1942 Penicillin1944 First test tube calf 1955 Polio vaccine1967 First heart transplant 1990 Genetic engineering2000? Nanotechnology First test-tube calf Science Can Bring Cheap Prize Stock to Every Farmer From the Daily Mail,  28 February 1944 Aragon Hecuba, born four weeks ago today, is no ordinary Guernsey calf. She receives more scientific attention than any human child. She is regularly weighed and inspected by experts. She is a "test tube" baby. She looks and behaves like any other calf. She is staggering on her spindly legs and pushing a questing tongue into visitors' hands at University Farm, Shinfield, Berkshire. But her father, a prize Guernsey bull, never saw her mother. Aragon Hecuba is one of the first batch of calves in this country to be bred by artificial insemination. In a few months she will have many sisters. She is the test calf of the series. An arftificially inseminated egg Since the Reading Centre for the Artificial Insemination of Dairy Cattle was established a year ago the prize bull has sired, indirectly, 10 times as many calves as normal. With others produced by artificial breeding, Aragon Hecuba lives for the present in a large airy pen watched by Mr J Phillips, head cowman, fed and groomed by land girls, examined by agricultural students. If Aragon Hecuba and the other test-tube calves on the farm grow up into fine, sturdy cattle, the experiment of artificial breeding will start a revolution in British farming. Working farmers will not keep their own bulls. Instead, they will be able to telephone an artificial insemination centre. Within a few hours, a veterinary expert will visit his farm, and the farmer will be certain that his next season's calves will be pedigree cattle, able to give the highest quality milk. Prize bulls change hands for two, three, and four thousand guineas. Working farmers, as opposed to gentlemen farmers, cannot afford to buy them. Maintaining a bull is, in any case, an expensive luxury for the dairy farmer. Now the Reading Centre offers farmers within a 12-mile radius the service of a prize bull for the fee of £1. Farmers farther afield can join a secondary scheme, under which an ice-packed vacuum container is sent to them by rail.