Sputnik

Leave It to Beaver premiered on American television on October 4th, 1957, the same time that Sputnik was launched into space by the former Soviet Union. While spacefaring has always been an amazing accomplishment for mankind, this launch was particularly remarkable, as it was the first man-made object in space. The impact that this unmanned spacecraft would have on the twentieth century is still immeasurable, affecting our every day lives. (Can you say Velcro?)

Sputnik weighed 184 pounds, was about the size of a beach ball, and it was silver in color. All that it carried was a radio that chirped for three-tenths of a second, fell silent for three-tenths of a second, and then chirped once again. It was possible to see Sputnik with the naked eye, depending on where you were. It was easiest to spot the satellite in the early morning and late evening, during its 98-minute orbit of the earth. It could do nothing but orbit the earth, and yet it helped to shape the world that we live in.

While the Americans were not the first in space, President Eisenhower was busy creating spy satellites that he intended to use to locate Russian missiles. Because he also wanted to promote "freedom of space", Eisenhower welcomed the launch of Sputnik. The public, however, was not so happy. In the book The Heavens and the Earth -- A Political History of the Space Age, historian Walter A. McDougall said, "No event since Pearl Harbor set off such repercussions in public life." Later, author Simon Ramo wrote, "The American response to the accomplishment of the Soviet Union was comparable to the reaction I could remember to Lindbergh's landing in France, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and Franklin D. Roosevelt's death."

After Eisenhower proposed his unsuccessful "Open Skies Campaign", on July 29th, the White House press secretary announced that as part of the IGY, "small unmanned Earth-circling satellites" would be created. Many Americans, especially scientists were overjoyed, that the U.S. would finally launch itself into space. The first successful U.S. send-off was the Explorer I.

Sputnik was a landmark in history, marking the beginning of the Space Age. In 1962 and 1963, twenty-four episodes of The Jetsons were created, only further proving the obsession with otherworldly travel during the era. Even before the start of the Space Age, in the fall of 1956, a Buick dealer in California, understanding that space travel would begin soon, wrote to NASA and tried to buy advertising space on future spacecrafts.

While you may have heard that the only results were "Teflon, Tang and Velcro," it was in fact a time when many technological advances were made. Sputnik I marked the beginning of the quest to reach the stars.