Transcontinental rail, powered flight, the Manhattan Project, Apollo, the internet, the genome — the breakthroughs that changed the country, with what they cost and who paid.
5 Stories · Innovation & Progress
Begun in 1990, completed in 2003 — three billion base pairs sequenced for $2.7 billion. The data went into the public domain. The questions it opened are still being answered.
ARPANET sent its first message on October 29, 1969: “lo” — the system crashed before it finished “login.” The network was funded by the Pentagon to survive a nuclear war.
On July 20, 1969, at 4:17 p.m. EDT, Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility. The race that put a flag there began with a Cold War deficit and ended with one footprint.
In secret across 30 sites and 600,000 workers between 1939 and 1945, the United States built the first nuclear weapons. Trinity, July 16. Hiroshima, August 6. Nagasaki, August 9.
On December 17, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, Orville Wright lifted off the sands for twelve seconds and 120 feet. Five years later, Wilbur flew for over an hour.