester of pregnancy when the fetus is largely unformed. This invasion of the womb resulted in a variety of profound birth defects, including deformed and missing limbs, deafness, blindness, cleft palate and a slew of internal problems. By the early 1960s, more than 10,000 thalidomide babies had been born. Although many died in infancy (an estimated 40 percent died before their first birthday), quite a few survived into adulthood. Now in their 40s, most thalidomide survivors continue suffering from a variety of chronic health problems directly related to their...

Wired.com

Sept. 26, 1960: JFK, Nixon Open the Era of TV Debates

Posted: September 25th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1960: In the first televised U.S. presidential debate in history, John F. Kennedy comes off well. His opponent, Richard Nixon, does not. Television instantly emerges as the decisive medium in presidential politics. It was Kennedy who proposed a series of four nationally televised debates, and Nixon -- supremely confident that he could spank the young upstart from Massachusetts -- eagerly accepted. It proved to be one of the biggest miscalculations of Tricky Dick's career. While Nixon could play the experience card, he was no match for Kennedy's charisma. And as many a politician has since discovered, with TV, it's all about style over substance. The first debate focused on domestic issues, and the two candidates battled on more or less equal terms. In fact, to the radio audience that couldn't see him, Nixon appeared to have won. But the much-larger television audience -- 70 million, then the biggest in history -- saw it very differently. Nixon looked haggard, at least partly because he brushed aside advice and appeared before the cameras wearing no makeup. His TV adviser, Ted Rogers, said later that Nixon's pasty skin tone -- the result of a two-week hospital stay following a serious knee injury -- and his perpetual 5 o'clock shadow would have benefited from a little makeup, especially when he was pictured alongside a tanned, fit-looking JFK. Nixon also fidgeted a lot, he was sweating, and his beady eyes darted around nervously. On top of that he wore a gray suit, which blended into the background. Although some of these problems were fixed for the subsequent debates (there wasn't much that could be done with those beady eyes), the damage had been done. In one of the closest presidential elections in history, Kennedy won by a little more than 100,000 votes. Many historians believe that without the so-called Great Debates, Nixon would have moved into the White House eight years earlier than he eventually did. Kennedy-Nixon was the last televised presidential debate until 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter took on GOP incumbent Gerald Ford. Ford did well in the first debate, which focused on domestic issues. But he may have lost the election during the foreign policy debate that followed, declaring that "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration." Given the chance to retract the statement, Ford stuck to his guns. A couple of months later, the American people (even those not of...

Wired.com

Sept. 25, 1878: Yes, Smoking Is a Health Hazard

Posted: September 24th, 2008, 8:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1878: Eighty-six years before the U.S. surgeon general issues a report confirming the dangers of smoking tobacco, a letter from English physician Charles R. Drysdale condemning its use appears in The Times of London. Drysdale, the senior physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital in London, had already published a book on the subject, Tobacco and the Diseases It Produces, when he wrote the letter that described smoking as "the most evident of all the retrograde influences of our time." Drysdale had been on an anti-smoking crusade since at least 1864, the year he published a study documenting the effects on young men of consuming ¾ ounce of tobacco daily. That study reported cases of jaundice, and at least one subject having "most distressing palpitations of the heart." Drysdale's book pinpointed nicotine as the dangerous agent and reported its ill effects on the lungs, circulation system, even the skin. Havana-cut tobacco contained roughly 2 percent nicotine, while Virginia tobacco was a more toxic 7 percent, Drysdale pointed out. (Tobacco was a product of the New World and had to be imported to Europe.) He also warned against exposure to second-hand smoke: "Women who wait in public bar-rooms and smoking-saloons, though not themselves smoking, cannot avoid the poisoning caused by inhaling smoke continually. Surely gallantry, if not common honesty, should suggest the practical inference from this fact." The prolific Drysdale wrote on a variety of other related subjects as well, including medicine as a profession for women and issues related to population control. Despite Drysdale's warnings, and despite the establishment of numerous anti-smoking movements, little was done to curb smoking anywhere in the world. Though physicians and scientists understood there were numerous health hazards associated with the practice, the number of smokers increased dramatically in the first half of the 20th century. Thank you, Madison Avenue. Thank you, Hollywood. The turning point probably came in 1957, when then-Surgeon General Leroy Burney reported a causal link between smoking and lung cancer. It was left to Burney's successor, Luther Terry, to lower the boom. Under Terry's direction, a special committee produced Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General. This 1964 bombshell -- so volatile that it was released on a Saturday to minimize the effect on the stock market -- began a massive change in people's attitudes...

Wired.com

Sept. 23, 1846: Neptune Right Where They Said It Would Be

Posted: September 22nd, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1846: German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, knowing exactly where to look, confirms the existence of an eighth planet in the solar system, Neptune. Galle was not the first astronomer to see Neptune -- Galileo, puzzled by the changing position of what he thought was a fixed star, had sketched the movement in 1613 but never published his findings. Others had seen it, too, but Galle, working at the Berlin Observatory, was the first to observe Neptune while understanding exactly what he was looking at. By the time Galle fixed his gaze upon Neptune, the existence of a planet beyond Uranus was widely predicted and its position had been intensely calculated. In fact, other astronomers were quarreling over who owned the priority of discovery. A Frenchman, Urbain Le Verrier, had worked out a complicated set of mathematical predictions based on anomalies in Uranus' orbit, and those, in fact, were what Galle was using when he spotted Neptune. Le Verrier had also taken care to make his predictions public. Meanwhile, the young British mathematician John Couch Adams, working independently, had reached similar conclusions, but confined himself to sharing the data with colleagues at Cambridge University. The key to their calculations was Uranus. Irregularities had been observed in the planet's orbit, irregularities that suggested possible gravitational interference by another heavenly body. French astronomer Alexis Bouvard first noted this in 1821, when he published observations of Uranus' orbit. By 1846, Le Verrier had not only completed his calculations for an eighth planet, but had determined its mass and orbital path. When his work was met with indifference by the French astronomical fraternity, Verrier sent his data to Galle in Berlin, who -- assisted by his student Heinrich Louis d'Arrest -- discovered Neptune that same night. Galle found Neptune less than 1 degree from the position Le Verrier predicted it would be. Adams was a gracious loser, giving full credit to Le Verrier for the information leading to Galle's discovery. Others in England, however, were less diplomatic, and in addition to some cross-Channel rancor, there was also criticism of those who could have been expected to act as Adams' mentors. A proposal by the suddenly interested Paris Observatory to call the new planet Le Verrier went nowhere, and the name Neptune was eventually selected. Source: Various

