Tech History Today – Dec. 19

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

In 1972 – Apollo 17, the last manned lunar flight crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt, returned to Earth.

In 1974 – The Altair 8800 microcomputer from Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems in Albuquerque, New Mexico went on sale. For $439 you got everything you needed to build a computer in one kit boasting 256 bytes of memory!

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.