I have occasionally imagined an alternate history in which geologists were just a few decades slower to notice tectonic plates, and they get discovered by angry cartographers and astronomers detecting their real-time motion instead.

imgs.xkcd.com/comics/conti...

A person born in China at the end of WWII saw China's power rise as its working age population tripled in their lifetime.

But now it has plateaued.

A person born today will see that growth reversed. China's working age population will drop by 1 million people per month for decades.

80 years ago, as WWII was ending, a young RAF engineer and science fiction enthusiast named Arthur C. Clarke published a short piece titled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays" in the October 1945 issue of Wireless World. It changed the world.
🧵

The NTRS is where you go to find details of how NASA tested rocket powered shoes in 1967. ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19...

In my youth, libraries at every self-respecting aerospace company or research university had bookcases full of beige booklets with these reports. Almost all are gone.

My fellow Coloradans, it would only take a tunnel twice as long as the Eisenhour Tunnel to go under Berthoud Pass. It would cut ten miles and half an hour off the trip to Winter Park, Granby, and the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. The state got a bid for this in 1956.

Did someone mention Blue Sky?
New Glenn showing off its plumage on its first flight.

Hmm. As a Gen-Xer, I don't think I ever saw a telegram sent or received. I have not turned up a data set of telegram volumes vs time in the US, but here's one in the UK.
nic.org.uk/data/all-dat...

It appears people were still sending millions of telegrams per year into the 1980s in the US.

Actually, now that you mention it...

(NASA still flies three WB-57F aircraft, originally built by Martin from a British design. They've been so modified that I don't count them as Martin planes here, but I reserve the right to be cheerfully inconsistent and call them the last Martin planes once the Mars seaplanes are gone.)

The company stopped building aircraft in the late 1950s. Its 4-0-4 airliners and Seamaster seaplane bombers didn't pan out. Seaplanes fell out of favor, and military demand for aircraft dried up after the Korean war. Martin switched to building rockets and missiles, like Vanguard and Titan.

At its plant on the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore, Martin built thousands of B-26 Marauders and PBM-5 seaplanes during WWII. They also built six enormous JRM-1 and -2 Martin Mars transport seaplanes. These were the biggest US airplanes in WWII, capable of carrying more than 250 passengers.

The company built many aircraft types, but specialized in bombers and seaplanes. Billy Mitchell used Martin MB-2's to prove planes could sink warships in 1921. Pan Am opened the Pacific in the 1930s with Martin M-130 China Clipper seaplanes.

Martin hired young engineers who would go on to lead the industry and run their own airplane companies, like Donald Douglas (chief engineer), Larry Bell (shop foreman), James McDonnell, Chance Vought, and future CEOs of North American, Fairchild, Brewster, and General Dynamics.

He was so early to the airplane industry that no one really knew what airplanes might be good for yet. He flew stunts in Hollywood movies, made mock bombing runs to see if airplanes might have military applications, and sold flying lessons to wealthy people like Seattle lumber baron Bill Boeing.

In 1912 Martin made a milestone round trip flight from LA to Catalina island - the longest over water flight at the time. His float plane almost sank on his return.

The family doctor warned his mother:

"For Heaven’s sake, if you have any influence with that Wild-eyed, Hallucinated, Visionary young man, call him off before he is killed. Have him devote his energies to substantial, feasable, and profitable pursuits."

She didn't.

We're about to pass an aviation milestone with little fanfare: the (probable) last flight of an airplane built by one of America's first aircraft companies, the Glenn L Martin Company.

Glenn L. Martin designed, built, and piloted his first airplane in 1909.

It's pretty amazing how in ten years we've gone from a power grid dominated by coal, with solar too small to count, to one where coals is 3rd or 4th, and solar and wind both out-generate hydroelectric dams.