Wired.com

Sept. 19, 1982: Can't You Take a Joke? :-)

Posted: September 18th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1982: At precisely 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posts the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:

:-(

With that post, Fahlman became the acknowledged originator of the ASCII-based emoticon. From those two simple emoticons (a portmanteau combining the words emotion and icon) have sprung dozens of others that are the joy, or bane, of e-mail, text-message and instant-message correspondence the world over.

Fahlman was not, however, the first person to use typographical symbols to convey emotions. The practice goes back at least to the mid-19th century, when Morse code symbols were occasionally used for the same purpose. Other examples exist as well.

In 1881, the American satirical magazine Puck published what we would now call emoticons, using hand-set type. No less a wordsmith than Ambrose Bierce suggested using what he called a "snigger point" -- \__/ -- to convey jocularity or irony.

But the modern emoticon does trace its lineage directly to Fahlman, who says he came up with the idea after reading "lengthy diatribes" from people on the message board who failed to get the joke or the sarcasm in a particular post -- which is probably what "given current trends" refers to in his own, now-famous missive.

To remedy this, Fahlman suggested using :-) and :-( to distinguish between posts that should be taken humorously and those of a more serious nature.

Fahlman's original post was lost for a couple of decades and believed gone for good, until it was retrieved from an old backup tape, thus cementing his claim of priority.

Source: Various

Sept. 15, 1916: All Disquiet on the Western Front

Posted: September 14th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1916: The tank makes its debut as a battlefield weapon, attacking the Germans as part of a British assault near Bois d'Elville, or Delville Wood, on the Western Front.

The crude, 14-ton monster that breasted the German trenches that day was the culmination of an idea 145 years in the making.

The concept of an armored assault vehicle dated back to 1770, with the first appearance of the caterpillar track. A precursor of the modern tank -- a steam-powered tractor -- was actually used by the British army during the Crimean War. Only a few of these vehicles were built, though, and they carried no offensive weapons of their own.

In 1899, Frederick Simms developed an engine-driven "motor war car." It was armor-plated and carried two Maxim machine guns, making it more akin to the armored car than to the tank as we know it. Simms offered it to the British army, but was turned down.

In the run-up to World War I, the British High Command remained indifferent to the concept an armored assault weapon, preferring to concentrate on infantry and cavalry. But the tank (or "landship" as it was then known, because it was regarded as a kind of land-based warship) had some influential advocates -- including First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, whose Landship Committee kept the idea alive.

In fact, the first tanks were manned not by army personnel but by naval ratings and officers, since the Royal Navy was already responsible for the operation of armored cars on the Western Front.

The Sept. 15 attack at Delville Wood was made by a D1 tank, commanded by Capt. H. W. Mortimore. It was followed up by a larger attack at Flers-Courcelette, which employed 15 tanks. The British had intended to commit every tank they had -- 49 in all -- to this assault, but only 22 of them reached the front line without breaking down, and seven of those failed to start as the attack commenced.

The Germans were profoundly shocked by the tanks' sudden appearance and fell back, but they quickly rallied. They soon discovered that while small-arms fire and machine guns had little effect against the armor, artillery could knock the tanks out with relative ease. And the Germans had very good artillery.

The tankers themselves found the machines difficult to operate. Visibility from the viewing slits was poor, and the machines were not only prone to breaking down but were very cumbersome: They crawled along at less than 1 mph and got hung up rather easily in the trench works.

Nevertheless, the British managed to reach some of their objectives at Flers, which impressed the brass back at headquarters. Even the subsequent German counterattack, which forced the British Expeditionary Force to break off its offensive on Sept. 22, didn't dampen Gen. Douglas Haig's enthusiasm for the new weapon. He ordered the construction of 1,000 more. By 1918, the British had produced around 2,800 tanks.

The French, meanwhile, built 4,000 tanks of their own, and used them in an infantry-support role. They proved just as unreliable as the British models, although they achieved some success when used in mass attacks. The United States built 84 tanks, while Germany put a mere 20 tanks into the field during World War I.

At the end of the war, both the French and British seemed to lose their appetite for tanks and did little to advance the technology during the 1920s and '30s. Across the Rhine, however, those who had been most affected by the new weapon began to study its potential use for the next big European war.

Source: Firstworldwar.com

Sept. 11, 1822: Church Admits It's Not All About Us

Posted: September 10th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1822: The College of Cardinals finally caves in to the hard facts of science, saying that the "publication of works treating of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the sun, in accordance with the opinion of modern astronomers, is permitted."

It represented a major shift in dogma for the Catholic Church, a concession that the Earth, in fact, might revolve around the sun. Unfortunately, it came 189 years too late to do Galileo Galilei any good.

Still, it would take another 13 years, until 1835, before Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems -- the work in which he defends the heliocentric theory -- would be removed from the Vatican's list of banned books.

As a theory, heliocentrism had existed since the ancient Greeks, who were the first to determine that the Earth is a sphere in a sky full of spheres. It remained an unproven theory directly opposed to the geocentric view held by Ptolemy and Aristotle, and embraced by Rome, that the Earth is the center of the universe.

Galileo was greatly influenced by the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, who not only posited that the Earth revolves around the sun but that it makes a complete turn on its axis every 24 hours. The Catholic Church, however, considered the theory heresy, and Galileo was convicted by the Inquisition in 1633 and remained under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Nearly two centuries later, however, the weight of scientific evidence was so overwhelming that the College of Cardinals finally reversed itself and allowed the teaching of heliocentrism. Still, it would take another 170 years, until 1992, for a pope -- in this case, John Paul II -- to officially concede that, yes, the Earth isn't stationary in the heavens. Eight years after that, in 2000, John Paul apologized for the way the Catholic Church treated Galileo.

