Early photons from the early universe

The 60 years before the announcement of “A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s” witnessed a remarkable number of observational and theoretical close approaches to what is now called the cosmic microwave background, though it had a wider variety of names in the past. We explore some of these, with special attention to the activities of Simon Newcomb, George Gamow, Andrew McKellar, Edward Ohm, and Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich.