31 August 1955 saw the release of the first car on solar batteries. Designed by William Cobb Sunmobile vehicle from General Motors demonstrated at the Powerama show in Chicago. It should be noted that the development was intended only to show the possibilities of using solar energy and had no practical applications — not least because that was the length of 40 inches, and eight solar panels the layout allowed only a sluggish crawl. However, solar cars are firmly settled in the minds of science fiction.
Model of electric car with solar panels
Did not bury the idea and General Motors: after three decades as a full-size car Sunraycer won the first World Solar Challenge competition in Sunny Australia. This model with an engine power of 1500 watts has overcome two thousand miles and came to the finish line first.
However, still no massive commercial vehicle that is entirely powered by solar energy. Even the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle can use solar panels to power the air conditioning or audio system.
31 August 1995 Ukraine has become a space power. On this day, from the Plesetsk cosmodrome launched a carrier rocket “Cyclone–3” with the Ukrainian satellite “Sich–1”. The spacecraft was purely civil and scientific purpose: he investigated the condition of vegetation and water bodies, conducted ice reconnaissance, followed by electromagnetic radiation and the properties of the ionosphere.
Ukrainian satellite “Sich-1”
Together with “Sich–1” satellite into orbit went and the first Chilean satellite, Fasat Alfa, but no luck — due to an emergency breeding machines he could not enter into operation. Later Ukraine has launched several space satellites “Sich”, but sending the first geostationary apparatus “Lybid-1” is still delayed — at first due to technical difficulties, and now the termination of cooperation with “Roscosmos”, which was supposed to supply the engine for the rocket.
31 August 1971 on the moon for the first time he drove a car. It was a special electric car, developed by engineers at Boeing. Each wheel is driven by a separate motor power is only a quarter horse-power — about 200 watts — but the power came from disposable batteries. Created in most automotive country Rover had an unusual operation — using the T-handle between the seats, not the usual steering.
Lunar vehicle
American astronauts David Scott and James Irwin rode on unomobile a total of nearly 28 km, while developing on certain sections speed up to 18 km/h. By their own admission, in these moments, they risked, as the great car jumped over the potholes in conditions of weak gravity (six times weaker than on Earth). Ride the astronauts had exclusively near the lunar module — NASA was not confident in the reliability of the suits.
And thanks to installed on the Rover television camera that could be rotated and operated from the Ground, managed to shoot the takeoff of the lunar module. The most difficult had the operator: due to signal delay, he was forced to be proactive and to command to raise the camera up more when on his screen module stood still.
This Rover (and its copies used in subsequent missions “Apollo”) is the only manned space vehicle. However, the natural satellite of our planet has been self-propelled machines of the other two powers: the first was the Soviet automatic station “Lunokhod–1” in 1970, and in 2013 on the moon visited the Chinese “WiTu”. The latter, however, was able to drive only 120 meters, but was the first in the history of space exploration robot, able to go into “hibernation” — he has planned out for the 14-day lunar night. Upon awakening, however, had problems: “WiTu” lost the ability to move, but continued to collect data.
31 August 2004, Apple unveiled its latest iMac computer on the basis of processor PowerPC iMac G5. A year and a half, after a couple of minor updates to this piece, Apple moves to Intel chips and x86 architecture — so ends the whole epoch.
Apple iMac G5
iMac G5 worked on PowerPC G5 970fx 1.8 GHz, had 256 MB of RAM and was supplied with hard drive 80 or 160 GB. The LCD screen was quite large by the standards of that time — 17 or 20 inch. And, you can say that the iMac G5 was a material explanation of why Apple said goodbye to PowerPC processors, the G5 was very, very hot, and the engineers had to go to great lengths to computer not overheated and not too buzzed her three fans.