This week in 1878 – Famed inventor Thomas Edison, patented a music player at his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. (This music device is the one we know as the phonograph.)
1947 – Edwin Land demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City. It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. The photos were black and white. The camera went on sale the following year.
1953 – The new fad in America was 3-D, as demonstrated in the movie, “Bwana Devil”. The 3-D feature opened at Loew’s State Theatre in New York City.
1962 –While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.
1986 – The Soviet Union launched its Mir spacecraft. Mir remained in orbit for 15 years and was occupied for ten of those years.
And this week in 2002 – NASA’s Mars Odyssey space probe began to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.