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Tech milestones of May 5 Video

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Tech milestones of May 5
Created: 05/02/2008
Video description: It's laser day! Sadly, no laser cats. Plus, America scores a point in the space wars on this date in technology history.

Tech milestones of May 5 Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Molly Wood from CNET TV. It's May 5, 2008, and here's what happened today in tech history. It's LASER DAY! Today marks the birth date, in 1921, of Arthur Leonard Schawlow, an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize for his work on lasers and their use in spectroscopy. ALSO on this date, Theodore Harold Maiman died at the age of 80. Maiman created the FIRST WORKING LASER. How weird is that! Also on this date in 1961, and this is big, too -- astronaut Alan Shepard Jr. became America's first space traveler. He landed safely after a 15-minute suborbital flight which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after a three-hour weather delay. And although Yuri Gagarin had only recently completed his orbital flight all the way AROUND the earth, Americans noted that Alan Shepard actually STEERED his capsule in space, and Gagarin was just along for the ride. That's it for today, friends, more tech history comin' at you tomorrow.

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