1959

The roof system of this building, designed by Lev Zetlin and opened in 1960, was the first of its kind in the world. Before the mid-1950's, the use of long-span cable structures was generally limited to suspension bridges. The only other significant cable roof structure preceding the Utica Memorial Auditorium was the North Carolina State Fair Livestock Judging Pavilion, completed in 1953.

In 1954 three researchers at Bell Laboratories published the results of their discovery of the world’s first practical ‘photovoltaic’ (henceforth abbreviated by ‘PV’) cell which was capable of converting sunlight into electricity, first at 4% and later at 6% conversion-efficiency[1]. In 1959 Sharp Corporation began R&D of silicon monocrystal PV-cells, with mass production starting in 1963[2], and commercialized a variety of mono/multi-crystalline PV-cells for everything from satellites to lighthouses, and industrial applications to residential use[2].

A curious child who dissembled the clocks in her parent's home, Grace Hopper graduated from Vassar College with a B.A. in mathematics and physics. She continued her education at Yale University by completing a masters and Ph.D. in mathematics. She then returned to Vassar to teach. During World War II, Hopper joined the Navy and was sworn into the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1943. After training, she was commissioned as a lieutenant and assigned to the Bureau of Ordinance Computation Project at Harvard University. She became the third person to program the Harvard Mark I computer.

Disney engineers designed this monorail system based on the system developed by Axel Wenner-Gren of the Alweg Company in Cologne, West Germany. Wenner-Gren ran his experimental monorail in 1952 on a level track, and when adopted by Disney in 1959, it was designed to simulate the terrain typical of urban transit. Opening in 1959, the system has been in continuous operation as a passenger service carrying an average of 340,000 passengers a year and logging 10,000 miles. The original trains were replaced in 1969 and a new fleet introduced in 1987 to upgrade the existing chassis.

The world's first high-speed, dockside container-handling cranes reduced ship turnaround time from three weeks to eighteen hours. They became the model and set the standard for future designs worldwide. In service January 7, 1959, the A-frame cranes built at Encinal Terminals in Alameda, California, were designed to move large quantities of products with less handling, less damage, and less pilferage. Under the leadership of C. Dean Ramsden, P.E., the Pacific Coast Engineering Company (PACECO Inc.) met performance specifications developed by the Matson Navigation Company.