Radio waves tend to travel in straight lines. This can be a bit of a nuisance if the person you want to send a radio message to is on the other side of a hill but fortunately mother nature in her infinite wisdom foresaw this and gave us the ionosphere, which is a belt of charged particles up in the atmosphere which reflects radio waves downwards, provided that the wavelength is not too high. As a result a wave from a transmitter can hit the ionosphere and bounce down to a spot a very very very long way away! Furthermore upon hitting the ground it is possible for this wave to be reflected right back up, hit the ionosphere and bounce back down again, thus skipping all the way around the world; the only drawback being that every time it bounces it loses a lot more of its power. So okay it works, it is possible to transmit radio waves right around the globe but since they are getting weaker and weaker is there a better way? Yes, there certainly is! Turn your radio signal in a concentrated beam up to a satellite which is always in exactly the same position relative to the earth (geo-stationery) and put in it a device called a transponder which will receive the radio signal, amplify it and then fire it straight back down to earth again. Not only have you lost no signal strength in the bounce but you will also be unable to amplify it; not only have you the ability to send a signal back down to earth a long distance from where it first originated but you can also send it in a concentrated beam to another receiving station on earth which can do exactly the same thing; receive the signal, amplify it and then send it off to another satellite! It is therefore possible to send a radio message right the way round the globe without losing any power!

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The first satellite in space was the Russian Sputnik which frightened a whole generation of Americans because no one had a clue up until then that the Russians were so far ahead of the USA in the necessary technology! Engineers and technicians went into overdrive and a rather primitive, and pretty well useless, satellite using a tape recorder to store and then rebroadcast voice messages was sent up by the Americans but the first really successful telecommunications satellite was Telstar which was launched in 1962 and sponsored by various companies including the British GPO, the French equivalent and Bell Telephone laboratories in the United States. Satcom had been well and truly born.