Today in Tech History: June 16, 2008 Video
Today in Tech History: June 16, 2008 Video Transcript
Hi, I'm Tom Merritt. It's June 16, 2008, and here's what happened today in technology history. On this date in 1963, Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. She was apparently nauseous and miserable for the entire flight, but she spent almost three days in space, orbiting the earth 48 times. It was more flight time than all American astronauts, at that point, COMBINED. And it was another 19 years before a woman went back to space, and that one was also a Russian. This is the birth date, in 1917, of Aurelio Lampredi, an Italian designer of car and airplane engines. He worked on everything from Vespa scooters to Reggiane aircraft engines, but he is best known for the "Lampredi engine" he designed for Ferrari, in 1946. The engine was first used in the 257S, in 1950, and Lampredi oversaw Ferrari's racing engine design in the early 50s. His Ferrari engines are still in use in road cars, but Ferrari went with Vittorio Jano's designs for its racing cars. So Fickle. Lampredi ended up at Fiat, and his engines powered those cars for more than 32 years. Finally, today marks the passing of Wernher von Braun, who died in 1977. He was a German physicist and astronautics engineer, and he is considered by some to be the preeminent rocket scientist of the 20th century. And that's it for today, everyone. Join us tomorrow for more tech history. Because sometimes, it IS rocket science.
First woman in space, Ferrari's engine designer, and rocket science.
