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ISSN 0953 1599 THE JOURNAL OF THE ASTRO SPACE

STAMP SOCIETY Issue No 90 June 2011

Patron:

Cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, Hero of the Soviet Union

COMMITTEE Chair :

Margaret Morris, 55 Canniesburn Drive, Bearsden, Glasgow, Scotland G61 1RX (E-mail: mmorris671@aol.com)

Hon. Secretary: Brian J.Lockyer, 21, Exford Close,Weston-Super-Mare,

Somerset BS23 4RE (E-mail : b.lockyer365@btinternet.com)

Compiler of Checklist / Hon Treasurer / Postal Packet Organiser

Harvey Duncan,16, Begg Avenue, Falkirk, Scotland FK1 5DL (E-mail: duncan1975@btinternet.com)

Orbit : Editor Jeff Dugdale, Glebe Cottage, Speymouth, Mosstodloch, Moray.

Scotland IV32 7LE (E-mail: jefforbited@aol.com)

Webmaster Derek Clarke, 36 Cherryfield Road, Walkington,

Dublin 12 (E-mail: dclarke36@gmail.com)

Postal Auction Organiser: David Saunders, 42 Burnet Road, Bradwell,

Great Yarmouth. NR31 8SL.

Overseas Representatives:

Australia: Charles Bromser, 37 Bridport Street, Melbourne 3205. Belgium : Jűrgen P. Esders, Rue Paul Devigne 21-27, Boite 6, 1030 Bruxelles

Eire:Derek Clarke, 36 Cherryfield Rd, Walkinstown. Dublin 12. France: Jean-Louis Lafon, 23 Rue de Mercantour, 78310 Maurepas

Netherlands: Bart Beimers, NJ Haismasrt 7, 9061 BV Gierkerk Russia: Mikhail Vorobyov, 31-12 Krupskaya Str, Kostroma United States: Dr Ben Ramkissoon, Linda Valley Villa #236

11075 Benton Street Loma Linda CA 92354-3182

Life Members: UK - Harvey Duncan, George Spiteri, Ian Ridpath, Margaret Morris, Michael Packham, Dr W.R. Withey, Paul Uppington, Jillian Wood.

Derek Clarke (Eire,) Charles Bromser (Australia.) Tom Baughn (U.S.A.,) Ross Smith (Australia,)

Vincent Leung Wing Sing (Hong Kong.) Mohammed K.Safdar (Saudi Arabia)

Did you miss the celebrations ?

I did, or perhaps I did not notice them on account of their modesty. In Britain the 12th April passed with a few mentions on the British news bulletins and a couple of Wikipedia based articles in the newspapers. My impression of the general media approach to the anniversary was, “So what ?” Perhaps it would have been different if Yuri was still alive. Already there is a trickle of genuine stamp issues and cancels to mark the 50th anniversary of the flight of Vostok and a handful marking Alan Shepard’s space shot a few weeks’ later : see page 28. However, you’ll find a lot of issues in various formats to celebrate these events if you are prepared to shell out on dubious or bogus issues (e.g. on page 32) and my advice is “Don’t encourage them !” The silver lining - perhaps we should be grateful for the sake of our pockets that so little of interest has been issued ! Maybe there is a widespread ennui with manned spaceflight on account of the impending end of the space shuttle, - the longest farewell series since the Frank Sinatra concerts ! - and the uncertainty of what is coming after that. But a handful of American commercial ventures offer an exciting alternative to the NASA dominated picture of the last twenty years and next year or the year after that there will be manned tourist flights and commercial inspired flights to the ISS.

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Part Five Part Four covered activity on

the ISS from Spring to Autumn of 2009 when the

Expedition 21 crew

From the end of October to the middle of November the multi-national EO-21 crew– Frank De Winne, Roman Romanenko, Robert Thirsk, Nicole Scott, Jeffrey Williams and Maxim Suraev continued their orbital vigil, wrote the late Neville Kidger in his “Orbital Operations” columns in Spaceflight magazine for January 2010 from which these notes are gleaned. Daily operations for the six included performance of the large programme of medical and science experiments, equipment maintenance and exercises to maintain the health of their bodies in the microgravity environment of earth orbit. The crew unloaded a newly arrived cargo ship and prepared another for departure whilst preparing for a the arrival of a new Russian module for complex. Williams and Thirsk prepared the Unity’s node’s port side docking unit for the arrival of the American Tranquility Node 3 on STS-130. Because that node was not original destined for the Unity port some “replumbing” was required. Tranquility was to provide a new berthing port as well as additional room for crew members. Attached to it would be the spectacular cupola, a unique work module with six windows on the sides and one on top. On 10th November the Russians launched Progress M-MRM2 (mini-research-module no 2) carrying the new “Poisk” or “Seek” module, an updated version of “Pirs” which was attached to Zvezda’s nadir port in September 2001. Poisk provided extra space for experiments, power-supply outlets and data transmission interfaces for upcoming scientific payloads from the Russian Academy of Sciences. In a (translated) blog Suraev bemoaned the fact that all equipment in Poisk was rigidly bolted in, requiring much work to release, unlike the practice of the other participating nations, “which make their cargo a cinch to unpack. I feel nothing has changed since the first spaceflight ever !”

STS-129 (launched 16.11.09)

Atlantis made and exceedingly successful visit to the ISS in mid-November, bringing heavy equipment and spare parts. The purpose of the “ULF-3” mission was to stock the ISS with nearly 30,000lbs of

replacement parts and components for its electrical plumbing, air conditioning, communications and robotics systems, carried in two large Express Logistics Carriers in the payload bay, making their first flight The first of three EVA’s, the 134th spacewalk devoted to ISS assembly and undertaken by Mike Foreman and Bobby Satcher, took place on Flight Day 4 (Nov 19) during which they installed a spare S-band antenna on Z1 truss, also making many preparations and technical adjustments for the arrival of Tranquility node. During a space walk performed by Randy Bresnik (and Foreman) news arrived of the birth of the former’s baby daughter Abigal Mae . The (now) seven astronauts spent their last full day in space on November 26th by celebrating with a special Thanks giving holiday feast courtesy of their ISSS colleagues. Nicole Scott departed from the resident crew and returned on Atlantis on 27th November, the shuttle carrying a special recumbent seat to ease her re-adaptation to gravity and her extended period weightlessness.

