Re: Playboy needs our help!

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dale Farmer wrote:
> 
>     Satellites.  ( INvented in the 30s, iirc, but not put up till later. )

So far as changing the world in the last 50 years, certainly. I'm sure
there's a good paper or two somewhere on the impact of satellite
television, if nothing else, on geopolitics...

But it depends how you define "invented". First satellite flew in '57,
following an announcement in '54 that one should be flown during the
IGY. The US was building/designing flight hardware in '55, but probably
not earlier, and I suspect the same was mostly true of the USSR.

I'm not sure about your 1930s date - it was probably clear one could be
flown, and the method of doing it clear, at that point; "if we keep
doing this, we'll be able to put *another* bit on top and put something
into *orbit*, Heinrich...". But, then, for the development of the
concept ("something artificial orbiting Earth") you can go back to the
late 1800s (first book describing an artificial satellite published,
for navigational purposes) or even as far back as Newton (remember that
famous picture with the cannon and the mountain?).

-- 
-Andrew Gray
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]