PLAYBACK, RELATIVITY, COMMUNICATION, SECURITY AND A SPEECH FOR SPACE

A couple of innovative advances in communication were announce on the 21^st November, as well as an explosive scientific theory and an attempt to manage security and cooperation in Europe and beyond. A busy day.

Photograph of Edison with his phonograph, 

taken by Mathew Brady in 1877

Thomas Alva Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone. He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on 21^st November, 1877 (early reports appear in Scientific American and several newspapers in the beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a 'talking-machine' can be found in the Chicago Daily Tribune on May 9), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was patented on February 19, 1878 as US Patent 200,521)

Einstein, in 1905, when he wrote

 the Annus Mirabilis papers

The Annus Mirabilis papers are the papers of Albert Einstein published in the Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics) scientific journal in 1905. These four articles contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space,time and mtter. The Annus Mirabilis is often called the "Miracle Year" in English or Wunderjahr in German.

On 21^st November 1905, Annalen der Physik published a fourth paper (received September 27), "Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?" ("Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?"), in which Einstein developed an argument for arguably the most famous equation in the field of physics: E = mc². Einstein considered the equivalency equation to be of paramount importance because it showed that a massive particle possesses an energy, the "rest energy", distinct from its classical kinetic and potential energies.

The initial ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) consisted of four IMPs (Interface Message Processor):

▪   University of California, Los Angeles(UCLA), where Leonard Kleinrock had established a Network Measurement Center, with an SDS Sigma 7 being the first computer attached to it;

▪   The Stanford Research Insitute’s Augmentation Research Centre, , where Douglas Englebrat had created the ground-breaking NLS system, a very important early hypertext system (with the SDS 940 that ran NLS, named "Genie", being the first host attached);

▪   University of California, Santa Barbara(UCSB), with the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Centre's IBM 360/75, running OS/MVT being the machine attached;

▪   The University of Utah's Computer Science Department, where Ivan Sutherland had moved, running a DEC PDP-10 running TENEX.

The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 p.m, on October 29, 1969 from Boelter Hall 3420. Supervised by Prof. Leonard Kleinrock, Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940 Host computer. The message text was the word "login"; the "l" and the "o" letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was "lo". About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full "login". The first permanent ARPANET link was established on 21^st November, 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was established.

The Charter of Paris for a New Europe (also known as the Paris Charter) was adopted by a summit meeting of most European governments in addition to those of Canada, the United States and the Soviet Union, in Paris on 21 November 1990. The charter was established on the foundation of the Helsinki Accords, and was further amended in the 1999 Charter for European Security. Together, these documents form the agreed basis for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. However not all OSCE member countries have signed the treaty.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organisation. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections. Most of its 3,500-plus staff are engaged in field operations, with only around 10% in its headquarters.

The OSCE is an ad hoc organization under the United Nations Charter (Chap. VIII), and is concerned with early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation. Its 56 participating states are in Europe, former Soviet Union and North America and cover most of the northern hemisphere.

The Charter was one of many attempts to seize the opportunity of the fall of Communism by actively inviting the former Eastern bloc-countries into the ideological framework of the West. In effect, the Paris Summit was the peace conference of the Cold War: Perestroika had ultimately put an end to the ideological and political division of the Iron Curtain. Pluralist democracy and market economy were together with international law and multilateralism seen as the victors, and as the common values and principles of national and international conduct that now ruled from Vancouver to Vienna to Vladivostok.

The Charter established an Office for Free Elections (later renamed Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)) in Warsaw, a Conflict Prevention Centre in Vienna, and a secretariat. Later, in 1992, a Secretary General was also appointed. It was agreed that the Foreign Ministers are to convene regularly for political consultations.

Finally here is a speech given by President John F Kennedy on the 21st November 1963, a day before his death.