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STS-129 was the last of five very ambitious missions in 2009 and only five further flights remained until the shuttle era was scheduled to close. Atlantis’ last flight would be STS-132, then set for May 2010. The last weeks of the decade saw a number of comings and going following the departure of Atlantis, the landing of Soyuz TMA 15 and after a brief period when there were only two crew on the ISS the launch of TMA 17 carrying three new crew. As of midnight on 31 December 2009, Zarya, the first ISSS element launched in November 1998 had been in orbit for eleven years and 42 days. Since the Expedition 1 crew arrived on 2.11.2000 the station had been continuous inhabited for some 3,347 days. A few days after Atlantis / STS 129 returned to earth a skeleton crew of Jeff Williams and Maxim Suraev, comprising the basis of the EO-22 team, was all that was left on the station when Roman Romanenko, Frank De Winne and Robert Thirsk returned to earth on 1st December via Soyuz TMA 15, having spent 186 days on station.

Soyuz TMA 17 (launched 21.12.09) EO-22

Members of the new resident crew docked with the ISS on 22nd December, with the crew of veterans Russian Oleg Kotov, and Japanese Soichi Noguchi and rookie American Tim (T.J.) Creamer bringing up Christmas presents and a tree ! The first work of the new year was to prepare for a Russian segment spacewalk on 14th January during which Suraev and Kotov set up the Poisk MRM2 for the relocation of TMA 16. Later in the month Creamer and Williams used Canadarm2 to relocate PMA3 from the port side of Unity to the space facing side of Harmony, clearing the way for the installation of the Italian-built Tranquility node which would be delivered by Endeavour / STS-130. Recycling water problems continued, meaning the crew had to use water from storage bags to feed

the Oxygen Generation System and all the station’s other needs. Astronauts received a special software upload at the end of January—personal access to the internet and Creamer made first use of the new facility on 19th January when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account (@Astro_TJ) from the ISS. The Zvezda service module’s engines were fired on 28th January lifting the ISS’s orbit to a position where it could most easily rendezvous with Endeavour, but before that shuttle arrived Progress 36 was launched from Kazakhstan on 3rd February.

STS-130 (launched 8.2.10)

With the arrival of this flight and its large cargo elements the ISS was 98% complete (wrote ASSS member George Spiteri the new compiler of Spaceflight’s Orbital Operations columns) in the May 2010 issue. A few days earlier Progress M-04/36P had docked at the aft port of Zvezda carrying its routine cargo supplies and several special payloads for installation, its arrival meaning that for the first time there were four Russian Soyuz type craft docked to the station. Endeavour, carrying Tranquility and the hexagonal domed Cupola referenced in the mission patch shown on the above cover, arrived a day late having taken off at night on probably the last ever such occasion. The first EVA of the mission began early on 12th February when Tranquility was attached to the Unity module via Canadarm2 and locked in place with 16 remotely controlled bolts. Three days later the Cupola was moved from Tranquility’s forward port to its nadir (earth facing) side again using the robotic arm facility. In a further space walk on 17th February Behnken and Patrick removed insulation from the Cupola’s windows and Virts opened the shutters inside the facility whilst its internal outfitting continued. Two days later preparations were made for the shuttle’s departure but not before Zamka and Williams took part in a

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red-ribbon cutting ceremony to officially declare the Cupola open ! Williams told reporters that “the Cupola offers a unique opportunity for photography with wide angle lenses”. The ISS received another altitude boost of 3.5 miles from the eight thrusters of Progress M-04/36P on 20th February. A day later a main computer failure knocked out communications between the ISS and earth, but contact was quickly restored with one of the astronauts commenting laconically on Twitter about “a little excitement”. On 27th February the crew took photographs of Chile following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake, but from that height could see not detail of the destruction. On 3rd March the ISS programme recevied a boost when it was announced that it had won the prestigious Collier Trophy for 2009, previously awarded to Mercury 9 astronauts, the crew of Apollos 8 and 11 and the Surveyor Moon landing programme. On March 17 there was the obligatory change of command in which Jeff Williams passed over command of EO-23 to Oleg Kotov. Next day Williams and Suraev having spent 169 days (and 2,669 orbits) in space returned to earth via Soyuz TMA 16, landing in three foot of snow. (Williams thus became the fourth most experienced astronaut after Whitson, Foale and Fincke). The ISS reverted to a six person crew with arrival in early April of three additional crew members to complete Expedition 23. The other half of E0-23 was launched from Baikonur on 2nd April, when Russian rookies Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko along with American Tracey Caldwell Dyson headed for the ISS. Soyuz docked with the ISS on 4th April and a day later the next shuttle Discovery / STS 131 was launched.

Soyuz TMA 18 (launched 2.4.10) EO-23

STS-131 (launched 5.4.10)

Stunning images of the ISS cupola from exterior and interior

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The launch of Discovery brought the Leonardo MPLM with 17,000 lbs of cargo to the ISS. Amongst the items transferred from the MPLM were four experiment racks and a new astronaut bedroom. In a series of spacewalks an empty ammonia tank and a faulty rate gyroscope were replaced, the former task being very complicated and being tackled on a number of different EVAs. Inside the complex Yamazaki continued to coordinate the transfer of equipment and the newly arrived and very inexperienced Soyuz crew were being helped by the Kotov crew to familiarise themselves with the ISS. On 14th April the entire station and shuttle crews took part in a joint news conference and the next day two of the crew Kornienko (50) and Noguchi (45) celebrated their birthdays. Discovery undocked around midday on 17th April having spent over ten days docked with the ISS. After a day’s delay because of poor weather at KSC the shuttle landed on 20 April, the whole mission having lasted just over fifteen days. On April 22nd Progress M-03M/35P packed with discarded items was undocked from the complex and later de-orbited. By now several crew were well practised in Tweeting and Noguchi commented on his Twitter page “Progress spaceship undocking in the twilight. COOL!” The other Progress craft was then used to boost the station’s altitude in preparation for the next shuttle and Soyuz missions. On April 27th a new Progress M-05M/37P was launched from Baikonur (to dock on 1st May) and all crew members were involved in an emergency firedrill. During the approach of Progress Kotov had to take over manual control of the docking using the well rehearsed TORU system after the ferry failed to go into the correct attitude after thruster firings. Caldwell Dyson and later Creamer conducted scientific research with the IVGEN experiment, a prototype system for producing sterile water that could meet the needs of future medical treatment on long-duration mission. Progress M-04M/36P was discarded from the aft port of Zvezda on 10th May to be de-orbited on 1st July after engineers had conducted various system checks. Two days

later the Kotov crew undocked Soyuz TMA-127 from the Earth facing port of Zarya and just under half an hour later re-docked to aft end of Zvezda, in order to receive MRM-1. The station crew continued preparation for the 14th May launch of Atlantis / STS-132, the last planned flight of that shuttle, which first flew in October 1985 on STS 51-J, a secret DoD mission.

