Satellite communication patent (Arthur C Clarke)

[Dave]

Science Fiction is by definition, based upon postulated scientific discoveries or environmental changes. Numerous authors have predicted things, which have ultimately come true. In 1945 Arthur C Clarke predicted satellite communications. He is often asked why he didn't patent the idea.

In an interview for the BBC Arthur C Clarke says 'I wrote a story many years ago called 'Silence Please' about devices that could eliminate sound, you can actually buy these on the market now. I am sometimes asked if I am sorry that I didn't patent the communications satellite, well I'm not sure that I could have done, but in any event I am fond of saying that "a patent is a license to be sued".'

 

[ntstatic]

i am not sure we still have the sound cloaking device .... though i do not remember - i must surely have read the story in question - what exactly the sound cancelletion device does or how it works.

the communications satellite was described by Clarke and hence became prior art when the satellites were actually built. Clarke had described the comunications satellite in such detail that they could not be patented when they were actually built... however until then they were just an idea which he had described .... and only ideas without any other basis cannot be patented. though software algorithms .... are almost like an idea ... but they can be patented

 

[BigBadBob141]

Yes he did think up the idea of communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits, which is pretty amazing and he was still in the RAF at the time
But the satellites he envisioned were basically manned space stations as the radio equipment in them would be huge and need constant maintenance, as this was thought up in the days of the vacuum valve, no transistors let alone integrated circuits.
I remember turning on our old radio as a child just before Sunday dinner for the comedy shows on the Home Service of the BBC, you would have to wait three or four minutes for the valves to warm up before you got anything.
And the old 425 line black & white TVs were the same, everything took time to warm up, but now days it's just me that needs to!!!
P.S. I remember reading some where one of the first post war electronic computers in America that was as big as a house, would have a team of students walking up and down inside it all day long, they would each have a shopping trolly filled with valves, and would have to pull out the burnt out ones and replace them, happy days!
P.P.S. The term having a bug in a computer program stems from a very old computer, also in America, it didn't have valves but was electro-mechanical, one day it started to go wrong, they found out that a large insect had crawled into one of the tens of thousands of switches jamming it when it squashed the insect, hence the term having a bug in the program!!!