Daily threads of significant technological events that happened on this day. “Study the past if you would define the future.” -Confucius
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On this day in 1949, a rhesus monkey named Albert II was strapped into a captured German V-2 rocket at White Sands, New Mexico, and launched into outer space.
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That data mattered. Scientists now knew what g-forces did to a mammalian body. The Soviets flew dogs two years later and brought them back alive. Ham the chimp flew in 1961. Gagarin flew three months after that.
ALT Ham chimpanzee Mercury capsule 1961 | Modified from: NASA, Public domain
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Albert II spent about six minutes in space and died on landing 77 years ago today. He never had a choice in any of it. But the readings from that flight are part of the reason humans made it there at all.
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On this day in 1983, a spacecraft launched for a 21-month mission crossed Neptune's orbit and became the first man-made object to leave the Solar System.
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Its last signal arrived January 23, 2003, over 11 hours after Pioneer 10 sent it. The nuclear power had decayed so much over 30 years there was barely enough electricity left to run the radio. No crash, no malfunction. It just quietly went dark.
ALT This artist’s concept shows what Deep Space Station-23, a new antenna dish capable of supporting both radio wave and laser communications, will look like when completed at the Deep Space Network’s Gol | NASA/JPL-Caltech, Public domain
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Pioneer 10 is now heading toward Aldebaran in Taurus. It will arrive in about 2 million years. A probe built for 21 months ran for 30 years and is still out there, carrying a message from Earth into the dark.
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On this day in 1997, 3Com acquired US Robotics in what was then the biggest deal in networking history. Two companies, one making LAN gear and one making modems, tried to build a single giant to take on Cisco. But there was more to it than just networking.
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The modem half of the deal aged much worse. The 56k standard USR bet on, called X2, lost out to the open V.90 standard. Broadband arrived fast. By 2000, 3Com spun USR back out, less than three years after buying it. Today USR is a division with around 125 employees worldwide.
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3Com itself never beat Cisco. HP bought what was left in 2010. The merger that was supposed to build a networking giant mostly just delivered one great PDA company, a famous bubble-era finance anomaly, and a slow decline. That is a very 1990s tech story.
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