STS-132 (launched 14.5.10)

Atlantis docked to the ISS Harmony module in early afternoon of 16th May, commander Ken Ham commenting on arrival, “it’s bigger than I remember”. During the joint crew mission three EVA were conducted, to install a new Ku-band dish in order to improve communications, to replace batteries and in particular to install the Russian module Rassvet which was stored in the shuttle payload bay. (Rassvet, “the beautiful module” with a white dome-like end can be seen just above centre of this photo).

Crew commented on the immense oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico: “sad to see the beautiful sea is kind of tinted”. Atlantis left the ISS for the last time on 23rd

May and landed at KSC on 26th May after a flight lasting the best part of twelve days. The engines of Progress M-05M/37P were fired for around ten minutes on 26th May to lower the station’s orbit “to ensure perfect conditions for the re-entry of Soyuz”. Five days later Kotov handed over duties as Expedition commander to Skvortsov and during the first minutes of 2nd June the Kotov crew undocked. When they landed near the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan the crew’s mission had lasted 163 days. The remaining crew members now became part of E0-24 and would be doubled with the arrival of three new crew in mid-June, when Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin and two Americans Douglas Wheelock and Shannon Walker were due to arrive via Soyuz TMA-19.

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A Hello From A Hero by Bert van Eijck

My Dutch colleague John Beenen wrote a nice piece on my hero Yuri Gagarin in the last Orbit. He mentioned several countries and towns with monuments and statues depicting the First Human in Space. Here is some information about another one—in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) and to be precise in Karlovy Vary, also known as Karlsbad, a world famous Spa town. It was in November 1988 - 23 years ago already – that my wife Jet and I stayed in the capital Prague for a week and made sightseeing tours in the country, still under the Soviet Union regime. So we came in Karlsbad and were welcomed in the city centre by a huge statue of a giant man who greeted us with his right arm in a welcome gesture. This man turned out to be Yuri Gagarin, and very good looking too. (See picture of the statue below left). Gagarin-in-stone stands at the beginning of what is called Gagarin’s Colonnade, the latest of a series of majestic baroque colonnades, famous for walking tours. The statue is more than life-size and was raised in 1975 having been created by a local sculptor called Antonin Kuchar. It was placed near the main entrance of the newly Russian built spa center. (See photo of your author in front Gagarin-statue with spa building in the left background).

It happens that Gagarin spent only one day in Karlovy Vary. He accompanied female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who took a curative spa course in 1966 after her spaceflight. That day Gagarin wrote many autographs for his fans. Karlovy Vary is in Bohemian county, about 120 kilometres west of Prague and named after its founder emperor Charles IV, who reigned 600 years ago. Many great figures from the

world of royalty, science and arts came to the twelve curative thermal springs, emanating from depths of over 2000 metres and reaching temperatures of 41 to 72 degrees Celsius. Famous in Karlsbad too is the Becher Liqueur, produced from more than one hundred herbs. On this Czechoslavk tour we also visited the former mining village of Lidice. A horror scenario here took place on June 10, 1942 during World War II. The Nazis shot all the 173 men dead, transported the women to concentration camps, took the children to German families for re-education and destroyed all houses. This is one of the dramas that shocked the world. After the war Lidice was rebuilt as a symbol of protest against violence and war. In the town there is a Garden of Friendship with roses donated by visitors from all over the world. In 1972 a stamp for Lidice was issued to commemorate the horror of 30 years ago.

Space jokes and miscellaneous Passed on by John Beenen

Some Americans and Soviets were together on the Moon. The Americans were quite busy in collecting interesting stones. The Soviets however carried large amounts of a red paint out of their ship and started to paint the Moon red. The Americans were very astonished and called Houston Control for advice. However, they just ordered them not to worry and to go on with their work and pay no attention to the Soviets. When the Soviets finished their work they went back to the Earth. The Americans stayed behind and now got the order to paint with white paint and large letters ‘Coca Cola’ on the red background. After a thorough investigation the restaurant ‘Space’ has dropped their plans to open a restaurant on the planet Mars. They returned with the next results: …. Good location, good service possibilities, excellent food, but no atmosphere! A wife at a gas station saw a Spaceship landing just beside her. An alien descended and started to fuel. On the side of the ship the wife noticed the abbreviation U.F.O. She asked if it meant Unidentified Flying Object. ‘No’ said the stranger, ‘it means: Unleaded Fuel Only’. Two astronauts were hanging in a space ship around the earth. One has to carry out a space walk, the other stayed inside. At a certain moment the astronaut outside would enter again but he found the lock closed and knocked. No reaction. He knocked again, louder now. Again, no reaction. That’s why he now knocked as hard as he could. Then he heard a voice ‘Who’s there?’

