Fast

Fast · Patrick Collison

• BankAmericard -- Dee Hock successfully launched the BankAmericard card, which later became the Visa card, in just 90 days from scratch and managed to acquire over 100,000 customers during that time.
• P-80 Shooting Star -- Kelly Johnson and his team designed and delivered the P-80 Shooting Star, which was the first jet fighter used by the USAF, in just 143 days.
• Marinship -- Work on the shipyard started right after the W. A. Bechtel Company received a telegram from the United States Maritime Commission on March 2, 1942. The Sausalito site was selected on March 3, and a proposal to build the shipyard was presented in Washington DC on March 9. During the presentation, U.S. Maritime Commission administrators instructed the W.A. Bechtel Company to build the shipyard, and physical construction began on March 28. However, the construction start was delayed for two weeks to allow the 42 families living on Pine Point, which was scheduled to be demolished to build the shipyard, to move. The first ship was completed on September 15 of that year, 197 days after receiving the telegram.
• The Spirit of St. Louis -- In 1927, Donald Hall and Charles Lindbergh built the "Spirit" in just 60 days. To figure out how much fuel the flight needed, they went to the San Diego Public Library at 820 E St and measured New York to Paris with a globe and a piece of string. It came out to 3,600 statute miles, and Hall worked out that it would take 400 gallons of gasoline.
• Eiffel Tower -- The Eiffel Tower went up in just 793 days, about 2 years and 2 months. When it was finished in 1889, it was the tallest building in the world, and it kept that title for over four decades. It cost about $40 million in 2019 dollars.
• Treasure Island -- In 1935, San Francisco decided to celebrate the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges by building a new island to host the Golden Gate International Exposition. The result was Treasure Island, a 400-acre man-made island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The construction of this island began in 1935 and was finished by March of 1937.
• Apollo 8 -- On August 9, 1968, NASA determined that Apollo 8 would travel to the moon. It was launched 134 days later on December 21, 1968.
• The Alaska Highway -- Over the course of 234 days in 1942, military engineers constructed a 1,700-mile-long highway connecting eastern British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska.
• Disneyland -- Disneyland, Walt Disney's "The Happiest Place on Earth," was built in just one year.
• The Empire State Building -- The construction took 410 days to complete, from start to finish.
• The Berlin Airlift -- In 1948, the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on Berlin, which led to the Berlin Airlift starting two days later. The US, UK, and France carried out the airlift for 463 days, using 300 aircraft to make 277,000 flights and ensure that 2.2 million Berlin residents received essential supplies. For 14 months, a supply aircraft landed every 2 minutes on average. During this time, Tegel airport was constructed to support the airlift effort. The planning began in July 1948, and the construction started on August 5 of the same year. The first landing took place on November 5, only 92 days after construction began, and the airport officially opened on December 5, 1948.
• Pentagon -- The construction of the world's largest office building was led by Brehon Somervell. The decision to proceed with the project was made on a Thursday evening. Initial drawings were completed that Sunday. Construction started two months later, on September 11 1941, and was finished on January 15 1943, 491 days later. When asked when something was needed, Somervell's go-to response was "the day before yesterday".
• Boeing 747 -- Boeing began the 747 program in March 1966, and the first 747 was finished on September 30, 1968, which was approximately 930 days later.
• The New York Subway -- On February 21, 1900, the initial contract for the subway was awarded, and after 4.7 years, 28 stations were unveiled, and operations began on October 27, 1904. In April 2000, the MTA made the decision to construct the Second Avenue Subway, which opened its first phase of 3 stations on January 1, 2017.
• TGV -- In 1976, the French government approved a high-speed rail link between Paris and Lyon, Europe's first high-speed line. France built brand new electric locomotives for it. The line opened on September 26, 1981, about 1,975 days after approval. Compare that with the California High-Speed Rail Authority, set up on September 24, 1996. Right now the first phase of the California high-speed rail project is expected to be completed in 2033, which is roughly 37 years (or around 13,000 days) after the authority's formation.
• USS Nautilus -- The US built the world's first nuclear submarine, which entered service on September 30, 1954, 1,173 days after construction began in July 1951.
• JavaScript -- Brendan Eich created the first prototype of JavaScript in just 10 days and released it in beta in September 1995.
• Unix -- Ken Thompson wrote the first version in three weeks.
• Xerox Alto -- Work on the Xerox Alto, the first computer with a graphical user interface (GUI), started in November 1972 because of a bet. Chuck believed that a futuristic computer could be developed in three months, and a Xerox executive bet him a case of wine that it couldn't be done. Building the Alto meant a lot of work on hardware, the operating system, and applications, and the first complete Altos came out on March 1, 1973.
• Shenzhen -- Between 1998 and 1999, Shenzhen's population grew from 4.4 million to 5.4 million, an increase of 22% or 1 million residents.
• iPod -- In January 2001, Tony Fadell was brought on to build the iPod. Steve Jobs gave the go-ahead for the project in March of the same year. By April, they had engaged a contract manufacturer and in October, they announced the product. The first production iPod was shipped to customers in November 2001, just under 300 days after the project began.
• Amazon Prime -- Amazon announced the first version of Amazon Prime on February 2, 2005, just six weeks after implementation began in late 2004.
• Git -- Linus Torvalds created Git in April 2005 and self-hosted it just four days later. On April 20, 2005, Git was publicly released with Linux 2.6.12-rc3 after only 17 days of work.
• COVID-19 vaccines -- The SARS-CoV-2 genome was published on January 10, 2020. Shortly after, on January 13, Moderna finalized the sequence for its mRNA vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273. The first batch of the vaccine was produced on February 7, and on February 24 (45 days after the genome publication), Moderna shipped the initial batch of mRNA-1273 to the NIH for use in Phase 1 clinical trials. After 266 days of clinical trials and regulatory coordination, Moderna announced on November 16, 2020, that the vaccine's efficacy was 94.5%.