Patterns in the Chaos

#OTD December 31, 1999 Ellie Arroway became the first human to make Contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence. She traveled aboard "The Machine" whose plans were received while she searched for signs of intelligent life by listening to radio static from space for "Patterns in the Chaos" #SciFi

An image of the front cover of Leila Belkora's book Minding the Heavens: The Story of our Discovery of the Milky Way - 1st Edition

My holiday gift to myself arrived this week- Leila's book "Minding the Heavens" It's already been valuable to me as I used it to 'fact-check' my recent post on the first detailed photo of Andromeda. I needed to confirm that the spiral nature of the Nebula was indeed "unexpected" at the time. It was.

A print of a photograph showing the structure of M31, the Great Nebula in Andromeda (now known as the Andromeda Galaxy). Photographed by Isaac Roberts on December 29, 1888. using his 20-inch (510 mm) aperture reflecting telescope made by Grubb. The long exposure photograph revealed that the nebula had a spiral structure, which was quite unexpected at the time. Photographs such as this changed astronomy by revealing the true form of nebulae and clusters, and eventually helped to develop the theories about galaxies. He published his celestial portfolio in a large format book that is the first popular account of celestial photography of the deep sky.

#OTD Dec 29, 1888 the Great Nebula in Andromeda (the Andromeda Galaxy), was photographed by Isaac Roberts with a 20" reflector & 4 hour exposure. It revealed the nebula was a spiral, unexpected at the time. Photos such as this changed astronomy by revealing the form of nebulae and clusters #histsci

A painting of the HMS Beagle in Sydney Harbour in 1838 By Ron Scobie

#OTD Dec 27, 1831 The HMS Beagle set sail from Plymouth harbor with 22 year-old Charles Darwin as the ship's unpaid naturalist. His 5 year voyage of scientific discovery led him to develop the theory of biological evolution through natural selection #histsci

Photograph of the Earth rising over the Moon’s horizon taken by astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968 15:40 UTC, with a highly modified Hasselblad 500 EL with an 80-mm lens loaded with custom Ektachrome 70 mm film developed by Kodak.

#OTD December 24, 1968: Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to orbit the Moon, and the first to witness an "Earthrise" #histtech #space

Photo of John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain in 1948. This is one of a series of publicity photos produced by Bell Labs around the time of the public announcement of the invention (June 30, 1948). Although Shockley was not involved in the invention, Bell Labs decided that Shockley must appear on all publicity photos along with Bardeen and Brattain. In 1956 John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley were honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect"

The first transistor, assembled by Walter Brattain and successfully tested for the first time on December 16, 1947 and first demonstrated at Bell Labs Dec 23, 1947

#OTD Dec 23, 1947 the transistor was first demonstrated at Bell Labs by Walter Brattain & John Bardeen. The PNP germanium transistor worked to amplify a microphone & headphones. In 1956 Brattain, Bardeen & William Shockley received the Nobel Prize for discovery of the transistor effect. #histtech

YouTube video by Retro Space HD APOLLO 8 cleaned up TV 1(1968/12/22)

#OTD December 22, 1968. The first US live TV broadcast from a manned spacecraft in space. The crew of Apollo 8 held six live telecasts during the mission to orbit the moon for the first time. #histtech #space
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1F4...

#OTD 50 years ago, the Altair 8800 microcomputer kit went on sale. It was the first commercially successful personal computer and began the 1970s computer revolution. It had no video output and was programed via switches or terminal, later using Micro-soft's first product, Altair BASIC #histtech

The Atlas-B rocket with SCORE on the launch pad. Project SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was built into the body of the Atlas and the whole rocket orbited (without booster engines). The spacecraft body served as antenna. It captured world attention by broadcasting a message via shortwave radio from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower through an on-board tape recorder

The Project SCORE Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment, two of which were built into the Atlas B rocket

#OTD Dec 18, 1958 First communication satellite launched. SCORE Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment was built in an Atlas B rocket & it's body served as the antenna. It was the 1st successful use of an Atlas as space launch vehicle & 1st broadcast of a human voice from space. #histtech

Photo of the first successful flight of the Wright Flyer, by the Wright brothers on December 17, 1903. The machine traveled 120 ft (36.6 m) in 12 seconds at 10:35 a.m. at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville Wright was at the controls of the machine, lying prone on the lower wing with his hips in the cradle which operated the wing-warping mechanism. Wilbur Wright ran alongside to balance the machine, and just released his hold on the forward upright of the right wing in the photo. The starting rail, the wing-rest, a coil box, and other items needed for flight preparation are visible behind the machine. This is described as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air, powered flight" by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but is not listed by the FAI as an official record.