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Mercury 13 from John Beenen Mercury 13 was not a secret American spaceflight, but a title of honour for 13 women pilots who where subjected to the same tests that the first astronauts of Mercury 7 had to endure. They were chosen by a former pilot Dr William Randolph Lovelace II at his own expense. Lovelace was assisted by the American keeper of several space records, Jacqueline Cochran, who was to present a major change of mind later on. Dr Randolph’s starting point was the fact that women certainly would qualify equal to men. In the early 1960’s and after a series of experiments with the pilot Jerrie Cobb, Lovelace selected 25 out of 31 appropriately experienced women of whom finally 13 stayed the course. All of them were to undergo the same three series of tests as their male counterparts and all passed the first series of tests involving body scans, reaction time measurements and exhaustion trials but also tests on their stomach : in short, the same tests as we know from Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Right Stuff’. The most important among them was Jerrie Cobb (1931) pictured here beside a Mercury capsule The others were: Myrtle Cage (1922), Jan Dietrich (1926-2008), Marion Dietrich (1926-1974), Wally Funk (1939), Sarah Gorelick (later Ratley) (1931), Janey Hart (née Briggs) (1920), Jean Hixon (1922-1984), Rhea Hurrle (later, Allison, later Woltman) (1928), Gene Nora Stumbaugh (later Jessen) (1937), Irene Leverton (1924), Jerri Sloan (née Hamilton, later Truhill) †, Bernice Steadman (née Trimble) (1923). Slight differences in their names occur across my sources. Some of the women candidates—Jerrie Cobb, Rhea Hurrie and Wally Funk—also successfully completed the second series of tests. However shortly before the third series it transpired that NASA did not support this programme and wanted only qualified, graduated jet test pilots. In those times women were not admitted therefore. Hence, the third series was cancelled and the ladies rejected. This was against the will of Janey Hart, who, via marriage with a Michigan senator had access to staff members in Washington. In 1962 she was therefore in a position to arrange a Congress hearing which happened two years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination of women illegal. In the course of this hearing their cooperation was opposed by representatives of NASA, some astronauts such as John Glenn and Scott Carpenter and, strangely enough also by the previously mentioned, Jacqueline Cochran. It is very likely that here personal interests played a decisive role as they used the curious argument that the participation of the women could endanger the American space programme. Not unusually on the internet a strange story suggests that Soviet commander Kamanin and cosmonaut Titov visited John Glenn on May 3rd 1962 and by then learned about the Lovelace 13 and became afraid that the Americans would be first with a woman in space and therefore pressed for the launch of Valentina Tereshkova.

Finally the problem was solved by President Lyndon Johnson who declared that all that nonsense had to stop. Thus the Americans knew they had the chance to put the first woman in space but discarded it, because of their attitude and the personal interests of the contestants. Hence, Soviet pilot Valentina Tereshkova became the first on June 16th 1963 . However, the Russians still are very reluctant to send further women into space. After Tereshkova only two followed: Svetlana Savitskaya, who flew on Soyuz T-7 in 1982 and Yelena Kondakova, the wife of cosmonaut Valeri Ryumin, (1957) on Soyuz TM-20 on October 4th in 1994. Savitskaya was also not without connections as she was the daughter of a high commander of the Soviet air force . After the Tereshkova flight the names of the original 13 American women were released, but it was not until 1978 that women were admitted to American spaceflight. The first were: Sally Ride (STS-7,13), Rhea Seddon (STS-16,40,58), Kathryn Sullivan (STS-13,31,45), Judith Resnik (STS-12, 25†), Anna Fisher (STS-14), and Shannon Lucid (STS-18,34,43,58,76 up), 79 (down). The first woman pilot of a spacecraft, Eileen Collins, flew in 1995 on STS-63 and also was the first female commander (of STS-114), in 2005.

At Collins’ request seven of the original Lovelace 13 were present at her launch. In the photo we have (l-r): Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Ratley, Myrtle Cage and Bernice Steadman. For their merits in the field of women’s rights on May 12th 2007 the then living would-be astronauts received honorary Doctorates from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Literature http://en.wikipedia.org http://www.thespacereview.com/article/869/1, 9-3-2000The Mercury 13: setting the story straight, James Oberg www.uwosh.edu/mercury13/ The history of Mercury 13 www.astronautix.com/astrogrp/mer31961.htm Mercury 13, 1961. (Photos of most of the women)http://space.about.com/od/spaceexplorationhistory/a/mercury13.htmFirst Lady Astronaut trainees (FLATs) www.nasa.gov.missions/highlights/f_mercury13.html Women who reach for the stars http://advan.physiology.org/cgi/reprint/33/3/157 Kathy Ryan, Jack E.Loeppke, Donal E.Kilgore Jr. A forgotten moment in physiology: The Lovelace Women in space program (1960-1962) Different biographies of most of the women

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Cover signed by Mercury 13 personnel Myrtle Cagle, Irene Leverton, Wally Funk and Gene

Nora Stumbough Jessen

Left a clearer image of their unofficial mission patch used

reproduced on cover

This attractive memorial cover sponsored by the Rubber City Stamp Club from Akron, OH isn't related to the Mercury 13 but was made to honour Judy Resnik, the second American woman in space who perished in the Challenger disaster in January 1986.

The items shown on the right were formerly in the Mercury 13 display before it was recently changed to the Jackie Cochran display (who was also involved with the Mercury 13), above left. It shows the wedding dress that was made out of a

parachute for Mercury 13's Myrtle Cagle. She never actually wore the dress as the man she was supposed to marry was killed in action.

Mercury 13 exhibit at the International Women's Air & Space Museum in Cleveland, OH where one theme is Mercury Women: Forgotten Link To The Future

Mercury 13 Exhibit at IWASM Ohio based ASSS member Marcy Frumker, who is the space adviser and a trustee for the museum

complements John’s article with some recent images.

For more information see www.iwasm.org

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The Naming of Craters

The Far Side of the

Moon

The first pictures of the far side were obtained in October 1959 by the Soviet Lunik 3 (aka Luna 3, marked first by SG 2385 shown right) which circumnavigated the moon and sent back rather blurred TV imagery. What earthlings then first saw was a barren side just as crater-scarred as the side we know so well. Later unmanned and manned flights have enabled detailed maps to be drawn up. It has only one major sea—making the far side quite different from the near side—the Mare Orientale, a vast multi-ringed structure, probably the youngest of all the lunar seas. (Adapted from commentary on page 46 of Philip’s Atlas of the Universe, where line drawing and table come from. Top photo from Dorling Kindersley Universe (2005)

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Some Far Side Crater Nominees Celebrated in Stamps

Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856) Italian chemist,

marked on Italy 1956

Enrico Fermi (1901-54) Italian-American physicist

marked on USA 2001

Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French scientist and polymath

marked on France 1952

Greek god Apollo marked on Greece

1968 Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) Scots Scientist

marked on Congo 1975

Yuri Gagarin marked on USSR 1976

Greek legendary figure Icarus marked on Aitutaki 1975

French sci-fi writer about the first men on the Moon

Jules Verne (1828-1905)

