Today in Tech History – November 25, 2017

1816 – Gaslight illuminated Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theatre, improving on an innovation pioneered in London. Instead of coal the gas was created from pitch, reducing the malodorous vapors caused by the wonder’s creation.

http://www3.northern.edu/wild/LiteDes/ldhist.htm

1915 – Albert Einstein presented general theory of relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/11/economist-explains-17

1957 – PG&E and General Electric inaugurated the Vallecitos Nuclear Power Plant in Pleasanton California. It was the first privately funded atomic power plant.

http://archive.org/details/FirstPri1957 http://www.energy.ca.gov/nuclear/california.html

1976 – The Project Viking landers passed through superior conjunction at Mars, enabling scientists to begin an experiment that used the landers as transponders. The data collected confirmed the Shapiro Delay, becoming one of the best confirmations of General Relativity we have seen.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1979ApJ…234L.219R

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