#OTD Dec 17, 1903, the Wright Flyer built by Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air, powered flight. It traveled 120ft/36.6m in 12 seconds with Orville lying down operating a wing-warping mechanism with his hips. #histtech

The world's first stamp to depict an airplane issued in the U.S on December 16, 1912. It was a 20-cent Parcel Post stamp, with carmine rose red ink, titled “Aeroplane Carrying Mail” with a drawing of a biplane.

#OTD Dec 16, 1912 the world's first stamp to depict an airplane was issued in the U.S. It was a 20-cent Parcel Post stamp, with carmine rose red ink, titled “Aeroplane Carrying Mail” with a drawing of a biplane. #histtech

Great film and great soundtrack.

#OTD Dec 14, 1972 the last humans on the moon left the lunar surface to return to the earth aboard Apollo 17. No one has yet returned.

Artist rendering of the Relay 1 in orbit

30-foot parabolic antenna developed by International Telephone and Telegraph Federal Laboratories that served as a Project Relay space communication terminal and was located in the United States. The antenna was part of the ground communication terminal of a United States to Brazil communication link via the Relay satellite launched by a NASA Delta rocket on December 13, 1962.

#OTD Dec 13, 1962 Experimental communications satellite Relay 1 launched on a Delta B rocket. It provided communications between North & South America & Europe. It was the first satellite to transmit television across the Pacific. Developed by RCA, it worked till 1965 and remains in orbit #histtech

Marconi watching associates raising the kite (a "Levitor" by B.F.S. Baden-Powell) used to lift the over 100 meters of copper wire antenna at St. John's, Newfoundland, which picked up a faint wireless signal from England. December 1901

Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy transmitting station in Poldhu, Cornwall, erected October 1901, with which he transmitted the first transatlantic radio message to St. John's Bay, Newfoundland on 12 December 1901, a distance of 2300 mi (3500 km). Marconi first built a round cylindrical wire antenna in summer 1901. When it blew down in a storm, he built this more sturdy antenna consisting of 50 wires in an inverted pyramid supported by four 210 ft (64 meter) wooden towers. The reason for the multiple wires of the antenna was to increase its capacitance to ground, to allow it to store more energy during each spark.

#OTD Dec 12, 1901 The first transatlantic radio signal was received by Marconi at Signal Hill in Newfoundland, Canada using a wire antenna flown by a kite. Morse code letter "S" was transmitted from 3,500 km away at Poldhu, Cornwall England by a ~12 kW spark gap transmitter on ~500 kHz. #histtech

Thor-Agena rocket launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base with Oscar 1 as a secondary payload which carried the primary mission Discoverer 36 to orbit.

OSCAR 1 (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio 1)

OSCAR 1 being built. The design, construction and testing of OSCAR 1 involved many individuals, many of whom were Lockheed employees: Clarence A Andrews, jr. (W0LIIV), Douglas K. Beck (WA6QQI), Albert R. Die (W3LSZ/6), Albert F. Gaetano (W6VZT), Russell Garner (K5VPN/6), Gail Gangwish, H. Hughes, Howard Linnenkohl (K0SDD), H. E. Poole, Charles S. Smallhouse (WA6MGZ) and Lance Ginner (K6GSJ)

#OTD December 12, 1961 The first amateur radio satellite OSCAR 1 launched on a Thor-Agena from Vandenberg AFB. It transmitted "HI' in morse code at 140mW on 144.983MHz. First of 164 amateur satellites so far, there are currently 18 operational used to communicate worldwide. #HamRadio #histtech

#OTD Dec 11, 1911 Marie Curie became the first person to receive a 2nd Nobel prize. This prize was for her individual achievements in Chemistry, whereas her first prize in Physics, (shared with Pierre Curie & Henri Becquerel) was for contributions in the discovery of radium & polonium. #histsci

Niels Bohr in 1922

Niels Bohr's original drawing of the structure of the Radium atom from his 1922 presentation.

