18.1 Introduction

The space age began when the Russians launched the first man-made earth-orbiting device, SPUTNIK, on October 4 1957; this feat was followed, on October 26 1959, by the transmission to earth of television pictures of the far side of the moon by the Russian vehicle Lunik III.

When these space technology achievements took place, television was a mere 21 years old in practical terms1. At the end of the 1920s, when economic conditions were poor, the motion-picture industry was surviving through the appeal of the talkies which had been recently introduced. Several experiments and demonstrations of television had been conducted in Europe and the USA during the 1920s and early 1930s, using Baird's 30-line electromechanical scheme (UK) and various electronic systems using several hundred lines (various countries including the UK), these latter exploiting the recent development of electronic imaging devices such as the iconsoscope and the work of Zworykin, Farnsworth, Schoenberg and Blumlein among others2. Regular terrestrial transmissions using a standard high-quality electronic system, developed by the newly formed EMI company and Marconi, were began by the BBC in London in 1936 but were suspended when the Second World War began in 1939. This service was resumed on June 7 1946 by which time the pioneering article by Arthur C. Clarke, published in 19453 in the ' Wireless World' magazine, had envisaged broadcasting as one application of satellites operating in the geostationary orbit. Clarke's ideas took almost 20 years4 to implement and the technical advances...