But 125 years ago you couldn’t hear a song unless you went to see a band. This is the 125^th anniversary of George Edward Gouraud‘s recording of Handel‘s Israel in Egypt, which for many years was thought to be the oldest known recording of music. It is most likely the oldest recording of classical music.

The oldest known voice and music recording was 135 years and 7 days ago on June 22, 1878, made on a Thomas Edison phonograph in St. Louis, and consisting of a 23-second cornet solo of an unidentified song and a man’s voice reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Old Mother Hubbard”. Described in this CBS News article (“oldest known voice music recording restored”), you can hear the unrestored recording, courtesy of The Creators Project.

And it was only 34 years ago on July 1, 1979 that Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2, a 14 ounce, blue-and-silver, portable cassette player with chunky buttons, headphones and a leather case. In other words, we’ve only had recorded music for 125 years and recorded music on the go for a little over a quarter of that time, where you were limited to a cassette tape that couldn’t hold more than 20 songs. And now you can carry around a smaller iPod Classic that can hold 2000 times that. The pace of innovation over the last 75 years is absolutely astounding.

We’ve already conquered extra-planetary supply management with our ability to supply the International Space Station on a regular basis and keep our astronauts fed, which means the next challenge is for us to supply inter-planetary supply chains between Earth and Mars.

Fifty years ago today, Andrew Kalitinsky a spokesman for General Dyanmics told scientists at a two day symposium called “The Exploration of Mars”, hosted by the American Astronautical Society that a manned mission to the planet Mars could be launched in 1975 and would likely consist of a convoy of four multi-ton spaceships. (Fifty years and one day ago, one day before this announcement, NASA announced plans to send two satellites to Mars in November 1964 as the first step toward a mission.)

Since then, we’ve only successfully sent:

• Mars 2, a Soviet probe that crashed into Mars in 1971
• Mars 3, a Soviet probe that landed on Mars but stopped transmitting after 14.5 seconds
• Mars 4, a Soviet orbiter that flew by the planet and sent back images and radio occultation data
• Mars 5, a Soviet orbiter that transmitted 60 images
• Mars 6, a Soviet fly-by / lander that failed on impact
• Mariner 4, an American spacecraft that few past Mars on July 14, 1965
• Mariner 6 and 7 American fly-by probes that reached Mars in 1969
• Mariner 9, an American orbiter that was the first probe to successfully enter Martian orbit
• Viking 1, an American orbiter/lander module that was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars
• Viking 2, an American orbiter/lander module that was the second spacecraft to successfully land on Mars
• Mars Pathfinder, an American spacecraft that landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars on July 4, 1997
• Mars Global Surveyor, an American orbiter that entered Martian orbit on Sep 12, 1997
• 2001 Mars Odyssey, an orbiter that reached Martian orbit in 2001
• Mars Express, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) orbiter that reached Martian orbit on Dec 25, 2003 (giving the ESA a Merry Christmas 10 years ago)
• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, an American spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit that attained orbit on Mar 10, 2006
• Rosetta, an ESA probe that flew within 250 km of Mars on Feb 25, 2007
• Curiosity, the American rover that landed on Mars on August 6, 2012 (and may have spotted a Martian Lizard)

Not a single manned mission in the lot of them! And not a single planned manned mission in the next 10 years! the doctor wants to optimize those inter-planetary supply chains. GD, you’re 38 years late. Get a move on!