[LINK] Telstar, 50 this week

[Roger Clarke]

At 4:38 +0000 11/7/12, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>Telstar, first telecom satellite, launched 50 years ago
>By: Martyn Williams (IDG News Service) 10th July, 2012
>http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/430140/telstar_first_telecom_satellite_la
>unched_50_years_ago/
...
>The story of Project Telstar can be traced back to 1955 when John Pierce,
>a researcher at AT&T's Bell Labs, began looking at the possibility of
>using space-based stations for communications. ...

I was going to say 'and even further back, to 1945':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke
>Although he was not the originator of the concept of geostationary 
>satellites, one of his most important contributions may be his idea 
>that they would be ideal telecommunications relays. He advanced this 
>idea in a paper privately circulated among the core technical 
>members of the BIS in 1945. The concept was published in Wireless 
>World in October of that year. ...

Or even 1929:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Potocnik
>...  the first man to calculate the geostationary orbit, on which 
>the station would orbit the Earth ...

But, on checking, Telstar's was an elliptical orbit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar

The first geosynch comms satellite was a year later, in July 1963:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncom#Syncom_2

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University