It was 1961. John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States. The United States had just started trying to put people in space and in a time of uncertainty and amidst a spacerace with Russia an American president proposes bold new steps in the exploration of space, landing men on the moon and returning them home safely.
Apollo 11 blasted off on July 16, 1969, with a crew of three; Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins. Four days later on the 20th July 1969, they landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle in the ‘Sea of Tranquillity’. Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon.
Armstrong’s first step onto the
lunar surface was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. He described
the event as “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Apollo 11 effectively ended the space race and fulfilled a national goal
proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy: “before this
decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the
Earth.”
All three astronauts returned safely to Earth to a hero’s welcome on the 24
July, 1969. President Kennedy’s wish came true. It took less than 10 years.
Humans had walked on the moon.
What advances have happened since 1969?
1970’s
- 1971- Electronic ink is pioneered by Nick Sheridon at Xerox PARC
- 1973 – Martin Cooper develops the first handheld cellular mobile phone
- 1974 – First grocery-store purchase of an item coded with a barcode
- 1975 – Pico Electronics develops X-10 home automation system
- 1976 – Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs launch the Apple I: one of the world’s first personal home computers
1980’s
- 1980 – Japanese electrical pioneer Akio Morita develops the Sony Walkman, the first truly portable player for recorded music
- 1981 – Fujio Masuoka files a patent for flash memory—a type of reusable computer memory that can store information even when the power is off
- 1982 – Compact discs (CDs) are launched as a new way to store music by the Sony and Philips corporations.
- 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web
1990’s
- 1991 – Linus Torvalds creates the first version of Linux, a collaboratively written computer operating system
- 1993 – Apogee Corporation was first established in 1993 (formally known as Crystal Print Services Limited)
- 1994 – American-born mathematician John Daugman perfects the mathematics that make iris scanning systems possible
- 1995 – Pierre Omidyar launches the eBay auction website
2000’s Onwards
- 2001 -Apple revolutionises music listening by unveiling its iPod MP3 music player
- 2002 – iRobot Corporation releases the first version of its Roomba® vacuum cleaning robot
- 2007 – Apple introduces a touchscreen cellphone called the iPhone.
- 2015 – Supercomputers (the world’s fastest computers) are now a mere 30 times less powerful than human brains
New knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors are made possible by technologies which assist humans in traveling to places they could not previously reach.
