Travel back in time

At Sanders Associates, Ralph Baer completes the sixth iteration of his recently-patented Television Gaming & Training Apparatus, now covered in brown woodgrain and called “The Brown Box.” Utilizing logic circuits and spot generators rather than a computer chip, the Brown Box is capable of playing video ping pong and other simple games. This is the prototype of the first mass-marketed home video game system. Sanders begins courting prospective licensees, including RCA, Zenith, General Electric, Motorola and Magnavox; companies already manufacturing television sets will be the corporate entites most likely to show an interest. RCA declines, but one of its executives, having seen the Brown Box demonstrated, later defects to Magnavox, which eventually licenses the Brown Box technology from Sanders. The result will be the Magnavox Odyssey, the first-ever home video game console.

ABC broadcasts the 14th episode of the Filmation animated series Fantastic Voyage, based on the 1966 movie of the same name. Marvin Miller, Ted Knight, and Jane Webb lead the voice cast.

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The recently-rechristened Environmental Sciences Service Administration launches, with the help of NASA, ESSA-8, the latest in a constellation of weather satellites operated by the former U.S. Weather Bureau. ESSA-8 is the first satellite in the ESSA constellation to boast a significant operational life span, watching Earth’s cloud patterns until it is shut down in 1976.

Moved ahead in the schedule due to ongoing difficulties with the construction of the lunar module, Apollo 8 lifts off from Cape Canaveral on a mission that represents NASA’s biggest gamble yet in the race for the moon: on only the second manned Apollo flight, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders will go to the moon, orbit it in their command/service module, and return to Earth (the lunar module is still in the late stages of development). Mission planners plot out a free return trajectory – ensuring that without engines, Apollo 8 could loop around behind the moon and swing back toward home.

This mission is dramatized in the 1968 episode of HBO’s 1998 series From The Earth To The Moon.

The 227th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Kevin Stoney guest stars as Tobias Vaughn, and Nicholas Courtney returns as the freshly-promoted Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, head of the newly created UNIT. This is the last Cybermen story until 1975.

This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
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Broadcasting live black & white television pictures from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, the crew of Apollo 8 delivers one of the most-watched broadcasts of 1968. As the surface of the moon rolls silently outside the windows of their command/service module, the astronauts take turns reading the first chapter of Genesis, dedicating it to “all of you on the good Earth.” After ten orbits of the moon, Apollo 8 fires its engine, putting it on a return trajectory to Earth; it splashes down safely three days later.

This mission is dramatized in the 1968 episode of HBO’s 1998 series From The Earth To The Moon.

The 228th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Philip Madoc guest stars. This is the first Doctor Who story written by Robert Holmes, who will become a frequent writer for the show during the early ’70s and take over as script editor during Tom Baker’s era. (more…)

The 69th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. Steve Inhat and Yvonne Craig (Batman) guest star. (more…)

The 229th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Philip Madoc guest stars. This is the first Doctor Who story written by Robert Holmes, who will become a frequent writer for the show during the early ’70s and take over as script editor during Tom Baker’s era.

This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store

BBC2 airs the 26th episode of science fiction anthology series Out Of The Unknown. Adapted by Jack Pulman from a story by Robert Sheckley, the story stars Peter Copley. This episode, which opens the series’ third season and the tenure of incoming producer Alan Bromly, no longer exists in the BBC’s archives.

More about Out Of The Unknown in the LogBook

The 230th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Philip Madoc guest stars. This is the first Doctor Who story written by Robert Holmes, who will become a frequent writer for the show during the early ’70s and take over as script editor during Tom Baker’s era.

This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store

With only cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov aboard, the Soviet Union launches Soyuz 4 into Earth orbit. Another manned vehicle, Soyuz 5, is launched the next day, and the two vehicles dock in orbit, the first docking of two manned spacecraft. Alexei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khrunov perform a spacewalk to leave Soyuz 5 and board Soyuz 4 for the return home (though the two capsules have primitive docking hardware, they do not have a docking tunnel or airlocks). Soyuz 4 makes a safe landing after two days in orbit – which is more than can be said for its sister ship.

The Soviet Union launches a three-man crew aboard Soyuz 5, which docks in orbit with the already-launched Soyuz 4 – the first two crewed spacecraft to accomplish this feat. The Soyuz 5 crew consists of cosmonauts Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khrunov, but only Volynov makes the return journey aboard Soyuz 5, as his crewmates board Soyuz 4 via spacewalk. It’s probably just as well for them: after three days in orbit, Soyuz 5 begins its descent to Earth, but the failure of explosive bolts meant to separate the re-entry capsule from the rest of the vehicle fail. To maintain some semblence of a survivable aerodynamic profile, Volynov flies Soyuz 5 in nose-first – one of the riskiest re-entries in the history of human spaceflight, since the nose of the capsule is not covered by any heat shielding. The vehicle separates just before the stress of re-entry would have destroyed it, but then its parachutes fail to completely deploy, resulting in a punishingly jarring but non-fatal landing, hard enough to break Volynov’s teeth.

Similar malfunctions will plague a pair of Soyuz vehicles returning from the International Space Station in 2007. Soyuz 5 is the final crewed Soviet flight prior to the moon landing.

The 231st episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Philip Madoc guest stars. This is the first Doctor Who story written by Robert Holmes, who will become a frequent writer for the show during the early ’70s and take over as script editor during Tom Baker’s era.

This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store

The 72nd episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. Lee Meriwether (Batman) guest stars. (more…)

ABC airs the 16th episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Michael Ansara guest stars.

More about Land Of The Giants in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store

The 73rd episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. This episode is co-written by Shari Lewis, better known as the puppeteer behind Lambchop. (more…)