The 1945 Proposal by Arthur C. Clarke for

Geostationary Satellite Communications

Sir Arthur C. Clarke's most famous prediction on the future is his proposal
of geostationary satellite communications published in the Wireless World
magazine in 1945. Not considered seriously at the time it became a reality
within 20 years with the launching on 1965 April 6th of
Intelsat I Early Bird the first commercial geostationary
communication satellite.

A satellite in an equatorial circular orbit at a distance of approximately
42,164 km from the center of the Earth, i.e., approximately 35,787 km (22,237
miles) above mean sea level has a period equal to the Earth's rotation on its
axis (Sidereal Day=23h56m) and would remain geostationary over the same point on
the Earth's equator. In 2002 the Clarke Orbit had over
300 satellites.

The first reference to geostationary satellites is Clarke's letter to the
editor titled Peacetime Uses for V2 published in the 1945 February issue
of Wireless World (page 58).
Arthur Clarke in his Scientific
Autobiography Ascent to Orbit published 1984 say that he had forgotten
about this letter till he was reminded of it in 1968 by the engineering staff of
the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation.

A 150 dpi scanned image of page 58 of an original 1945 Wireless
World magazine is linked below. See also the copy edited OCR text
in HTML.

Clarke privately circulated in 1945 May a proposal titled The
Space-Station: Its Radio Applications in six typed manuscripts. The top
copy of that is now in the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington D.C. It was reprinted in Spaceflight, Vol 10. no
3, March 1968 pp 85-86 and in Ascent to Orbit pp 57-58.

In Ascent to Orbit Clarke says the paper with original title The
Future of World Communications was written in late June and submitted to the
RAF censor on July 7th. It was sent to Wireless World on August 13th and
accepted on September 1st. The editor had changed title to Extra-Terrestrial
Relays and published it in the 1945 October issue of Wireless World
(pages 305-308).

The 150 dpi scanned images of pages 305-308 of an original 1945
Wireless World magazine is linked below. Note that the last two pages
reprinted in Ascent to Orbit have been reformatted omiting an
illustration on page 307 which had no Figure number. See also the copy edited
OCR text
in HTML.

There is a minor reference to Clarke's article titled Extra-Terrestrial
Relays published in the 1945 November issue of Wireless World (page
336).

in HTML.

See also details of the
Wireless World Magazines imaged above.