Source: Various

Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship Enterprise

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1966: Star Trek makes its network television debut.

Given the cultural impact and enormous franchise spawned by the original Star Trek series, it's hard to believe that the show lasted just three seasons -- 80 episodes -- and was canceled by NBC in 1969 because of low ratings.

But if network numbers-crunching and the short-sightedness of advertising sponsors doomed it, Star Trek's long-term survival, evidenced by its ongoing syndication, not to mention the numerous TV spinoffs and feature-length films it inspired, is both a vindication of and a tribute to its creator and executive producer, Gene Roddenberry.

And Roddenberry was a guy badly in need of vindication. His career began promisingly: Roddenberry wrote scripts for some popular 1950s TV shows like Naked City, Highway Patrol and Have Gun, Will Travel. But the original Star Trek TV series, as well as the first feature-length film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, were conspicuous successes in an otherwise unremarkable and often problematic association with Hollywood.

The commercial success of the first Star Trek movie would spawn other films and a new TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, although Roddenberry's involvement with those projects was diminished. But if his relationship with the industry had its rough patches, his reputation as a futurist and visionary -- which begins and ends with Star Trek -- is assured.

The original show's most visionary aspects were social, not scientific, and that had everything to do with the times. The country was in turmoil, embroiled in Vietnam and the growing civil rights movement. Roddenberry said later that these events influenced many of the themes, as well as the multicultural makeup of the crew.

Roddenberry remained in demand on the lecture circuit to the end of his life, speaking not only at universities but at some other pretty significant places, too, including the Smithsonian Institution and NASA.

Star Trek's impact on popular culture is matched by only a handful of other television shows, and surpassed by precious few.

The original cast members on the USS Enterprise's 1966 flight deck became household names: Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (George Takei). Navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), who joined the cast in the second season to give the Russians their due in space, was also a popular character.

Phrases like "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Live long and prosper" and "to boldly go …" entered the lexicon, and the show's cult following, kept visibly alive by the numerous and rollicking Star Trek conventions, remains strong to this day. An 11-foot model of the starship Enterprise is on display at the Smithsonian.

On the tech front, the communicator used by Enterprise crew members is said to have been the inspiration for the flip-open cellphone.

The original pilot episode for the series, "The Cage," was filmed in 1964 but not aired in its entirety until 1988. After the original pilot was rejected by NBC, "The Cage" was chopped up and heavily edited, and eventually shown under the title "The Menagerie" during Star Trek's three-year run.

Nimoy's Mr. Spock was the only character from the pilot to later appear in the TV series, although he was most un-Spock like, showing a lot more emotion than your average Vulcan. In the pilot, the Enterprise was commanded by Capt. Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter).

Because of all the spinoffs that resulted from it, Roddenberry's Star Trek is often referred to as The Original Series. For a lot of us who came of age watching Shatner chewing on all that alien scenery and nibbling on all those alien necks, it was The Only Series.

Source: Various

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Sept. 4, 1957: Short, Unhappy Life of the Edsel

Posted: September 3rd, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1957: It's E-day, as Ford Motor Company introduces its newest make, the Edsel.

In an industry celebrated for its spectacular failures, the Edsel still takes the cake. Although as mechanically sound as other Ford products, the car was criticized from Day One for being too ugly, too expensive and vastly overhyped.

The 1958 Edsel was intended to be an intermediate-level brand, bridging the gap between the cheaper Fords and pricier Mercurys and Lincolns. The most-affordable Edsel (the Ranger) cost 70 bucks less than Ford's top-end Fairlane, while the most-expensive model (the Citation) cost more than a Mercury Montclair.

In the post-mortem that followed the Edsel's early demise, the faulty pricing structure was cited by Ford as a big reason the car failed. Sales weren't helped, either, by the fact that it rolled out of the plant at the beginning of a recession. But there was more.

The Edsel -- named for Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son who died of cancer in 1943 -- was the subject of an intense marketing blitz while still on the drawing board. The company promised an eager public something revolutionary, carefully baited the hook, and then failed to deliver. The Edsel was just another sedan on the basic Ford chassis.

Well, maybe not just another sedan. The classic barfly standard that everyone is good looking at closing time isn't true in this case. The Edsel was butt-ugly, period. A half century later, it's still butt-ugly.

Almost immediately after E-day, the superhype that had generated so much anticipation boomeranged on Ford. Automotive writers roundly trashed the Edsel, going so far as to compare the oval-shaped vertical grille to the female sex organ -- racy stuff for 1957.

Henry Ford II, who had opposed naming the car after his late father, believing it to be undignified, was no doubt furious and mortified. Robert McNamara, soon to become U.S. secretary of defense in the Kennedy administration, was president of the Ford Motor Company at the time and realized instantly he had a lemon on his hands. (A few years later, he'd be a little slower to realize that he had even a bigger lemon on his hands in a place called Vietnam.)

During the Edsel's first year, 1958, four models were produced and barely more than 63,000 were sold in the United States. Sales dropped in 1959, even though Ford had cut back to just two models, and on Nov. 19, 1959, barely two years after E-day, the company threw in the towel on the Edsel.

In one of those little logic-defying ironies, the Edsel today is a prized collector's item, fetching as much as $200,000 for a rare 1960 convertible.

Another victim of this historic automotive fiasco was the name Edsel itself. Although never a particularly popular boy's name -- rising to 400th on the 1927 list -- Edsel (from the Old German Adal, meaning "noble") has almost entirely vanished.

Source: Time magazine, Failure magazine

Sept. 1, 1939: Wehrmacht Puts the Blitz in Krieg

Posted: August 31st, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1939: Germany invades Poland, starting the second European war in a generation and introducing the world to a new kind of warfare: blitzkrieg.