French chemist Frederic Joliot-Curie (1897-1956) on

East Germany 1980

Sergei Korolev marked on USSR 1986

Konstantin Tsiolkowski marked on Viet Nam 1986

Louis Pasteur (1822-95) French chemist on France 1938

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834—1907) Russian chemist on

Bulgaria 1984

Gregor Mendel (1822—1884) Austrian scientist on Austria 1984

H.G.Wells (1866-1946) English writer on Israel 2000

Max Planck (1858-1947) German physicist

on Berlin 1952

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Mercury 3 The first US manned spaceflight programme achieved its aim of establishing with a one-man vehicle that men (see pages 8 and 9!) could be sent into space and returned safely to Earth. Redstone rockets were used for the sub-orbital (MR) missions and Atlas rockets for the orbital (MA) missions. The bell shape was determined primarily because of heating conditions during re-entry. Limited launch capability at that time—Redstone’s thrust was only 347 kN (35,380 kg)- necessitated a design barely large enough for the astronaut and essential equipment. Mercury was originally designed so that (as with the Soviet Vostoks) control could be exercised entirely from the ground but the astronauts were soon demonstrating that there were time when only the on-board pilot could save the mission from failure. The total cost of Project Mercury was just under $400M (approx. £170M at the time). The Americans must have been stunned by Gagarin’s flight, in particular in that Soviets appeared to have by-passed their own cautious approach to putting a man in space by practising some ballistic flights first. (We have to say “appeared” because of the continued secrecy about the early days of the Soviet manned space flight programmes).

MR3 : May 5th 1961

The first American manned spaceflight was sub-orbital ; that is, pilot Alan Shepard was thrown up into space and back again in a ballistic trajectory. The Mercury Redstone rocket pushed the 4,265lbs craft to a speed of 5,180 miles per hour and an altitude of 116.5 miles. Shepard’s capsule, which he

named Freedom 7—the number 7 was used on these first capsules by Mercury astronauts referring to the original group of seven—landed in the Atlantic Ocean 302 miles from Cape Canaveral, taking just over fifteen minutes. Shepard experienced 6G during accelerations and 11G on re-entry. A recovery helicopter that watched Freedom 7 for five minutes of its descent now came overhead and hooked a cable to the top of the spacecraft. The helicopter crew was in radio communications with Shepard. The astronaut indicated he would release the spacecraft hatch when it cleared the water. The helicopter pulled the spacecraft a couple of feet higher in the water and Shepard released the hatch. A sling was lowered to the astronaut and he was lifted into the helicopter. Both Shepard and the Freedom 7 were then flown to the deck of the nearby recovery carrier, the USS Lake Champlain. They were on board the carrier 11 minutes after landing in the water. The astronaut and spacecraft came through the flight in fine shape. (This parag ex Wikipedia).

Most of the above beautifully lucid and crisp summary (and that on page 22) is adapted from text written by former BBC science journalist Reg Turnill for his Observer’s series of space books. (Warne 1972). Your editor is in regular contact with Reg who, aged 96 (right), is still going strong and is currently campaigning for further democratisation of the British Interplanetary Society.

Lift-off at 9.34. EST 5.5.61

Splash down occurred at 9.49 EST after which recovery teams from the USS Lake

Champlain went into action.

Above postcard with photos (l-r)

of Grissom, Glenn and Shepard bearing 1962 Togo stamps celebrating Shepard’s

achievement.

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Apollo XV Remembered

Commander - David Randolph Scott (born 6 June 1932). Scott was born on Randolph Air Force Base (hence his middle name) near San Antonio, Texas and was an active Boy Scout where he received its second highest rank, Life Scout. He was educated at Texas Military Institute, Riverside Polytech High School in Riverside, California, where he joined the swim team and set several state and local swim records. Scott attended The Western High School in Washington, D.C. graduating in June 1949. In DC he was an honor student, on the school swim team and the Ambassador hotel AAU champion team as a record setter. He attended the University of Michigan for one year where he was an honor student in the Engineering school, a member of the swimming team before finally receiving an invitation to attend West Point where he finished 5th in his class of 633 in 1954. Because of his high standing in the class, he was able to choose which branch of the military he would serve. Scott choose the Air Force because he wanted to fly jets. He received both an S.M. degree in Aeronautics/Astronautics and the degree of Engineer in Aeronautics/Astronautics (the E.A.A. degree) from MIT in 1962. He also received an honorary doctorate of Astronautical Science from the University of Michigan in 1971. Scott was the one the Group Three astronauts selected in October 1963. He was the first of the group to be selected to fly and was also the first to command a mission of his own. Before the Apollo 15 mission, he flew with Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8 and was Command Module Pilot on Apollo 9. He was the backup spacecraft commander for Apollo 12. On 18 April 1975, at age 42, Scott became the Center Director of NASA's Flight Research Center, a position he held until October 30, 1977. After he left NASA, he commentated for British TV on the first Space Shuttle flight (STS-1) in April 1981. He also consulted on the movie Apollo 13 for Ron Howard and was on the set for much of the filming of the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, where he advised both Tom Hanks and the various directors, as well as answered questions from the actors on set. In 2000 he was briefly engaged to British television newscaster Anna Ford. In 2003-2004 he consulted on the BBC TV series Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets. In 2004, he and former Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov began work on a dual biography / history of the "Space Race" between the United States and the Soviet Union. The book, "Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race" was published in 2006. Neil Armstrong and Tom Hanks both wrote introductions to the book. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Margaret "Mag" Black-Scott, an executive for Morgan Stanley.

Command Module Pilot - Alfred Merrill Worden (born 7 February 1932).

