The Clarke Belt
If asked about Arthur C. Clarke chances are the average person would shoot you a blank stare. If you then played the opening bars of Strausss Thus Spoke Zarathustra and mentioned Stanley Kubrick, you may actually get a flicker of recognition. If you spoke the famous line, Open the pod bay doors, HAL! you could well get a smile and a Right ” yeah!
Such is the relative obscurity most science fiction writers, even writers as esteemed as Clarke, toil under. Although venerated within select circles, authors like Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov, are seldom celebrated or recognized by the culture at large. Literary or even cultural obscurity is one thing, but to fail to recognize a scientific breakthrough is shameful.
The awareness of Clarke as a great writer is one thing, but his real, scientific contributions are another. Few people are aware of the fact he pioneered the concept upon which modern global satellite communication is based. Having served in the Royal Air Force from 1941 through 1946 as a radar instructor and technician, Clarke first proposed the idea of a satellite-based communications system in 1945. He proposed geostationary satellites could be used as telecommunication relays in a paper entitled Extra-Terrestrial Relays, which was published in Wireless World in 1945.
It is hard to fathom the profound affect his simple idea has had on our daily lives, especially with regards to GPS tracking systems. It is easy to take the technology that makes cellphones and instant driving directions possible for granted. By triangulating a receiver on a phone or GPS device, satellites can pinpoint our location and lead us, as it were, to the Promised Land. A bit much to ask of a cellphone? Perhaps.
It is a testament to his genius that he could envisioned the potential of the satellite well before the computer was little more than conjecture. He claimed the idea came from his experience with radar systems, wherein objects and their direction and trajectory can be accessed by the bounce effect of radar waves off metallic objects. GPS tracking systems and wireless telecommunications work on the same principle of deflected and directed waves, all triangulated by the sea of satellites orbiting the earth. A great debt is owed to this bold visionary.
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