This form of attack, which helped the Germans obliterate the Poles in three weeks and the French in only six, relies on rapid mobility and the coordination of massed armor and infantry, with fighter planes and dive bombers providing air support. It also depends on the element of surprise, one reason Nazi Germany never declared war prior to invading an enemy.

The concept of blitzkrieg was a matter of adapting 20th-century technology -- especially the tank, the airplane and the radio -- to the age-old tactics of mobile warfare. The Germans were not alone in exploring these possibilities -- military thinkers like Britain's Basil Liddell Hart and France's Charles de Gaulle also wrote extensively on the subject during the interwar years -- but conditions within the German army, and inside Germany itself, made for a more receptive audience.

Heinz Guderian is the acknowledged father of the blitzkrieg. Guderian was a signals officer during World War I, but he studied tank tactics in the early '20s and became a proselytizer for armored warfare. He later published a study, Achtung Panzer!, that amounted to a blueprint of German blitzkrieg tactics for the next war.

Adolf Hitler, meanwhile, was in the process of rearming the country when he attended a war-gaming exercise that combined tanks and motorized infantry. Hitler was impressed by the swiftness and the striking power, and he told Guderian -- who was running the exercise -- that this was the army he meant to have.

The tank is the blitzkrieg's decisive weapon. Tactically, the key is to attack en masse rather than committing tanks piecemeal, in an infantry support role, which is what the French did. In Germany, this philosophy led to the creation of the panzer divisions, the world's first truly armored units.

(Guderian, though only a colonel, was given command of the 2nd Panzer Division in 1935. As a general in World War II, Guderian commanded the XIX Panzer Corps during the Polish and French campaigns and, later, the Second Panzer Army in Russia. He also served as inspector general of panzer troops and, finally, as chief of the army's general staff.)

The classic blitzkrieg attack unfolds like this:

Air strikes, rather than artillery, open the attack, hitting at key targets such as enemy airfields, communications centers, rail lines, main roads, supply depots and troop concentrations. Early in the war, the Ju-87 "Stuka" dive bomber was heavily employed in this role.
Artillery zeros in on those points in the enemy line selected for the armored breakthrough.
When the barrage lifts, massed armor attacks those points (Schwerpunkte in German), tearing gaps in the enemy's line. Tanks, supported by motorized infantry, achieve the breakthrough, driving deep into the enemy's rear areas without stopping to consolidate gains or engage troops on the flanks. The point is to disrupt communications, paralyze command structure and destroy the enemy's ability to mount a coordinated counterattack.
Infantry divisions follow up the breakthrough, encircling and mopping up enemy resistance, shoring up the flanks and consolidating the conquered territory.

Success is achieved through surprise and speed, which keeps the enemy off balance. Maneuvering is coordinated through the use of radio, which was used so extensively by the Germans that individual tanks carried their own equipment. The French, by comparison, hardly used radio at all. The French High Command was not even connected by radio to units in the field. Instead, it dispatched orders by motorcycle courier from its headquarters outside of Paris.

Incidentally, the German Wehrmacht never officially used the word blitzkrieg -- literally, "lightning war" -- though it did appear in several prewar German military publications. It came into popular use after turning up in Time magazine's coverage of the Polish invasion.

Source: Various

Aug. 29, 1965: Long-Distance Calling ... Very Long Distance

Posted: August 28th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1965: An astronaut in space holds a conversation with an aquanaut underwater, marking another milestone in human communication.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper, orbiting the Earth with Pete Conrad in Gemini 5, hooked up by radiotelephone with an old pal, astronaut-turned-aquanaut Scott Carpenter, who was living and working 205 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla, California, aboard Sealab II.

The two men had known each other since 1959, when they were among the seven pilots chosen by NASA to be America's first Project Mercury astronauts. Carpenter, a former Navy pilot, had already been in space, the solo astronaut on a mistake-plagued, three-orbit flight aboard Aurora 7 that resulted in his being effectively grounded.

He was on leave from the space agency when he joined the Navy's Sealab II project as training officer. Carpenter eventually resigned from NASA in 1967. He retired from the Navy in 1969.

Cooper and Conrad, meanwhile, were nearing the end of an eight-day orbital mission to test human endurance in space. Eight days was recognized as the time needed to travel to the moon and back. (Five days was the longest Soviet space flight before then, and the American record was four days. By years' end, American astronauts would complete a 14-day mission in space.)

The radio hookup was partly a gimmick, to take advantage of Carpenter's astronaut status to publicize the Sealab II project. But it was also a method of testing the effectiveness of an underwater electronics lab installed aboard the submersible.

Gemini 5 was not the only long-distance call made from Sealab II. The Navy aquanauts also spoke with President Johnson at the White House and with Jacques Cousteau's Conshelf 3 team, French colleagues conducting a similar underwater-habitat test off Cap Ferrat in the Mediterranean Sea.

Following their chat with Carpenter, Cooper and Conrad readied Gemini 5 for its return to Earth and splashed down in the very same Pacific Ocean later that day.

Thirty years later, in 1995, Carpenter recreated his seabed-to-space call, chatting with astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavor while staying at Jules' Undersea Lodge off Key Largo, Florida.

Source: Various

Aug. 27, 2003: The Lights Will Stay On in Fairbanks

Posted: August 26th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

2003: Fairbanks is connected to the world's largest storage battery, built to provide Alaska's second-biggest city with an uninterrupted power supply.

Fairbanks' remote location and sub-Arctic climate makes supplying reliable power to the city of 32,000 difficult. In deep winter, the temperature in Fairbanks is almost constantly subzero, dropping as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit The situation is complicated by the fact that Alaska isn't connected to the power grid that keeps the lower 48 humming.

As a result, Fairbanks used to experience a serious, "cascading" blackout every two or three years, along with a number of smaller failures every month. Since the mountain couldn't come to Muhammad, it was necessary to devise another source of reliable local power.

