Today in Tech History – December 19, 2017

1958 – The first known radio broadcast from outer space was transmitted. US President Eisenhower spoke from a pre-recorded message aboard the Project SCORE experimental satellite. Redundancy paid off as the first recorder failed but the backup worked.

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/thismonth/this_month_dec08.html

1972 – Apollo 17, the last manned lunar flight crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt, returned to Earth.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo17.html

1999 – TIME Magazine announced Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, as its person of the year. The magazine cited online shopping and dot-com mania among the reasons.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bezos-itime-is-person-of-year/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.