The son of Merrill and Helen Worden, he was born in Jackson, Michigan and attended Dibble, Griswold, Bloomfield and East Jackson grade schools and completed his secondary education at Jackson High School. He received a bachelor of military science degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point,

New York, in 1955 and master of science degrees in Astronautical/Aeronautical Engineering and Instrumentation Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1963. He also received an honorary doctorate of science in Astronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1971. Worden graduated from the United States Military Academy in June 1955 and, after being commissioned in the Air Force, received flight training at Moore Air Force Base, Texas; Laredo Air Force Base, Texas; and Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. Prior to his arrival for duty at the Johnson Space Center, he served as an instructor at the Aerospace Research Pilots School—from which he graduated in September 1965. He is also a February 1965 graduate of the Empire Test Pilots' School in Farnborough, England. He attended Randolph Air Force Base Instrument Pilots Instructor School in 1963 and served as a pilot and armament officer from March 1957 to May 1961 with the 95th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. He has logged more than 4,000 hours flying time—which includes 2,500 hours in jets. Worden was one of the 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He served as a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 9 flight and as backup command module pilot for the Apollo 12 flight. During 1972-1973, he was Senior Aerospace Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, and from 1973 to 1975, he was chief of the Systems Study Division at Ames. Between 1972 and 1975, he made seven guest appearances on Mister Roger's Neighborhood. After retirement from active duty in 1975, Worden became President of Maris Worden Aerospace, Inc., and then became Staff Vice-president of BG Goodrich Aerospace Brecksville, Ohio. Worden is currently the Chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, providing scholarships to exceptional science and engineering students. He is married to Jill Lee (Hotchkiss) and has three children. His recreational interests include bowling, water skiing, golf and racquet ball.

Lunar Module Pilot - James Benson Irwin (17 March 1930 - 8 August 1991). Irwin's grandparents emigrated to the USA from Altmore Parish at Pomeroy in County Tyrone around 1859. Irwin himself was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1947 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in naval science from the United States Naval Academy in 1951 and a Master of Science in aeronautical engineering and instrumentation engineering from the University of Michigan in 1957. He received his flight training at Hondo Air Base and Reese Air Force Base, Texas. He graduated from the Air Force Experimental Test Pilot School in 1961 and the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School in 1963. Prior to joining NASA, he was Chief of the Advanced Requirements Branch at Headquarters Air Defense Command. Ten years prior to his Apollo mission, his plane crashed on a routine training mission: a student pilot he was training crashed the plane they were flying. They both survived, but Irwin suffered compound fractures, amnesia, and nearly lost a leg. Dr. John Forrest, an U.S. Air Force orthopedic surgeon, was instrumental in preventing the amputation of Irwin's leg. Irwin was one of the 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He also served as a member of the astronaut support crew for Apollo 10, the first mission to carry the full Apollo stack to the moon, and was the dry run for the first manned moon landing. He then served as backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 12. Beyond his achievements as an astronaut with NASA, Irwin is perhaps most notable for his Christian work. He left NASA and

Concluded on page 16

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retired from the Air Force with the rank of colonel in 1972 and founded High Flight. He frequently commented about how his experiences in space had made the presence of God even more real to him than before. Beginning in 1973, he led several expeditions to Mount Ararat, Turkey in search of the remains of Noah's Ark. His expeditions failed to find any sign of the Ark. In 1982, he was injured during the descent and had to be transported down the mountain on a horse and then to the nearest hospital by Lieutenant Orhan Baser and his commando team. Irwin suffered a serious heart attack near his home in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He died on 8 August 1991 as the result of a subsequent heart attack in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He is survived by his wife Mary Ellen and their five children.

Apollo 15 Curios Above, a cover from Ken Woods bearing a 2007 GB Scouts stamp relating to David Scott’s achievements as a youth. Right, facsimile of signed cover which was carried to the moon on this expedition.

1993 mini-sheet from San Marino which wrongly uses a photo from the Apollo 15 expedition in claiming it portrays the first Moon Landing. See stamp from

Chad on page 15 which shows the Apollo 15 photo before it was doctored.

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Ancient & Modern

How mythological allusion has inspired naming conventions within our fields of interest:

3: Space Probes, Projects and Programmes

A

The name of the American Moon landing programme, whose hardware was used up to ASTP cooperation (i.e. from 1967— 1975) was taken from one of the few classical characters whose name is the same in both Greek and Latin. Apollo was the offspring of Zeus and Leto and had a very wide remit, being charge of such aspects of daily life as music, prophecy, archery, poetry and dance but had a major

role as the god of light in which case he was known as “Phoebus Apollo” sometimes conflated with Helios, the sun god, who rode from the East across the skies to the West each day, as depicted in France 1946 (left). The “ll” occurring in his name

was perhaps a happenstance for the greatest triumph of the project—the first moon landing of Apollo ll. Atlas was the name given to the first American rockets which put men in space. According to Mark Wade’s on-line Encyclopaedia Astronautica… “The Atlas rocket, originally developed as America's first ICBM, was the basis for most early American space exploration and was that country's most successful medium-lift commercial launch vehicle. It launched America's first astronaut into orbit; the first generations of spy satellites; the first lunar orbiters and landers; the first probes to Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn; and was America's most successful commercial launcher of communications satellites. Its innovative stage-and-a-half and 'balloon tank' design provided the best dry-mass fraction of any launch vehicle ever built. It was retired in 2004 after 576 launches in a 47-year career”

In Greek mythology, Atlas—usually depicted as a man carrying a globe as on Greece 1970 above right—was sired by the Titans and was the father of the Hesperides, the Hyades

and the Pleiades. He also features in one of the twelve labours of Heracles.

Aquarius was the name given to the lunar module of the ill-fated Apollo 13 expedition (right Maldives 1970), which became the “life-boat” on the perilous return journey when the rest of the spacecraft was vacated until the re-entry phase. No doubt named after the zodiacal sign and constellation, Aquarius represents Ganymede the

handsome youth abducted by Zeus and forced to become his water carrier on Mt Olympus.

(Greece 2007).

Aphrodite, the goddess of love, (shown on Cyprus 1979 rising from the foam) seems a heavily ironic name for a deadly US military project. Mark Wade explains that it was an..

“American intermediate range cruise missile. In July 1944, the USAAF implemented the idea to convert "war-weary" B-17 Flying Fortress bombers to radio-controlled assault drones. About 25 B-17s, mostly B-17F, were converted to BQ-7 configuration under program Aphrodite. The BQ-7 was to be flown from Great Britain against very hardened or heavily defended German targets - submarine pens or V-1 missile sites”.

The French modern workhorse Ariane rocket system (France 1995) is

named after the Greek heroine Ariadne, daughter of King Minos who aided Theseus in defeating the minotaur, and who is shown on the left of the above 2009 Greek issue, as Theseus disposes of the monster.

