John Glenn: A Memory

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“It was quite a day. I’m not sure what you can say about a day in which you see four beautiful sunsets in one day, but it’s pretty interesting.”—John Glenn, February 20, 1962

October 29, 1998, was a Thursday. John Glenn, about to become a former U.S. Senator, was on board the space shuttle Discovery, and if all went according to plan, he was going to shatter the records for longest time between trips into orbit, oldest person to travel into space, and probably a few other things. He was 77 and had orbited Earth on February 20, 1962, thirty-six years earlier.
Read More

Today in History: Dec. 8

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

U.S. Patent Number 1,835,031 was published on this date in 1931 by Lloyd Espenschied and Herman Affel of AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories. It was for coaxial cable, something that is profoundly important in modern life, yet unheralded.

The patent was for innovations in the technology, which had been under development on both sides of the Atlantic for decades—ever since the first Trans-Atlantic cable had been set in place and put to work, technicians had been searching for better and faster cable for transmissions.

Espenschied’s patent for a “concentric conducting system” is also of note because, although written in 1931, it mentions its possible use in cable television: “The types of transmission line systems now in use will not satisfy the television requirements for long distance transmission which must be met eventually.”
Read More

Nothing to Protest

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The best two words any of us get to say or write each day are “Thank you.” Thank you to everyone who reads this website, even if this post is the first one by me that you have ever seen: Thank you.

Yesterday, this website was viewed for the 40,000th time in 2016. About one month ago, the number of views this website received surpassed the number of views it received in all of 2015. Just under 34,000 views in 2015, and more than 40,000 in 2016.
Read More