The answer turned out to be a massive battery, the largest ever built, that now sits in a warehouse on the outskirts of Fairbanks. According to ABB Communications Services, the power-components specialist that built it, the battery can generate up to 40 megawatts of power -- enough to keep 12,000 people supplied with electricity -- for seven minutes. That's long enough to fire up the city's backup diesel generators and restore the power supply.

The battery energy-storage system, or BESS, which cost $35 million to build, contains 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells weighing a total of 1,400 tons and covering more than 10,000 square feet.

BESS is controlled by a Pentium PC-based platform programmed to provide all the essential services, including a complicated temperature-control system designed to withstand the rigors of the Alaskan winter.

In its first two years of operation, BESS reportedly prevented at least 81 power failures, an average of more than three per month. In a hostile environment like the area around Fairbanks, that can mean the difference between life and death.

Source: Various

Aug. 22, 1962: First Nuke-Powered Cargo Ship Docks

Posted: August 21st, 2008, 8:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1962: NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, completes its maiden voyage.

In a world terrified by the prospect of nuclear war, the Savannah was meant to demonstrate the peaceful use and positive potential of nuclear power. President Eisenhower conceived the idea as part of his "Atoms for Peace" program in 1955, a time when the United States and Soviet Union were routinely testing increasingly powerful nuclear weapons.

Four nuclear-powered merchant ships were eventually built.

The Savannah, named for the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 1819, was in every sense of the word a showcase. The ship was given a sleek, streamlined design that wasn't really compatible with stowing large amounts of cargo, a fact that would eventually shorten its career.

Passenger accommodation was comparable to many conventional liners of the day. There were 30 air-conditioned staterooms, a dining room for 100 people, a swimming pool, a library and a lounge that could be converted into a cinema.

But the heart of the Savannah was its nuclear propulsion system, which at $28 million ($203 million in today's money) cost more than the ship itself, a mere $18.5 million ($134 million today). The Babcock and Wilcox nuclear reactor drove Savannah's two steam-turbine engines cheaply and efficiently.

In the end, though, it wasn't economical enough to offset the tight forward cargo area and other deficiencies that made the ship too expensive to operate commercially. Its tapered bow not only limited the cargo capacity to 8,500 tons -- well below that of contemporary vessels -- but also made loading difficult, especially as ports became more automated.

The Savannah also required a crew of 124, one-third again as large as conventionally powered ships, and those crew members required additional training to work with the propulsion system.

The Maritime Administration, which owned Savannah, leased her in 1965 to American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines for cargo-passenger service. But the ship never turned a profit and was laid up in January 1972. The Savannah spent most of the 1970s tied up in Galveston, Texas, where it underwent regular inspections of its nuclear plant.

Since then, the ship, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark, has become a museum piece in search of a home. Following decommissioning, the nuclear fuel was removed; the process of cleaning out all remaining nuclear contamination continues in a Baltimore shipyard.

When that job is completed sometime in 2011, the Maritime Administration hopes to see Savannah converted into a floating museum. So far, there have been no takers.

Source: Various

Aug. 20, 1960: Back From Space, With Tails Wagging

Posted: August 19th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1960: Belka and Strelka, a couple of stray mutts impressed into the Soviet space program, become the first living creatures to return alive from an orbital flight.

The Russians had been using dogs for experimental high-altitude flights long before Belka (Russian for "squirrel") and Strelka ("Little Arrow") lifted off from Baikonur on what would be a 16-orbit flight. Their safe return was by no means a certainty: Less than a month earlier, two other dogs were lost when the booster rocket meant to carry their Vostok spacecraft into orbit exploded on launch.

Then there was Laika, of course, the first living being to orbit the Earth. But Laika was sent into space on a one-way ticket; the Russians knew beforehand that she wasn't coming back.

It was the Americans, not the Russians, who put the first animals into rocket-powered missiles to test the effects of rapid acceleration and weightlessness on a living organism. Albert, a rhesus monkey, was the first to go, launched into suborbital space on June 11, 1948, aboard a V-2 Blossom rocket. He did not survive.

The Russians began experimenting with rabbits, mice and rats before switching to dogs in the early 1950s. In general, the Russians were successful at bringing their dogs home safely, and several of them made multiple flights. One plucky pooch, Snowflake, made at total of six flights during 1959 and 1960.

In selecting their animals, the Russians preferred females (owing to their temperaments and the ease of waste elimination) and strays (which were considered hardier and more adaptable than pampered house pets).

The dogs went through rigorous training to get them ready to fly. Because the dog would be immobile throughout the flight -- in a specially constructed safety module inside the capsule -- she was confined in gradually smaller boxes for days on end, and trained to sit still for long periods of time. The animal grew accustomed to wearing a space suit and was placed in flight simulators and centrifuges that prepared her for space flight.

Belka and Strelka did not go into space unaccompanied. With them onboard Sputnik 5 were 40 mice, a couple of rats and some plants. All were unharmed by their one-day voyage.

Strelka, in fact, went on to become a mother. One of her puppies was presented to President Kennedy's daughter, Caroline, as a gift from the Soviet Union. When Caroline's dog produced her own litter, JFK got a few laughs by referring to them as "pupniks."

Eight months after Belka and Strelka returned to Earth, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first biped to orbit the Earth and return safely.

Source: Various

Aug. 18, 1947: Birth of the Cool (Company, That Is)

Posted: August 17th, 2008, 8:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1947: Eight years after its founding, Hewlett-Packard incorporates. The tiny garage in Palo Alto, California, where the company originated is now regarded as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

Plenty of rock bands have come out of garages, and Jobs and Wozniak noodled around in one with their goofy little computer, too, but Hewlett-Packard must be considered the mother of all garage productions.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard met as engineering students at Stanford back in the early '30s and cemented their lifelong friendship during a post-graduation camping trip. Packard went off to take a job with General Electric, while Hewlett went on to postgraduate studies. They were reunited by Stanford prof Fred Terman, who encouraged the two to "make a run for it."