Greece 1970

John Glenn aboard

Friendship 7 is launched into space via an Atlas LV-3B

rocket T&C 1977

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“The Athena I, known as the Lockheed Launch Vehicle (LLV) at the time of its first flight and Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle (LMLV) at the time of its second flight, is an American small expendable launch system which was used for four launches between 1995 and 2001, and which is scheduled to return to service in 2012. It is a member of the Athena family of rockets, along with the larger Athena II. Launches from 2012 will use the Athena Ic configuration, which features a

different second stage”. (Wikipedia)

Athena (aka Athene, or Pallas or Pallas Athena) was the Greek goddess of industry, wisdom, war, the arts, justice and skill. She is shown on many stamps relating to Greek legend always in a martial pose or guise. Shown here is Greece 1935.

C and D

Castor is the name given to a family of sold-fuel rocket stages and boosters built by US firm Thiokol for a number of NASA launch vehicles from the 1960 to the present day, for example the Scout rocket. Castor 4 elements have been used as strap-ons on Delta II, Atlas IIAS and Athena launch vehicles.

In Greek mythology Castor along with twin brother Polydeuces (Pollux to the Romans) comprised the Dioskouroi, (shown on Greece 2007), the sons of Leda though with different fathers. They of course also constitute the constellation of

Gemini.

The term Centaur has been used also for a series of American rocket stages and for a US “space tug” which for example as Centaur I had eighteen launches between 1984

and 1997, being launched on Atlas 1 rockets.

This choice of mythological reference is better than most as centaurs were believed to be half-man, half horse and as such very useful both in war and peace. One of the most famous centaurs was Nessus killed by Heracles in revenge for ravishing his wife. A centaur is shown left on France 1946.

Cygnus gives its name a series of solid fuel rocket engines by Thiokol, e.g. Cygnus 5, 15 and 20 and currently to a new unmanned resupply spacecraft being developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation and Thales Alenia Space as part of NASA's COTS project. It is designed to transport supplies to the International Space Station, post shuttle.

One mythological account of the birth of Helen of Troy was that the great god Zeus impregnated her mother Nemesis disguised as a swan and then when the egg hatched he commemorated her birth by creating the beautiful constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), shown here on Seychelles 1984.

Naming a space vehicle after a large awesome object out of which flames shoot is quite appropriate and Draco and Dragon of course both relate to the same type of mythological monster, (shown here

on GB 2009) the former term being the Latin for the latter. Dragon was the name given to a 1960’s French two stage sounding rocket, spin stabilised by small rocket engines on the four fins. Today the term Dragon is that of a projected American commercial (Bigelow) space capsule developed by SpaceX as a cargo shuttle for the ISS. The most likely explanation for the widespread belief in such fictional creatures is the pre-science confusion and lack of comprehension when dinosaur bones were found. (Dinosaurs and modern humans missed each other by some 65 million years, but that was not clear to scientists until Victorian times). There were various types of dragon, such as wyvern, drake, worm, hydra and amphiptere depending on their attributes and number of legs or wings. (GB 1991 shown here)

The most famous dragon in mythology was the one slain by Saint George, apparently a real person who lived in Lydda (aka Lod) near modern day Tel Aviv in the Third Century A.D. but

whose true story was conflated later with the classical legend of Perseus and Andromeda. (GB 1951 shown here) The dragon killed by Saint George / Perseus most unusually had no name, but many others in mythology are known. For example, Heracles killed the Hydra and Geryon, whilst in Norse mythology Sigurd (aka Siegrfried in the Wagnerian version of the saga) killed Fafnir and the god Thor disposed of the Midgard serpent The American single-pilot reusable manned spaceplane Dynasoar project cancelled in 1963, punned on the term dinosaur, but was also a blend of “Dynamic Soarer”.

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E to H

Europa was the name given to Europe's first space launcher (1966—71). The first stage was a British Blue Streak IRBM, the second stage the French Coralie, and the third stage the German Astris. All orbital launch attempts failed due to unreliability of the third stage. The project was cancelled after withdrawal of British support and replaced by the Ariane. The launcher was named in honour of the continent on which the project originated, in turn named after Princess Europa, daughter of Agenor, Phoenician King of Tyre who lived roughly 2000 B.C. Europa was coveted by Zeus who in order

to seduce her took the form of a beautiful white bull, who coaxed the princess to climb on his back before swimming off with her across the sea to Crete, as shown on Lebanon 1948

Excalibur was an American sea-launched orbital vehicle, a subscale version of Sea Dragon proposed by Truax Engineering in the 1990's and named after the famous sword in British Arthurian legend, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain. The sword shown here on GB 1985 was cast on the orders of wounded King Arthur into the enchanted lake by Sir Bedivere and then held aloft by The Lady of the Lake.

Freja was a Swedish earth magnetosphere satellite launched twice in 1992. Freja was designed to image the aurora and measure particles and fields in the upper ionosphere and lower magnetosphere, celebrated by Sweden in one of three stamps within its 1991 Europa issue.

In Norse mythology Freja (Freya) is a goddess of love and fertility, the most beautiful of all the divinities. Patron of crops and birth she also loves music, spring and flowers and is often portrayed on her chariot being pulled by cats as on this 1981 Swedish issue.

Gaia is am ESA astrometry space mission, and a successor to the ESA Hipparcos mission. It was included within the context of the ESA Horizon 2000 Plus long-term scientific programme in 2000. Arianespace expects to launch Gaia for the ESA in March 2013, using a Soyuz rocket. It will be operated in a Lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point.

In Greek mythology Gaia was known as Earth or Mother Earth, born from Chaos and mother of Pontus (the Sea) and Uranus (the Sky), whom she took as her husband. This 1981 issue from Berlin depicts a modern sculpture of the goddess.

Gemini was the name given to the first two pilot spacecraft launched ten times by NASA in the mid 1960’s following its success with the Mercury series.

In mythology Gemini became a constellation named after the twin brothers also known as the Dioskouroi, who were sons of Leda by different fathers, one of them being Zeus. They are also known as Polydeuces and Castor and Pollux. Shown below are Bulgaria 1967 and Romania 2002.

Helios was American nuclear-powered orbital launch vehicle. It was a study by Kraft Ehricke of a vehicle where the booster stage contains liquid oxygen tanks only and takes the nuclear second stage to the stratosphere. The nuclear sustainer then takes the payload to orbit or escape trajectory. Two other French (mid to late 1990’s) and German (mid-1970’s) satellites also used the name

Helios takes its name from the Greek sun-god, often conflated with Phoebus Apollo, who rode his chariot across the sky every day, as suggested on this 1991 Greek issue.

