1945 Arthur C. Clark proposes a geosynchronous satellite. Engineer John Bardeen, with Walter Brittain and William Shockley, attempts to apply semiconductors to electronics. Semiconductors, such as silicon, are materials whose conductivity can be deliberately or predictably altered using electricity. Vannevar Bush describes Memex, the first personal computer (in theory), in the Atlantic Monthly. The article later reappears in the widely distributed Life magazine. Memex is a desk that contains large amounts of information compressed onto microfilm. The user sits at the desk, swiftly accessing information by operating a board of levers and buttons. The desired information appears on translucent screens propped on the desktop. (Christos J. P. Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, History of the Internet: A Chronology [1999]). ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) is unveiled in a basement room at the University of Pennsylvania. It covers 650 square feet and contains 300 neon lights, 10,000 vacuum tubes; 220 fans are required. The massive computer can carry out 5,000 operations per second. ENIAC can calculate the speed of a flying object faster than the object can fly. John von Neuman publishes a report on EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer). Von Neuman outlines "stored-program-computing" for the first time: the computer's storage device houses the program's instructions along with the input data. Thus, more memory is available. Von Neumann also coins the now-universal computing terms: memory and gates. These terms transform the computer into something almost human. (Christos J. P. Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, History of the Internet: A Chronology [1999]). Introduction of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, Japan. 1946 CBS demonstrates color TV to journalists and the FCC in the Tappan Zee Inn at Nyack-on-the-Hudson, New York. Whiteside Parsons, a devotee of Aleister Crowley’s magic and a brilliant scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, attempts to create a homunculus, literally an artificially conceived person occupied by a preterhuman spirit. Among the oldest of alchemical legends, Crowley’s Moonchild suggests that a homunculus could be created when both parents were Crowleyan initiates who performed the required sex magic rituals. The embryo created by their congress would act as a “butterfly net” to capture the appropriate spirit. The resultant child would be human in the commonplace biological sense but for all pragmatic occult purposes would function as a homunculus. After the appropriate chants, intonations, and gestures, Parsons and Marjorie Cameron commence sex magic congress in the presence of L. Ron Hubbard, who describes the activity taking place on the astral plane. Tragically, on June 20, 1952, Parsons is blown apart by an explosion in his garage. Bloody body parts are visible in the rubble. Today Parsons is credited with aiding in the creation of solid rocket fuel, which is commonly used in space exploration. A crater on the moon is named after him, honoring his achievements in this field. (Bill Landis, Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger [New York: Harper Collins, 1995]). 1947 Dennis Gabor describes principles of holography. Walter Brattain and John Bardeen of Bell Telephone Laboratories devise the transistor, an electronic switching mechanism and amplifier (to replace vacuum tubes). “The first transistor, the point-contact transistor, stands ten centimeters high--contains a semiconducting crystal of germanium, which serves as the amplifier, connected to 3 wire probes. A current entering one probe is amplified when it passes through the crystal and out through another probe.” (Christos J. P. Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, History of the Internet: A Chronology [1999]). 1948 Ampex Corporation markets first commercial video tape recorder. 1950 First U.S. cable television system appears. EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) psychologist Konstantin Raudive records himself on audio tape interviewing dead friends and loved ones. Raudive then listens to the tapes repeatedly until he can discern coherent responses in the static. Raudive writes that if one tunes a radio between stations—where static and white noise is present—the dead can fashion all words from those vibrations. 1952 Alan Turing is convicted for indecency (participating in homosexual activity) and is sentenced to take large doses of estrogen. 1953 The film Meet Mr. Lucifer features a moralizing tale of television as “an instrument of the devil, a mechanical device to make the human race utterly miserable.” 1954 Alan Turing eats half of an apple dipped in cyanide and dies. Clarence Kelly Johnson, designer for Lockheed Aircraft, designs the Utility-2 (U-2) Jet and privately dubs it "The Angel." The Hyon Corporation develops the "B-camera" for the U-2. Its revolutionary Mylar film and lens (conceived by Dr. James Baker of Harvard) can photograph the entire U. S. in just twelve flights and can resolve a 2 x 2 ft. object from a thirteen-mile altitude. Lawrence Curtiss, an undergraduate physics student, invents a process by which fine glass fibers can be coherently bundled in order to convey an entire image: the Fiberscope. 1956: Emmett Norman Leith develops the data processing system that allows holography to work. Holography is the recording and reconstruction of a wavefront. The reconstructed hologram wavefront is identical to that which issued from the object. 1957 A conversation between Jerry Lee Lewis and Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records: SP: You can save souls! JLL: No! No! No! No! SP: Yes! JLL: How can the Devil save souls? What are you talkin’ about? I have the devil in me! If I didn’t, I’d be Christian! SP: Well you may have him— JLL: JESUS! Heal this man! He cast the Devil out, the Devil says, “Where can I go?” He says, “Can I go into this swine?” He says, “Yeah, go into him. Didn’t he go into him?” Release of The Three Faces of Eve, the first movie about multiple personality disorder, based on the best-selling book of the same name. Sputnik, first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]. The satellite, a metallic object the size of a beach ball, rotates around the earth for three months and then falls–it burns up when it hits the atmosphere. 1958 Color is synthesized from a monochrome television set in the first “flicker color” broadcast. Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a children’s show, begins color television broadcast. Pope Pius XII declares Saint Clare of Assisi the patron saint of television. Researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories invent the modem, short for modulator-demodulator. The device converts data from the computer format (digital) to the telephone-line format (analog) and back again. Modems make computer networks possible. (Christos J. P. Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, History of the Internet: A Chronology [1999]).