History of Satellite Communications
The first idea of satellite communication came from an article in 1945 named Wireless World, where Author C. Clarke described the use of manned satellites in 24 hour orbits to distribute television programs. However, the first person to carefully evaluate the technical and financial aspects of such a venture was John R. Pierce of Bell Telephone Laboratories (Whalen, n.d.).
In a 1954 speech and 1955 article, Pierce described the usefulness of a communications \"mirror\" in space, a medium-orbit \"repeater\" and a 24-hour-orbit \"repeater.\" In comparing the communications capacity of a satellite, which he estimated the capacity at 1,000 simultaneous telephone calls, and the capacity of the first trans-atlantic telephone cable, which could carry 36 simultaneous telephone calls at a cost of 30-50 million dollars, Pierce wondered if a satellite would be worth a billion dollars (Whalen, n.d.).
By the middle of 1961, RCA had a contract with......
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