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September 1966 Radio-Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Electronics,
published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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In 1966,
Radio-Electronics editor Forest Belt reflects on the impossibility of
singling out the "most spectacular" communications achievement amid rapid
advancements. He highlights Surveyor 1's lunar landing, emphasizing its
resilience in extreme temperatures and its transmission of moon surface images
back to Earth. The editorial also praises NASA's Mariner 4 for relaying Mars
close-ups and responding to signals from 749 million miles away - a two-hour
round-trip feat. While space breakthroughs dominate headlines, Belt notes
quieter terrestrial progress: military communications networks, navigation
satellites, and experiments with lasers and undersea cables. He predicts
satellite-to-home TV and underscores the need to expand communication planning
beyond Earth, encompassing oceans and deep space. Belt concludes that the scale
of innovation demands a universal, not merely global, perspective on future
systems. The piece captures the era's optimism (despite the Vietnam ramp-up) and
the challenge of tracking progress in a field advancing on multiple frontiers.
The Universe of Communications
  By Forest H. Belt, Editor
On the editorial page this month, in this our first CB & Communications
Special, I planned to talk to you about the most spectacular communications event
to date. No earth-shattering commentary, just a chat about how it was accomplished
and what it might mean to your future and mine.
So I picked the most recent big event. But ... no ... that wasn't really the
most important. The most important was ... No, wait a minute ... how about ... ?
You get the idea. With so many events linked in one way or another to communications,
how could I possibly pick out one that is the most important? Obviously, I couldn't.
The news media played up the triumph of Surveyor I, our "TV station" on the moon.
Now, there's a TV show for you - live, from outer space! Not only did Surveyor manage
a gentle landing, controlled by its own internal computer, but shortly set to work
with its movable-mirror television camera telecasting back to earth thousands of
sparkling pictures of the moon's surface. All through the 270°F temperature
of the moon "day," the tough little moon photographer worked, and then settled into
stillness to wait out the -280°F lunar "night."
Then, 14 earth-days later, when the sun rose again over the lonely lunar landscape,
earth-based scientists sent out hopeful little electronic suggestions that Surveyor
should wake up and look around again. And, with a slow but encouraging stretch of
electronic muscles, Surveyor did wake up, healthy as ever, soaked up a hearty breakfast
of solar energy to replenish its now-thawed batteries, and went willingly to work
again pouring information about the moon down those telemetry and television beams
to exulting scientists at receiving stations back on earth.
Then there's that other miracle of space communications - Mariner 4 - which has
become the earth's most traveled former denizen. Not satisfied with sending the
world's first closeup pictures of Mars last year, this marvelous interstellar traveler
obligingly sent back an answer to our most recent electronic question - sent it
back from 749 million miles away in space. Talk about communications! It took more
than 2 hours for the messages to make the round trip to Mariner and back.
All this activity in outer space overshadows less flashy happenings down here
within a few hundred miles of earth. A worldwide system of communications is ready
to serve the military. Navigation satellites are edging toward the launch pads.
Some experts predict we'll have direct satellite-to-home TV in a few years; others
deny it. (Rest assured; if we don't, the reason won't be technical.) And orbiting
observatories are an accomplished but little publicized fact.
Right here on the solid earth, imaginative ways of multiplexing more messages
on existing facilities are being put into operation. In labs, lasers are opening
new avenues of speculation about handling the mounting volume of future communications
traffic.
No spot is untouched by the innovators. New means for undersea communication
are being tried out, while we're still finding new ways to send more messages over
those old standby's, the undersea cables.
So, you see, I picked too broad - if not impossible - a subject. One short editorial
can't cover it.
But, in working at it, I decided one thing I can pass along and hope will affect
your future thinking about communications: No longer can any of us talk of, think
about, or plan for world communications. From the briny depths of the ocean to yet-unfathomed
reaches of outer space, we now must plan our communications systems in terms of
the universe.
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