Madame Guzman didn't get her chat with aliens when she announced the Guzman Prize 115 years ago today. Despite offering a 100,000 franc reward, nobody could come up with the technology to communicate with distant worlds. (Mars didn't count it was deemed too easy.)But in some ways, the Ansari X Prize was its successor.
Unveiled in May 1996, the $2.5m prize (which grew to $10m) would be awarded to anyone who could design and build "a reliable, reusable, privately-financed, manned spaceship capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometres above the Earth's surface twice within two weeks".
The idea was to prove that private space travel (ie, non-government funded) was not only possible, but profitable. Twenty-five teams threw their hats into the ring, including four from Britain the most represented county after the United States.