NBC airs the tenth episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Patrick O’Neal, Kim Stanley, Rudy Vallee, Pat Boone, and Larry Linville guest star.
ITV airs the 25th episode of Ace Of Wands, starring Michael McKenzie, Tony Selby and Judy Loe. Oscar Quitak (Brazil) guest stars. This episode, like the rest of the series’ first two seasons, is now missing from the archives.
Computer engineer and recent MIT graduate Ray Tomlinson, working on the nascent ARPAnet project, adds minor new features to an experimental file transfer protocol and, in so doing, sends the first network e-mail. This first message doesn’t have far to travel – it arrives at another computer terminal in the same room – but it is the beginning of e-mail on ARPANET, a feature which is adopted so widely and so quickly that it accounts for 75% of all ARPANET data traffic just two years later. Tomlinson is also credited for inventing the user@destination e-mail address format.
With its first crew having perished, prompting a far-reaching reorganization of the Soviet space program and its technology, the now-unmanned Salyut 1 space station is ordered to fire its thrusters, slowing it down to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. With no immediate prospect of a new crew to inhabit it, the first space station intended for long-term occupation by a human crew barely lasts six months in orbit.
ITV airs the 26th episode of Ace Of Wands, starring Michael McKenzie, Tony Selby and Judy Loe. Oscar Quitak (Brazil) guest stars in the second season finale, which also marks the departure of cast members Selby and Loe. This episode, like the rest of the series’ first two seasons, is now missing from the archives.
Boasting a curved, futuristic fiberglass cabinet that truly looks like an alien art object, Nutting Associates’ arcade video game Computer Space hits an amusement market dominated by pinball machines and jukeboxes. Devised by Nolan Bushnell, Computer Space is a coin-operated homage to the mainframe game Spacewar, complete with complicated controls, and fails to sell well. Bushnell later has a revelation: arcade games will need to be easy to learn (but not easy to beat) in order to catch on.
More about Computer Space in Phosphor Dot Fossils
Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast
NBC airs the 11th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. David McCallum, David Carradine, and Linda Marsh guest star; one story is narrated by Orson Welles.
NBC airs the 12th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Leslie Nielsen and Fritz Weaver guest star.
NBC airs the 13th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Glenn Corbett and Susan Strasberg guest star.
NBC airs the 14th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Patty Duke, Cesar Romero (Batman), Carl Reiner, and Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman) guest star.
The unmanned NASA/JPL space probe Mariner 9 enters orbit around Mars, becoming the first human spacecraft to orbit another planet in the solar system. The probe begins a nearly year-long survey of the red planet, mapping over 70% of its surface at a much higher resolution than was achieved by the previous NASA Mars probes, Mariners 6 and 7. Mariner 9’s mapping mission is temporarily delayed by a global dust storm obscuring the entire planet when the orbiter arrives. Among its discoveries are Olympus Mons, the solar system’s largest volcano, and the gigantic canyon later named Valles Marineris. Mariner 9 also gathers images of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos.
NBC airs the 15th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Bob Crane, Jo Anne Worley, John Astin, Victor Buono (Batman), and Alan Napier (Batman) guest star.
NBC airs the 16th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Alex Cord and Elizabeth Hartman guest star.
ABC premieres the two-hour TV movie Earth II, starring Gary Lockwood (2001: a space odyssey) and Mariette Hartley. The movie is intended to serve as a pilot for a potential series, but despite making a powerful impression on science fiction fans, Earth II doesn’t draw a large enough audience to merit a series pickup.
More about Earth II in the LogBook
Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast
NBC airs the 17th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Bardford Dillman, Louise Sorel, Steve Lawrence, and Donald Moffat (Logan’s Run) guest star in an episode that includes an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Pickman’s Model”.
NASA’s Mariner 9 Mars orbiter becomes the first spacecraft to provide relatively close-up images of Mars’ innermost, larger moon, Phobos, from over 3,500 miles away. The irregular shape and heavily cratered surface of Phobos point up its likely origins as an asteroid that long ago came close enough to Mars to be captured into an orbit. Phobos (and its still unseen-at-close-range smaller sibling, Deimos) will be imaged at much closer range later in the 1970s by the Viking orbiters.
Electric Light Orchestra‘s self-titled debut album is released in the UK, though it proves to be the last released collaboration between founders (and former Move members) Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne; Wood leaves the band after an unpromising live debut. The album is released in the US in March 1972, where a phone call to clarify the album’s title results in a misunderstood written note that leads to the American release going out under the unintentional title No Answer.
NBC airs the 18th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Ross Martin, Rene Auberjonois, and Mel Blanc guest star in an episode that includes an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Cool Air”.
NBC airs the 19th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Edward G. Robinson, Yaphet Kotto, and Zsa Zsa Gabor guest star.
Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, a pioneering researcher in the formation and development of severe weather, proposes a scale for judging the intensity of tornadoes by the damage left behind. His five-point scale covers minimal tornadoes (F1) through storms capable of inflicting incredible damage (F5), with damage surveyed after a storm to determine the physical effects and the estimated wind speed needed to cause those effects. The Fujita Scale is adopted almost worldwide, remaining in widespread use by severe weather researchers and government agencies until it is supplanted by the more refined Enhanced Fujita Scale in the 1990s.
NBC airs the 20th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Dana Andrews, Sandra Dee, Jared Martin, Patrick Macnee, Brock Peters, and Tim Matheson guest star.
