Newton Minow on the First Telecommunications Satellite | Features

When he signed the new law, President Kennedy claimed,

By enacting this laws, Congress has taken a step of historic great importance. It claims considerable gains to our individual people today and to the entire globe. Its function is to establish a business communications method employing area satellites which will serve our demands and those of other nations and contribute to environment peace and knowing.

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The rewards which a satellite technique really should make attainable in a several years will stem mainly from a vastly elevated ability to trade details cheaply and reliably with all elements of the world by phone, telegraph, radio, and television. The final outcome will be to encourage and aid earth trade, instruction, entertainment, and several kinds of expert, political, and personal discourse which are important to balanced human associations and intercontinental comprehension.

Much better and considerably less pricey communications, like improved and much less pricey transportation, are essential elements in the march of civilization. This laws will, by advancing the peaceful and productive use of space, assistance to accelerate that march, and I lengthen appreciation to the Members of Congress who worked so hard to protected passage of a very powerful piece of laws.

The satellite was introduced on July 10, 1962, 60 several years ago nowadays, the world’s very first professional payload of any sort in place. According to NASA, “Two days later, it relayed the world’s to start with transatlantic television signal, from Andover Earth Station, Maine, to the Pleumeur-Bodou Telecom Centre, Brittany, France…. The first illustrations or photos, those of President John F. Kennedy and of singer Yves Montand from France, together with clips of sporting events, visuals of the American flag waving in the breeze and a nevertheless impression of Mount Rushmore, had been precursors of the worldwide communications that today are generally taken for granted.”