With a nut of $500 in cash, borrowed from Terman, plus a used Sears, Roebuck drill press, Hewlett-Packard swung into action in the small shed behind Packard's modest house at 367 Addison Ave. The company's first product, released in 1938, was an audio oscillator used for testing sound equipment. When the Walt Disney Company bought eight of them to develop the technically advanced movie Fantasia, HP was off-and-running.

Packard and Hewlett (and that's the last time you'll see the names in that order) made the partnership permanent Jan. 1, 1939. The formal name was determined by the gracious winner of a coin toss. Even though Packard won the toss, he apparently liked the way "Hewlett-Packard" sounded, so they went with that. He never had reason to regret the choice.

Hewlett-Packard's rise as a tech powerhouse is a story that's been told ad nauseam. The electronics products were first-rate and eagerly embraced. Want became need with the coming of World War II, and HP quickly grew, moving out of Packard's garage in 1940.

But the company was innovative in another, perhaps less-known way, that's equally important. Thanks to the humanistic sensibilities of Messrs. Hewlett and Packard, HP also demonstrated a new type of management technique, one that placed a premium on the workers and their happiness. This open-management style was the prototype for how many technology companies, particularly in Silicon Valley, would operate decades later.

Packard, especially, was interested in fostering a relaxed working atmosphere. In practicing "management by walking around," he devised what became known as his 11 simple rules. He also practiced what he preached. Once, when an engineer defied his direct order to stop work on an oscilloscope that later became a commercial success, Packard had a special medal struck -- "Extraordinary Contempt and Defiance Beyond the Usual Call of Engineering" -- for the man.

HP further softened the hierarchy by establishing open cubicles and not putting doors on management offices. It also provided medical coverage to its employees at a time when that was not generally done.

Source: Hewlett-Packard

Aug. 15, 1877: 'Hello. Can You Hear Me Now?'

Posted: August 14th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1877: Thomas Edison suggests using the word hello as a telephone greeting. The idea catches on.

Edison invented a lot of things, for sure, but one thing he didn't invent was the telephone. The brass ring for that one goes to Alexander Graham Bell, although Elisha Gray filed his patent for a similar device the same day. But they never called it Ma Gray, did they?

Edison's contribution to the "improvement in telegraphy" was giving us the salutation now used the world over, in one form or another. Bell's famous first words spoken over what we now call the telephone -- "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you." -- were delivered without any greeting at all.

When he did weigh in on the subject, Bell proposed using "ahoy, ahoy," the age-old seafarer's hail. And, in fact, ahoy was the first greeting used, until Edison suggested hello.

At the time, the phone was conceived of as a business machine that would connect two offices with a permanently open line. Some people toyed with the idea of an alarm bell at each end to alert one office that the other office wanted to speak. On Aug. 15, 1877, Edison wrote to a friend who was setting up a phone system in Pittsburgh: "I don't think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you think?"

Contrary to some accounts, Edison did not coin the word. Halloo and variants had been used for ages to urge on hunting hounds and to shout to people at a distance. Edison was tinkering with a prototype phonograph in 1877 and used a shouted halloo! for testing. Early gramophones and telephones alike had pretty low signal-to-noise ratios.

Hello itself turns up in a number of places prior to 1877, including Mark Twain's travelogue, Roughing It, published four years before Bell called Mr. Watson. Earlier references to the word also exist, one dating back to at least 1826.

In any case, hello caught on quickly and entered the dictionary in 1883, and when was the last time you had to look up that spelling?

Source: Various

Aug. 11, 1942: Actress + Piano Player = New Torpedo

Posted: August 10th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1942: Hedy Lamarr, once described by German actor-director Max Reinhardt as "the most beautiful woman in Europe," receives a U.S. patent for a frequency-hopping device designed to guide radio-controlled torpedoes while making them more difficult to detect in the water. Holding the patent with her is George Antheil.

It's the incongruity of the patent holders with their invention, as much as the invention itself, that is remarkable. Lamarr, a Viennese-born movie actress, would eventually be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Antheil, an American avant-garde composer of orchestral music and opera, lived in Paris during the '20s and counted Ernest Hemingway and Igor Stravinsky among his friends.

Not exactly the kind of folks you picture tinkering with cutting-edge weapons of war. In fact, their device was way ahead of its time. Although it was patented at the height of World War II, frequency hopping relied on electronics technology that didn't exist yet. An updated version of the Lamarr-Antheil device finally appeared on U.S. Navy ships in 1962 (three years after their patent expired), and was first used during the Cuban missile crisis.

In 1942, though, Navy brass were unimpressed, dismissing the invention as too bulky to fit inside a torpedo. Antheil's arguments to the contrary were ignored, and he said later that comparing parts of the invention to the fundamental mechanism of a player piano in front of a bunch of naval officers had probably been a mistake.

"'My god,' I can see them saying, 'we shall put a player piano in a torpedo.'"

Lamarr and Antheil dropped the idea and turned to other things. In the end, their device was resurrected by engineers at Sylvania and proved to be one of the forerunners of spread-spectrum communications, which has applications in satellite systems and cellphone technology.

Lamarr was the quintessential beauty with brains. (She was contemptuous of many of her fellow actresses: "Any girl can be glamorous," she said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.") She was mathematically gifted and became acquainted with the intricacies of modern weaponry while married to her first husband, an Austrian munitions manufacturer.

Having established herself acting in German films, Lamarr came in 1937 to the United States, where she signed with Louis B. Mayer and MGM. It was Mayer who got her to change her name, from Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler to Hedy Lamarr. She enjoyed a solid career in Hollywood, although other leading ladies of the day, such as Ingrid Bergman, eclipsed her as a box-office draw.

Then there was George Antheil.

Aside from his provocative compositions and eccentric skills as a pianist -- his jarring technique frequently agitated his audiences, to the point where he would lay a pistol on the piano as a warning to keep quiet -- Antheil was very much a Renaissance man. He wrote widely on a variety of subjects, penning a syndicated advice column to the lovelorn and writing about endocrinology for Esquire magazine. He also published a book on the subject, Every Man His Own Detective: A Study of Glandular Endocrinology.

