And so the Communication Moon Relay project was born. Unlike PAMOR, which remained top secret, CMR was unclassified and a point of pride for the military. It envisioned using the moon for all sorts of things like communicating with aircraft and submarines, or broadcasting public messages to half the world at a time. On July 24, 1954, after years of experiments transmitting toward the moon, Trexler sat down at a microphone and delivered a short monologue into a microphone. There are no records of what was said, but two-and-a-half seconds later a speaker in the room echoed his message back to him.

It was the first time in history that a human voice left the planet and returned again.