59 years ago tonight, Sputnik was launched successfully

[Stuart G]

Just a note to remind. We have come a long way. Sadly, we could have advanced much further. One of the most interesting advances of the so called "space race" is our reading this right now on these computers and the internet. More advances in computer technology were made just as a result of attempts to get to the moon. So much more and leave it up to you for the rest..

[Snobblevitch]

1. Actually, it was 58 years ago. Sputnik was launched 10-04-1957.

[SheilaT]

2. Yep. I remember it well.

I was nine years old, and my older brother, who at that time wanted to become a rocket scientist, told me. I remember being so amazed that anyone had put something up in orbit around this earth.

[HereSince1628]

3. Oh THANK GOD!!! I thought I was OLD!

I remember the drawings in the newspaper!

[Snobblevitch]

6. You are old...(ha)...

I wasn't born until many years later.

My dad tells a story about how his radio station (he was GM) offered $100 to the first person who could provide an audio recording of Sputnik. He got several dozen tapes before telling his listeners the contest was over. All Sputnik did was to send out broadcasts of beeping. It was an experiment by the Soviets. The paranoia by Americans was a bonus.

[HereSince1628]

8. I better remember TeleStar going into orbit rather better.

At the time there were few single slowly moving lights in the night sky. The entire neighborhood standing out in the street to watch TeleStar make some of it's early orbits.

Made no sense to me how without very long wires attached that little light was going to help us make phone calls

[PosterChild]

11. Not really a beep, .,..

.... it was a sine wave. Some engineers where I work (no, I wasn't there then, I was two years old) tracked the transmission and used the dopler shift to determine it's orbit . Then came an insperation - if they knew it's orbit they could work backwards from the dopler shift to determine their position. This became Transit, the first ever satellite navigation system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_%28satellite%29

[Snobblevitch]

12. The only thing I remember about trig

is sine, cosine, and tangent. That's just one of the few reasons I was a liberal arts and business major (stats almost killed me) and not an engineer.

[PosterChild]

13. You and I both....

....can probably thank Sputnik for what we know about trig. Say what you will, parionoia can be very motivating .

Sometimes for better , sometimes for.....

[Snobblevitch]

14. I remember virtually nothing about trig.

I remember taking an algebra course in college that was a prerequisite for a basic accounting class (I'm fine with addition, subtraction, division). The first day, the teacher gave us a ten question quiz. Unless we got at least 8 answers correct, she suggested we drop the class and take an easier one. Well, the easier one was not the prereq I needed. I got 3 correct. I stayed in the class because I would rather take the chance I would pass than take an extra class. I managed to pass. I have no idea how I did it. Every time (almost) I completed an equation I had no idea if it was correct or not. My roommate laughed at me. That is, he laughed at me until he had to write a four page paper and had zero idea how to start. I would write papers, ok typewrite, papers without a rough draft and get an A. (Thank goodness for the computer lab so I could stop using the typewriter). He could not write more than two sentences without begging for my help. Of course, I asked him for help with algebra, and after a few minutes he gave up.

[PosterChild]

16. Preserverance and determination are...

...the real prerequisites . You did good!

[Snobblevitch]

18. And pop quizes that I somehow understood.

The tests, not as much.

[pangaia]

4. I even remember sitting in a junior high school class when it was announced.

[TheCowsCameHome]

9. I was delivering newspapers that morning.

All over the place it was like "What is this thing?"

[bettyellen]

5. The Space Museum was one of my favorite things in Moscow. They had a replica (or taxidermy?)

of the first dog that went up. And tons of other cool stuff.
I bought a set of boxes of matches, each with a different astronaut on them.

[PosterChild]

17. Soviet / Russian rocket fuel . ...

Kalashnikov brand, of course!

[bettyellen]

19. They have an infectious pride for astronauts, engineers and artists that I just loved.

[dumbcat]

7. It was the single biggest influence on my going

into a forty year career in electrical engineering. I was a third grader and listened to the signals coming down from Sputnik on the 40 meter band on my friend's old Zenith shortwave radio. We shortly later both got our ham radio licenses and both went into the electronics field, me in the military and he went into radio/TV broadcasting.

[Snobblevitch]

10. I had a Zenith Transoceanic as a kid.

I too went into broadcasting. I wish I had the math skills to be an engineer.

[alphafemale]

15. Sheer joy in this moment

[Blue_In_AK]

20. I remember that well.

Six years later my dad was working at NASA on the Apollo project. The US space program accomplished a lot in the years between Sputnik and the moon landing in 1969.