During World War II -- which he had accurately predicted would start in Europe with the German invasion of Poland -- Antheil served as a war correspondent.

It was Antheil's knowledge of endocrinology, in fact, that began the Lamarr-Antheil collaboration. Aware of his work in the field, Lamarr approached him at a Hollywood dinner party to talk about the possibility of increasing the size of her breasts. The next thing you know -- bang! -- a revolutionary torpedo-guidance system. We'll just leave it there.

Source: Various

Aug. 6, 1890: Kemmler First to 'Ride the Lightning'

Posted: August 5th, 2008, 8:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1890: William Kemmler becomes the first person ever executed using electrocution. It doesn't go well.

Kemmler, a Buffalo, New York, vegetable peddler with a strong jealous streak, confessed to killing his wife with a hatchet following an argument. "I killed her, and I'll take the rope for it," he said, expecting to be hanged.

But the state of New York had other plans.

It was Kemmler's bad luck to be condemned to death just as the state was ready to try out a newfangled killing device called the electric chair.

The first chair was built by Harold Brown, an employee of Thomas Edison, who happened to be doing a lot of work with electricity in general and was exploring electrocution as a more humane method of execution than hanging.

It also happened that Edison was embroiled in a battle with Nicola Tesla and George Westinghouse over whose electric current would be adopted as the standard. Edison was pushing direct current, or DC, while Tesla and Westinghouse championed alternating current, or AC.

Edison, never shy about exploiting a situation to his advantage, especially if it could cripple a rival, therefore directed Brown to rig the chair to operate on AC. By associating the Tesla-Westinghouse current with something as unpleasant as the state killing of a human being, Edison hoped to turn public opinion his way. He even suggested replacing the new coinage, electrocution, with "to be Westinghoused." It never caught on.

The execution was delayed while Kemmler's case was appealed on the grounds that it violated the Eighth Amendment restriction against cruel and unusual punishment. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices denied Kemmler's appeal. An execution date of Aug. 6 was set.

When his time came, Kemmler went to the chair obligingly, like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter. Contemporary accounts describe him as composed and cooperative. "Gentlemen, I wish you luck," he said to his executioners. "I'm sure I'll get a good place, and I'm ready."

The switch was thrown, and 1,000 volts of AC slammed into Kemmler. There was every reason to think that would be sufficient: Only a day earlier, it had been enough to kill a horse during a final test.

After 17 seconds, the current was shut off. The attending physician, Dr. Edward Spitzka, pronounced Kemmler dead. But he wasn't dead. He was still breathing, and when a member of the gallery pointed that out, Spitzka and another physician re-examined Kemmler. "Have the current turned on again, quick. No delay," Spitzka said.

This time they gave Kemmler 2,000 volts. According to witnesses, the second jolt caused his blood vessels to burst and his skin to catch fire.

A New York Herald correspondent who witnessed the execution left no doubt about its effect on him: "The scene of Kemmler's execution was too horrible to picture. He died the death of Feeks (.pdf), the lineman, who was slowly roasted to death in the sight of thousands."

Westinghouse, who had tried to prevent his current from being used for the execution, later remarked laconically: "They would have done better using an ax."

Despite Kemmler's grisly death, a number of states, mostly in the eastern and southern United States, adopted the electric chair -- known colloquially as "riding the lightning" -- as the preferred method of execution. It remained in widespread use until late in the 20th century.

The electric chair is no longer used in this country as the primary method of execution. Several states, however, still keep one around as a secondary method.

Sources: Various

Aug. 4, 1977: All U.S. Energy Placed Under Single Roof

Posted: August 3rd, 2008, 8:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1977: President Carter signs the Department of Energy Organization Act, creating the U.S. Department of Energy.

Prior to 1973, the United States had no coherent energy policy. Instead, a number of smaller agencies, often working independently of one another, handled different aspects of the nation's energy needs. In the early years of the Atomic Age, for example, the military assumed responsibility for all nuclear-related issues.

The 1973 energy crisis changed everything. It was triggered when Arab member nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo against all western countries supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The embargo resulted in an immediate jump in oil prices (to $12 a barrel!), widespread gasoline rationing and the imposition of a 55 mph maximum speed limit. And it exposed America's energy dependencies and weaknesses.

The Nixon administration responded with Project Independence and the creation of the Federal Energy Office, the former intended to give the United States total energy independence by 1980 and the latter to manage a national energy policy. The energy program grew incrementally under the Nixon and Ford administrations, but remained diffuse.

Jimmy Carter had acquired a technical background in nuclear propulsion as an engineering officer in the Navy. When he took office in 1977, he proposed creating a Cabinet-level überagency that would consolidate everything energy-related -- research, exploration, conservation, production and disposal -- under its authority. The Energy Department would also be responsible for setting the national energy agenda and assuring nuclear safety.

Congress passed the act, and Carter signed it Aug. 4. The Department of Energy began operating Oct. 1, 1977.

The energy secretary, currently Samuel Bodman III, oversees a department with a $25 billion budget and more than 16,000 employees. Among the many units DOE funds and operates are more than 30 national laboratories. And it's the Energy Department, not the Pentagon, which oversees the development, testing, integrity and safety of the nation's nuclear arsenal.

Source: Various

July 30, 1869: Moving Oil in Bulk, for Good and Ill

Posted: July 29th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1869: The Charles, generally recognized as the world's first oil tanker, leaves the United States bound for Europe with the equivalent of 7,000 barrels of crude.

The Charles, home-ported in Antwerp, Belgium, carried its cargo in 59 iron tanks below decks. Earlier, oil was transported across the ocean in actual wooden barrels, each capable of holding only 42 gallons, which severely limited the carrying capacity of individual ships -- but also established the "barrel" as oil's unit of measurement.

The Charles' tanks were configured in rows in the ballast to assure the ship's stability. It saw service between 1869 and 1872.

If the Charles was the world's first oil tanker, though, it was not, strictly speaking, the first tanker. Three weeks before the Charles weighed anchor, the British brig Novelty arrived in Boston carrying 84,000 gallons of molasses stored in bulk in similar tanks.

