November 29

1803: Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, of Doppler effect fame, was born. 1849: Sir John Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the diode tube, was born. 1877: Thomas Edison demonstrated his hand-cranked phonograph that recorded sound on grooved metal cylinders. 1929: Navy Lt. Commander Richard Byrd radioed that he had made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. 1944: The first open heart surgery was performed at Johns Hopkins hospital. 1951: The first U.S. underground atom bomb test - designed "Uncle" (a mnemonic for underground) was detonated. 1954: Nobel Prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi died. 1961: "Enos" the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning. 1972: The original PONG arcade unit was released by Atari.