#OTD Dec 10, 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Niels Bohr for contributions to understanding atomic structure, radiation & quantum theory. He theorized energy levels of electrons are discrete & revolve in stable orbits around the nucleus, but can jump from one energy level to another. #histsci

5. Earth 🌍

The "Blue Marble" photo taken by either Ron Evans or Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 crew in 1972. The original photograph was taken with the South Pole facing the top; however, this cropped and rotated version is the most widely distributed and is one of the most reproduced images in history. The photographer used a 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera with an 80-millimeter Zeiss lens.

#OTD Dec 7, 1972 The Blue Marble photo of Earth was taken by the crew of Apollo 17. The image released during a surge in environmental activism in the 1970s, became a symbol of the environmental movement. A depiction of Earth's fragility, vulnerability, and isolation amid the vast expanse of space.

Wiley Post and his single-engine Lockheed Vega the “Winnie Mae"

Wiley Post wearing the pressurized flying suit he designed and was built by the B.F. Goodrich company.

#OTD December 7, 1934 Wiley Post discovered the jet stream while flying in the stratosphere in an unpressurized plywood plane. He helped B.F. Goodrich develop a pressurized flying suit, forerunner of the space suit, made of rubberized fabric with an aluminum helmet pressurized to 0.5 bar.

#OTD Dec 6, 1882 The transit of Venus across the sun was photographed on a series of glass plates by David Peck Todd using a solar telescope on the summit of Mount Hamilton. Venus transits were predicted by Johannes Kepler in 1627 and occur in eight-year pairs with gaps of 100+ years between pairs.

UCLA's Boelter Hall housed one of the four original ARPANET nodes. The birthplace of the Internet. Photo: UCLA Samueli School of Engineering

A sketch of the ARPANET in December 1969. The initial four-node ARPANET network was established. The precursor of the Internet, the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency) connected computer network nodes at four universities: the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, Calif., U.C. Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.

#OTD Dec 5, 1969 The initial four-node ARPANET network was established. The precursor of the Internet, the network connected four universities: the University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford Research Institute, U.C. Santa Barbara and University of Utah, using 50-kilobit-per-second phone lines.

A drawing of Enrico Fermi and a group of scientists gathered beneath the football stands at the University of Chicago to achieve the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction

#OTD Dec 2, 1942 Enrico Fermi and his team demonstrated the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction. They built a lattice of 57 layers of uranium and uranium oxide embedded in graphite blocks underneath the football stands at the University of Chicago. It ran for 4.5 minutes at about 0.5 watts.

#OTD Nov 30, 1609 Galileo pointed his telescope at the moon and made drawings of the irregularities of the surface. It was the first time the moon had been realistically depicted. He made watercolor sketches from the drawings which were engraved for his revolutionary book "Starry Messenger"

RCA radio facsimile transmitter (left) and receiver (right) in the process of transmitting a photograph, with Richard H. Ranger the inventor of the wireless photogradiogram.

#OTD Nov 29, 1924 100 years ago, the first wireless photograph, a “Radiophoto” was transmitted from New York to London on 1.3 Mhz. A photograph was placed on a rotating drum and a photoelectric cell converted the shades of light and dark into electric signals that could be transmitted via radio.

The Ford Trimotor aircraft before takeoff from the Ross Ice Shelf.

The Ford Trimotor aircraft with Richard Byrd and crew flying above Antarctica.

#OTD November 28, 1929 Commander Richard Byrd began the first flight to reach the South Pole. A four person crew flew a Ford Trimotor aircraft from “Little America” base on the Ross Ice Shelf for an 18hr round trip. They navigated by the sun as magnetic compasses don't work near a Pole.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell next to the radio telescope she built and used to detect first pulsating radio source (pulsar).

#OTD Nov 28, 1967 The first pulsating radio source (pulsar) was detected by graduate student Jocelyn Bell, at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cambridge, England. The radio telescope consisted of a rectangular array of 2,048 full-wave dipoles arranged in 16 rows of 128 elements on 4.4 acres.

The Pepsi Generation