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his week in 1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen, a German mechanical engineer and physicist, published a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which later will be known as x-rays. And we’re still using them, 123 years later.
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.
And this week 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.”