The Universe of Communications
September 1966 Radio-Electronics

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.

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.