50 Years of Satellite Communications

Adam Mann, writing for Wired Magazine, has an article on the 50th anniversary of Telstar-1.

Telstar, a collaboration between U.S., French, and British broadcasting agencies, was the world’s first active communication satellite, enabling TV programs to be broadcast across the Atlantic. The 3-foot-long satellite was also the first to send the television signals, telephone calls, and fax images through space.

Before Telstar was launched, microwave towers could flash TV shows and other communication information from point to point through the air, supplementing the landlines that already crisscrossed the globe. But once these signals reached the ocean, they reached their limit.

(Maybe most astounding is that we used to collaborate with the French; not mock them for their adequate health care while we fattened ourselves up on Freedom Fries.)

Anyway, satellites? How cool is that? Humanity has been on the planet for millions of years (never mind what the Biblical literalists might tell you) and only for the last 50 have we been able to put communication devices in space. And we have the privilege of living in such a time.

With that, I give you Louis CK. Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy: