The transistor is invented, man orbits the moon for the first time, and Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” is no person… It all happened this week in tech history.
This week in 1947 – The transistor was invented. In its original form, the transistor wasn’t the tiny silicon component we know today. It took up a lot of space in the lab in New Jersey where it was invented. Today, thousands of transistors can be packed into an incredibly minute space and used in every electronic application you can think of.
1968 –The crew of Apollo 8 entered into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed ten lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures.
In 1982 – The Man of the Year in “TIME” magazine was a non-human for the first time. A computer received the honors as 1982’s “greatest influence for good or evil.”
And this week in 1999 – Two astronauts from the U.S. space shuttle “Discovery” started three days of spacewalks to repair the crippled Hubble Space Telescope so it could focus correctly on stars, galaxies and other celestial objects.