Since then, as the world's dependence on carbon-based fuels has mushroomed, tankers have played a critical role in both war and peace.

During World War II, they carried oil from American refineries to supply the Allied forces in both the European and Pacific theaters. The T2 oiler was the workhorse of the tanker fleet, and a highly prized target for both German and Japanese submarine commanders.

Today, the tanker remains the primary means of transporting oil in bulk, and almost half the ships at sea at any given time are of this type. Overall, as of 2005, oil tankers comprised just under 40 percent of the world's merchant shipping fleet.

The largest modern supertankers -- the biggest ships ever built -- carry in excess of 320,000 deadweight tons (roughly 2 million barrels) of crude, petrochemicals and a variety of other liquid cargo. In 2005, 2.42 billion metric tons of crude oil and refined petroleum were shipped by tanker.

Moving enormous amounts of oil entails obvious environmental risks, and accidents, when they've occurred, have been spectacularly destructive. The Exxon Valdez, which ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989, resulted in 10.8 million gallons of crude being lost. Although there have been much larger oil spills, the Exxon Valdez incident remains one of the most damaging because of the particularly sensitive nature of the surrounding environment.

Source: Various

July 29, 1958: Ike Inks Space Law, NASA Born in Wake of Russ Moon

Posted: July 28th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

1958: President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The plot had thickened months before.

Beep … beep … beep …

They were steady, almost metronomic, signals coming from a tiny radio beacon orbiting the Earth every 96 minutes aboard an aluminum sphere measuring a mere 22-inches across. In an instant, everything changed.

It was Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet news agency Tass announced to a stunned world that the Soviet Union had successfully placed Elementary Satellite 1, known by its diminutive "Sputnik," into an elliptical orbit some 550 miles above a Cold War-wracked planet.

American scientists attending a reception at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., that day knew their Russian colleagues were close. With luck, the thinking went, the USSR might launch a satellite sometime in 1958. But the Americans were close, too. Their Vanguard program, run by the Naval Research Laboratory, was beset by cost overruns and various delays, but they were confident that they would be first into space.

That illusion was completely shattered October 4, which is remembered as "Sputnik Night." While getting Sputnik into orbit didn't suddenly confer technological supremacy upon the Russians, it was nevertheless a remarkable achievement -- and an enormous propaganda coup. For the moment, at least, communism had trumped capitalism on a major front, and the conceit that America stood unequaled in the technological sphere was shaken.

When, less than a month later, the Russians put the larger and much-heavier Sputnik 2 into orbit, with the dog Laika aboard, genuine alarm set in. Now there was talk of a growing technology gap. There were also fears in U.S. military circles that these satellites might be capable of pinpointing targets for a Soviet nuclear-missile attack.

The Space Age was dawning badly for the United States.

The pressure for a U.S. riposte grew. It only intensified with a failed attempt to launch the Vanguard TV3 satellite in December 1957. It was the Army that finally got the United States off the schneid. Wernher von Braun, a key scientist in Nazi Germany's rocket program, was now working for the U.S. Army, along with a number of his former German colleagues brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. They convinced the Pentagon to set Vanguard aside and bet the ranch on the Army's still-untested Project Explorer.

Explorer 1, launched atop a Juno 1 rocket January 31, 1958, was the first American satellite to achieve orbit. Although it was much smaller than Sputnik 2 and only a few pounds heavier than the original Sputnik, Explorer 1 was a badly needed success. It also marked the beginning of the space race in the national consciousness.

Explorer 1, and the subsequent launching of Vanguard 1, mitigated, but did not efface, the sting of Sputnik. And it did nothing to stave off a comprehensive reorganization of the U.S. space program. The Eisenhower administration, working with an often-fractious Congress, got nowhere, so Ike (in between tee times, his detractors would say) directed his science adviser, James Killian, to convene a committee and come up with a game plan.

The first step was to reinvigorate the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, a rather geeky and elitist civilian panel that had been around since 1915, by handing it all nonmilitary responsibilities connected to space exploration. As NACA's charter grew, the decision was made to expand it into a full-fledged government agency taking direct responsibility for the nation's space program.

President Eisenhower signed the legislation creating NASA on July 29, and it officially became a functioning entity October 1, with T. Keith Glennan as its first administrator. There were 8,000 employees, inherited from NACA; three research laboratories -- Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory -- and an annual budget of $100 million. (That's about $750 million in today's money, compared to a 2008 budget of more than $17 billion.)

The agency's mission statement will have faint echoes for Star Trek fans: "To improve life here, to extend life there, to find life beyond."

* * * * *

To mark the 50th anniversary of NASA's birth, Wired.com has created a special package of features:

Source: Various

NASA: 50 Years of Towering Achievement

Posted: July 26th, 2008, 11:00pm CDT by Tony Long

One of the indelible memories for anyone living through the 1960s was watching CBS newsman Walter Cronkite anchor another televised liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Throughout the decade, from Alan Shepard through Neil Armstrong, Cronkite made it clear to his audience that they were taking part in something momentous, something that not only represented the flowering of a great technological achievement but stirred the human soul as well.

This week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration observes the 50th anniversary of its creation. And make no mistake: There's a lot to celebrate. NASA's achievements write a glorious chapter in human history, one that's nearly impossible to overstate. Is it fair to call NASA the greatest scientific and exploratory agency ever created? It is.

Americans used to appreciate this. Rare was the school in the early '60s that didn't stop the day's activities so student and teacher alike could gather in front of a grainy, often wavy, black-and-white picture of an Atlas booster rising heavenward from the smoke and fire, while Uncle Walter, live from the Cape, told us what it all meant.

It meant a lot. The U.S. space program was a cultural touchstone as much as a scientific or political one. Astronauts were heroes, as revered as any ballplayer or movie star of the time. You'd have to be living in a cave not to know what NASA was, and byproducts of the space program touched almost every corner of American life.

It cost the United States about $40 billion to get to the moon. Even at twice the cost, that's chump change. The human race has been repaid many times over for that inve

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