As Control Design celebrates its 15th anniversary, each month we bring you a look back at some of the events and developments that shaped technology during that time. In October, British Royal Air Force Pilot Andy Green drove a jet-powered car faster than the speed of sound, Chevron announced that it would buy Texaco for $35 billion, and NASA launched the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
Oct. 15, 1997: British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green broke the land-speed record by driving a jet-powered car faster than the speed of sound.
Oct. 1, 1999: The People's Republic of China celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding.
October 2000: The United Nations estimated that there were 742,500 industrial robots in use worldwide. More than half of those were being used in Japan.
Oct. 16, 2000: Chevron announced that it would buy Texaco for $35 billion. The combined company became the fourth largest oil company in the world.
Oct. 20, 2004: The United Nations reported that Japan was using 320 robots of all sorts per 10,000 employees, and Germany was using 148 industrial robots per 10,000 employees. In the car industry, there was one robot per 10 workers in Japan, Italy and Germany.
