Time Travel Tuesday #timetravel a look back at the Adafruit, maker, science, technology and engineering world

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1847 – American inventor Richard March Hoe secures a patent for the rotary-type printing press.

800px Richard March Hoe Brady Handy

He is most well known for his invention in 1843 of a rotary printing press: type was placed on a revolving cylinder, a design that could print much faster than the old flatbed printing press. It received U.S. Patent 5,199 in 1847, and was placed in commercial use the same year. Arunah Shepherdson Abell, publisher of The Sun in Baltimore, was among the first to buy it and put it into use. In its early days, it was variously called the “Hoe lightning press,” and “Hoe’s Cylindrical-Bed Press.”

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1889 – American cryptanalyst Agnes Meyer Driscoll is born.

Agnes meyer driscoll

On June 22, 1918, about one year after America entered World War I, Agnes Meyer enlisted in the United States Navy – America had just started allowing women to enlist. She was recruited at the highest possible rank of chief yeoman and after a stint in the Postal Cable and Censorship Office she was assigned to the Code and Signal section of the Director of Naval Communications. After the war ended she made use of an option to continue working at her post as a civilian. Except for a two-year hiatus, when she worked for a private firm, she would remain a leading cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy until 1949.

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1897 – American aviator Amelia Mary Earhart is born.

Amelia Earhart standing under nose of her Lockheed Model 10 E Electra small

After Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest (1873–1959) expressed interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean. After deciding that the trip was too perilous for her to undertake, she offered to sponsor the project, suggesting that they find “another girl with the right image”. While at work one afternoon in April 1928, Earhart got a phone call from Capt. Hilton H. Railey, who asked her, “Would you like to fly the Atlantic?”

The project coordinators (including book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam) interviewed Earhart and asked her to accompany pilot Wilmer Stultz and copilot/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, nominally as a passenger, but with the added duty of keeping the flight log. The team departed from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m on June 17, 1928, landing at Pwll near Burry Port, South Wales, exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later.[52] There is a commemorative blue plaque at the site.[53] Since most of the flight was on instruments and Earhart had no training for this type of flying, she did not pilot the aircraft. When interviewed after landing, she said, “Stultz did all the flying—had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.” She added, “… maybe someday I’ll try it alone.”

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1950 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations.

Cape canaveral crop

CCAFS is headquartered at the nearby Patrick Air Force Base, and located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida, CCAFS. The station is the primary launch head of America’s Eastern Range[3] with three launch pads currently active (Space Launch Complexes 37B, 40, and 41). Popularly known as “Cape Kennedy” from 1963 to 1973, and as “Cape Canaveral” from 1949 to 1963 and from 1973 to the present, the facility is south-southeast of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip provides a 10,000-foot (3,000 m) runway[4] close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape.

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1951 – Actress Lynda Carter is born.

800px Lynda Carter Wonder Woman

Carter’s acting career took off when she landed the starring role on Wonder Woman as the title character and her secret identity, Diana Prince. The savings she had set aside from her days of touring on the road with her band[10] to pursue acting in Los Angeles were almost exhausted, and she was close to returning to Arizona when Carter’s manager informed her that Joanna Cassidy had lost the part to her. Carter’s earnest performance greatly endeared her to both fans and critics and as a result, she continues to be closely identified with Wonder Woman.

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