By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com
Remember Sputnik? Only if you were alive in October 1957.
Three stories in the Bluffton News that year reveal local fascination and questions about this first-ever successful artificial satellite.
Sputnik ignited the space race. It fed U.S. fears that our nation had fallen behind in developing new technology. It in turn, intensified the arms race and raised Cold War tensions.
Translated “Fellow Traveler,” Sputnik 1 was a very simple satellite. It was a metal sphere with four long antennas protruding from it. It contained a thermometer, a fan, a radio transmitter, batteries and little else.
Read the following stories from The Bluffton News concerning Sputnik and the Cold War.
Headline: Bluffton radio “Ham” traps voice of Russian Sputnik on tape recorder
Oct. 17, 1957, Bluffton News – What is believed to be the “voice” of Sputnik, the Russian earth satellite, has been trapped by a Bluffton radio “ham” operator and professional electronics technician on his tape reporter.
Lying in wait before his short-wave radio rig at his home on Cherry Street for five nights after the launching seems to have paid off for Maynard Geiger. He has three minutes of “beeps” recorded. They seem to be those from Sputnik.
CONTINUES
Although he has read reams of information on the Russian satellite thus far, Mr. Geiger has not heard the radio voice of the “moon” described.
Mr. Geiger made every possible check to assure he was listening on 20.005 megacycles, the proper frequency. The voice came on at the proper time – 10:27 ½ p.m. Wednesday night, October 10. He heard the beeps for three minutes.
Mr. Geiger believes that the speeding satellite was picked up as it moved south from a point west of Georgian Bay.
At 10:29 it seemed to be most distinct (when the moon was over Detroit) and faded out a minute and a half later when it should been passing west of New Orleans.
The “voice” recorded by the Geiger tape recorder varies in intensity the three minutes it is heard. It appears with a throaty sound becomes more distinct and disappears with a throaty sound. It is a mechanized beep with a peculiar hollow sound.
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