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American inventor Charles H. Townes dies

He is known as the inventor of the maser and laser. Townes was an advisor to the United States Government. As a professor of the University of California at Berkeley he began an astrophysical program that produced several important discoveries, like the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Apollo 1 fire

Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was the first manned mission of the United States Apollo program, the program to land the first men on the Moon. Planned as the first low Earth orbital test of the Apollo Command/Service Module with a crew, to launch on February 21, 1967, the mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the Command Module (CM). The name Apollo 1, chosen by the crew, was officially retired by NASA in commemoration of them on April 24, 1967.

First tape recorder

The Wire Recording Corporation of America introduced a new product called Wire Way. It was sold for $149.50 at the time. The use of magnetic tape for sound recording originated around 1930. In the beginning it was made of paper. The Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company (3M) company replaced paper by plastic.

The new quantum theory of physics is invented

The theory describes nature at the smallest scales of energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles. It was invented by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger and his German colleague Werner Heisenberg. The problem was that quantum theory was not relativistic. It worked for particles moving slowly, but not close to the speed of light.

Thomas Edison patented the light bulb

Contrary to the common belief, Edison did not invent the lightbulb. He had many predecessors, for example German clockmaker Heinrich Göbel or British chemist Humphry Davy. True inventor of modern lightbulb was British physicist Joseph Swan. However, Thomas Edison improved it to a great degree. His lightbulb was first commercially successful.

Anniversaries of the (in)famous