Abstract
Sir Patrick Moore, the highly visible host of the television series The Sky at Night and a fellow of the Royal Society, wrote the book Earth Satellites in 1956 for the popular audience on the exciting potential of satellite technology. Published one year before the launch of Sputnik, Moore’s book included a drawing of satellite technology’s possible ramifications for global culture. The drawing depicts people in both Africa and Latin America watching the same Jackie Gleason television program, which was being broadcast around the world thanks to satellite technology. The viewers have created sculptures and pottery mimicking Gleason’s famous pose. Moore’s picture suggests that people from all parts of the world would translate the ideas and images from television programs into their own visual culture. To Moore “whether this would be a blessing or not is a moot point.”1 What is relevant to Moore is that the globalizing effects of satellite technology could standardize the way people live and work.
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Notes
Patrick Moore, Earth Satellites (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1956), 116.
Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1998);
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E. Nelson Hayes, Trackers of the Skies (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1967), 10–15;
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Alfred Eckes and Thomas Zeiler, Globalization and the American Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 137.
Walter LaFeber, The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations throughout History (W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), 310–312;
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© 2010 Roger D. Launius, James Rodger Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin
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Muir-Harmony, T. (2010). Tracking Diplomacy: The International Geophysical Year and American Scientific and Technical Exchange with East Asia. In: Launius, R.D., Fleming, J.R., DeVorkin, D.H. (eds) Globalizing Polar Science. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114654_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114654_16
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