This Week in History: Technology & Society
Well, I just returned from coaching speakers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and my mind is focused on “all things technical” … particularly, the relationship between technology and society.
For the week of January 10 through January 16, consider:
1906 The first radio was advertised in Scientific American. A selling point? Receiving signals up to one mile away.
1912 Birthday of Frank Westheimer, US chemist: “A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.”
1914 Henry Ford began the idea of having a continuous assembly line for cars.
1935 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific.
1943 The Pentagon building was completed, becoming the world’s largest office building (with 17 miles of corridors).
1949 The US Justice Department filed an anti-trust suit against AT&T.
1962 From a speech given by President John F. Kennedy: “A child miseducated is a child lost.”
1970 The Boeing 747 completed its first trans-Atlantic flight (from New York to London).
1978 NASA [finally] selected their first women astronauts … years after the USSR sent a woman astronaut to orbit the earth.