News Briefs, November 1962 Radio-Electronics

By 1961, when this items appeared in the "News Briefs" section of Radio-Electronics magazine, the "Space Race" was moving into high gear to launch both commercial and military satellites. Telephone companies figure out real quickly that the cost of building and launching satellites for intercontinental and coast-to-coast communications was far cheaper than a terrestrial build-out. Operational costs boiled down to primarily Earth station staffing and maintenance (not including the distribution to "last mile" landlines). A U.S.-to-Brazil bird was announced here. GaAs semiconductors were finding new applications in laser work. Ferro-glass, a magnet glass, was announced, with planned use in microwave frequency devices. Elmo Neale Pickerill was honored for having been the first man to broadcast via radio while airborne.

News Briefs

Relay Spacecraft being constructed by RCA for NASA is an eight-sided prism, tapered at one end. Weight 169 lbs., diameter 29 inches, height 32 inches, with 19-inch long communications antenna extending from the narrow end. The surface is covered with 8,215 solar cells, shielded from radiation damage by a layer of quartz 60 mils thick. NASA will conduct experiments on Relay's operating condition at the ITT station at Nutley, and at another NASA test station at Mohave, Calif., before communications experiments are carried out.

A North and South link has been scheduled by the International Telephone and Telegraph Co. in cooperation with the government of Brazil. It will go into effect when the Project Relay satellite is launched late this year. The Relay satellite is planned to orbit the earth at altitudes ranging from 800 to 3,500 miles. A completely mobile ground station has been constructed for use near Rio de Janeiro. It includes a 30-foot parabolic tracking antenna, control-band and auxiliary trailers, and will be operated by the ITT subsidiary Companhia Radio Internacional do Brasil. The power of the ground station is 10 kw. The Project Relay satellite will put out 10 watts. The project is a purely experimental one, designed (1) to test feasibility of communications in this direction; (2) to detect radiation particles in the Van Allen belt, and (3) to determine the extent of radiation damage to solar cells and electronic components. The mobile station will be able to handle 12 simultaneous two-way telephone messages or 144 teleprinter or high-speed data circuits. Experimental work between the United States and Europe will include television, teletype, high-speed data transmission and telephone communication. The signals will be transmitted to the satellite on 1, 725-mc or 2,300-mc and from the satellite on 4,170-mc. The northern link in the communications experiment will be operated at the ITT Federal Lab at Nutley, N. J., which has received the country's first FCC license allocating radio frequencies to private industry to operate an experimental research facility of this type.

A bust of Elmo Neale Pickerill, the first person to transmit radio signals from a plane to earth, has been installed at the Smithsonian Institution National Air Museum. Mr. Pickerill learned to fly under Orville Wright, for the purpose of attempting the wireless transmission.

During his historic flight on Aug. 4, 1910, he communicated with a portable ground station at Manhattan Beach, N. Y., from an air position above Mineola, 20 miles away. He also established two-way communication with the Marconi stations at Sagaponack and Sea Gate, also on Long Island, N. Y., the marine station of United Wireless Telegraph and five steamships in the area. Using a 200-foot wire trailing from one wing tip as antenna, and a second one from the other wing tip as an "artificial ground," Mr. Pickerill also laid to rest fears that airplane transmission could not be practical because of the impossibility of making a good ground.

The presentation to the museum was made by Mr. Pickerill himself, who is now 77 and lives at Mineola. The bust was commissioned and presented to Mr. Pickerill in 1939 by his friend Augustus Post, a New York financier, and one of the founders of the Early Birds Association, in recognition of his services to radio and aviation.

A tiny gallium arsenide crystal, the size of a pin-head, mounted near the bottom end of the black rod (seen through the circular window) generates a modulated infrared beam with an intensity up to 2,500 watts per cm².

According to scientists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a gallium arsenide diode, emitting very powerful radiation in an exceedingly narrow range of frequencies near the visible light spectrum, may do many of the things now proposed for optical masers (lasers). The high power and narrow bandwidth of the energy from the diode, and the very high speed with which it responds to a change in the input signal, make it seem especially adaptable to such work. The diode was pictured on page 60 of last month's issue, although little information on it was available at that time. Equipment has already been devised that will transmit 20 TV channels or 20,000 voice channels on a single beam of intense infrared. The new device was developed by R. J. Keyes and T. M. Quist of MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, Solid State Division, with the joint support of the Armed Forces.

Larry Steckler, Associate Editor, Radio-Electronics, communicating via Telstar.

Relatively inexpensive equipment was used to provide a single two-way voice channel via the Telstar satellite at a demonstration at Bell Labs, Holmdel, N. J. Several two-way telephone conversations were completed. The path of the calls was from a small temporary 850-watt transmitter at Holmdel to Telstar and down to the big space communications station at Andover, Me. From Andover the calls were sent back to Holmdel over regular phone circuits. The other side of the calls went from Holmdel to Andover via land lines, up to Telstar and back via radio to Holmdel. Transmissions were on 6384.58 mc and reception on 4165 me.

At Holmdel a remodeled 18- foot dish antenna together with other existing equipment formed the communications station. While the capabilities of such a station do not in a rather ordinary house trailer. Although an 18-foot dish was used for the demonstration, a properly designed 10-foot dish could do the same job, it was stated.

Now that we have become used to conductive glass, an optically transparent glass that is ferromagnetic at room temperatures has been produced. The new material, developed by Semi-Elements, Inc., Saxonburg, Pa., is called Ferro-glass. It is expected to have important applications in thermomagnetic devices, microwave circulators, antennas, transformer cores, memory devices, cryogenic control, applications in corrosive atmospheres, laser-modulation usage and applications in space equipment. It could be particularly valuable in magnetic research, where it would be desirable to be able to observe the specimens.

The new glass is not cheap (at least as yet). Experimental quantities are said to cost from $135 up for 1 cc.

The high-altitude nuclear test staged in the Central Pacific last summer has "increased the potential danger for man's space flights," according to Dr. James A. Van Allen. The new belt, consisting largely of high-energy electrons, is about 400 miles deep and 4,000 miles wide, stretching around the middle of the earth on the geomagnetic equator.

News BriefsNovember 1962 Radio-Electronics

News Briefs

News Briefs
November 1962 Radio-Electronics