1931 – US Patent No. 1,835,031 for a “concentric conducting system” was awarded to Lloyd Espenschied of Kew Gardens, New York, and Herman A. Affel of Ridgewood, New Jersey, and assigned to the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Coaxial Cable had been patented.
1993 – The US Secretary of Defense declared the GPS system a dual use system that had Initial Operation Capability and opened the Standard Positioning System to civilians, which gave accuracy of nine meters horizontally.
http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/gps/gps-info
2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX became the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
https://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/spacexfeature.html
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.