August, 1956: Eleven years later, Clarke writes the following letter to Andrew G. Haley. In it, he mentions the aforementioned article and then expands on his earlier writings by correctly predicting the future development of both satellite television and GPS.
Transcript follows.
Recommended reading: Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!: Collected Essays, 1934-1998.
Transcript
Aug 56
Dear Andy,
Odd that we should have crossed in the post!
I am afraid that I am too much out of touch with current communication theory and technique to provide much of value for you. (In any event, all my war-time experience was in radar, not radio.)
As you may know, my main interest in this subject is in the use of satellite relays, which I think may revolutionise the pattern of world communications. To the best of my knowledge, I was the first to suggest this possibility (see "Extraterrestrial Relays", Wireless World, October 45). By another odd coincidence I've just sent my agent an article on these lines, entitled "The Billion Dollar Moon", giving my latest view on this subject. My general conclusions are that perhaps in 30 years the orbital relay system may take over all the functions of existing surface networks and provide others quite impossible today. For example, the three stations in the 24-hour orbit could provide not only an interference and censorship-free global TV service for the same power as a single modern transmitter, but could also make possible a position-finding grid whereby anyone on earth could locate himself by means of a couple of dials on an instrument about the size of a watch. (A development of Decca and transistorisation.) It might even make possible world-wide person-to-person radio with automatic dialling. Thus no-one on the planet need ever get lost or become out of touch with the community, unless he wanted to be. I'm still thinking about the social consequences of this!
But as for details of frequencies and powers, I'll have to leave that to the experts to work out; I'll get on with my science fiction and wait to say "I told you so!"
Sincerely,
(Signed, 'Arthur')
Arthur C Clarke
P.S. Any chance of seeing you in London? I leave for N.Y. on 28 August.
10 comments:
This is truly amazing.
We must dream it first. Thank you for the letter. Their relationship really illustrates the impact of the science fiction writers on technological advancement.
"It might even make possible world-wide person-to-person radio with automatic dialling. Thus no-one on the planet need ever get lost or become out of touch with the community, unless he wanted to be. I'm still thinking about the social consequences of this!"
This makes me laugh. I'm still thinking of those consequences, too!
In f****king credible. Bring on the teleporters!
an amazing englishman..
once had the opportunity to correspond with the man..
on the optic revolution
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarchi/2345777194/sizes/l/in/set-1691104/
To put this in context. Sputnik was launched in 1957 and the general population felt the russians had caught the US with their space trousers around their ankles.
Arthur C Clarke a amazing man . .
But these "predictions" are not really predictions in the classical sense.
These are quite valid and reasonable speculations on foreseeable future applications. (and Arthur C Clarke was VERY good at taking things to the next step or two)
But it still takes hard engineering to make any thing like this become reality and some do not. this is the part you can't really predict too far in the future (ie with out atomic clocks with the accuracy they now have GPS as we know it would not work)
Does this make it "prior art" as he was able to describe the details of what would be needed for the concept? Would this then allow the breaking of existing patients now there is verifiable hardcopy of the idea?
sheesh - worse ideas have been patiented with less info than he gives in this letter :)
Cant get much more prior than this :) heh
I told you so!
A brief historical note: Clarke's Oct 1945 article followed his letter to the editors of the same magazine on the same subject, published in the February 1945 edition of Wireless World.
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