The name Hermes (named after the Greek messenger of the gods) was given to a major US Army project to implement German rocket technology after World War II. Development started in 1944 with award to General Electric as the prime contractor. The program was cancelled in 1954 after $ 96.4 million had been spent. However the name has been more recently associated with the cancelled ESA mini-shuttle designed to service the ISS. Shown here Italy 1991 and France 1942.

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Fallen Idol The Yuri Gagarin conspiracy

John Beenen reviews a flawed DVD

documentary From one of my former articles you may know that I don’t believe in conspiracy theories around Apollo 11 and Yuri Gagarin. Hence, I approached this DVD with a very sceptical mind. But let me start with a positive remark. The DVD is made very professionally and also for a non-believer as myself there is much to enjoy. It contains very much authentic material and especially the wider setting in which many well-known photos have been taken is very interesting. The DVD itself deals especially with the fact that Yuri Gagarin was not the first cosmonaut, but that a couple of days before he may have been preceded by Vladimir Ilyushin, the son of the well-known designer of Soviet aircraft and himself an esteemed pilot with many aircraft records and a Hero of the Soviet Union. From my article about phantom Soviet cosmonauts you could take that I support the opinion that Gagarin was not the first cosmonaut at all and that, nothwithstanding Ilyushin, he has been preceded by at least three others who all unfortunately died in space. The DVD mentions Gagarin as the second after Ilyushin whose flight, however, was not successful. Ilyushin is alleged to have faced many problems in flight and thus, had made three revolutions in stead of one. At the emergency landing somewhere in China he may well have suffered major injuries, but he reappeared in Moscow after 11 months. Some years older he is shown in the DVD at several places obviously unhurt. The fact is that the Chinese and Soviet relations were rather bad that time, April 1961, and that, when he had landed in China, he might have been taken into custody for a longer time then. It’s almost certain that the Chinese would have been eager to investigate his spacecraft return capsule. According to the Soviet government his stay in China was explained as the result of a serious car accident which could not be treated in the Soviet Union and that he was sent to China to recover. Within the view of the political relations that time this explanation is rather unlikely. The Soviets would never have admitted that within the field of medical care they could not cure somebody. It only could have happened when this was a part of a good will action to improve their relations and that was possibly just the case.

Anyhow, the emergency landing is established nowhere. According to the DVD the fact of the flight is supported by the observation of a spacecraft some days before Gagarin by an American tracking station at Tern Island in the Pacific at the right time and frequency. They should have picked up a voice in distress. The only problem is that the observer ‘for safety reasons’ was not disclosed, so that it is just hearsay. And then there is the article by Dennis Ogden of The Daily Worker, two days before Gagarin’s flight. In the interviews taken up in the DVD he sticks to his story and there is no reason not to believe him. Another person interviewed, Gordon Feller, claims to have seen documents in the Soviet

archives confirming Ilyushin's flight, but he never shows up with written evidence. Still, the DVD presents very conclusive proof that the flight of Ilyushin preceded that of Gagarin. But there are also many arguments against the flight of Ilyushin, recapitulated at www.astronautix.com. From these arguments it becomes clear that Ilyushin never flew in space. The strongest argument against the flight, however, is not a direct one: even after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 amongst all unknown material revealed there came not a glimpse of evidence or picture of a flight of Ilyushin or him being part of the first cosmonaut group. And it is known which training the cosmonauts would have stood. On the other hand the Soviet leadership sometimes made

very personal choices such as for example in the case of Tereshkova. But I would invite all readers to read the very interesting article in ‘Astronautix’. It gives a good counterweight against the contents of the DVD, which is also mentioned in ‘Astronautix’. Myself, as I am not completely convinced by the story in the DVD I’d like to stick to the conclusions of ‘Astronautix’. The end the DVD mentions also the sad decease of Vladimir Komarov in Soyuz 1, but their comments are in line with what is already known; on behalf of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Komarov was sent into space with an unfinished, crippled spaceship. That he still managed to regain control of this ship was an achievement not to be underestimated. At the end unfortunately also the deployment of his parachutes failed. It was the pitiful end of a flight which should not have been executed at that time. The Soviet leadership has to take the blame for this accident Concerning the DVD, it contains beautiful stuff for everybody who is interested in spacecraft and the early history of manned spaceflight, but keep your mind open and consult also other sources of information.

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Soviets recovered an Apollo capsule

I feel few readers knows this, but when I surfed the net I found an interesting article in www.astronautix.com/articles/sovpsule.htm and other places from which it became clear that in 1970 the Soviets recovered an Apollo capsule from test flight BRP-1227 from the Bay of Biscay. On www.collectspace.com some credible comments are made. This is the story: early 1970, late 1969 the crew of the American ice-breaker Southwind practised a recovery of an Apollo capsule (BP-1227) as part of a possible rescue mission for Apollo 9. Under undisclosed circumstances the capsule disappeared under water. In their vicinity sailed a Soviet trailer or perhaps it an spy ship ? After this event the ice-breaker sailed north for the Barents and Kara Seas, was stuck in the ice for a long time and after that, in September 1970, made for the Soviet harbour of Murmansk. To their immense surprise in that harbour the Americans observed the capsule that they had lost about a year before. The capsule had been recovered by an Hungarian fisheries ship. As part of the Nixon-Kissinger-Brezhnev détente doctrine and in the presence of the Hungarian press the capsule was presented to the American crew with some ceremonial. After that the Southwind left Murmansk for the Kara Sea followed by the Soviet ice-breaker Vladimir, which (on purpose?) even rammed them. Finally they reached Portsmouth, where the capsule probably was unshipped. Today the capsule is part of the collection of the American National Air and Space Museum and until 2070 has been lent out to the town of Grand Rapids. Strangely enough for 32 years the story was largely ignored until an Hungarian space archivist, Nador Schuminszky found it in his papers.

Garn scale You’ve heard of the Richter scale of course….From 12th-19th April, 1985 the American Republican senator for Utah, Jake Garn (1932), member of Congress flew with STS-51D. He had the idea that he had the right to fly with a mission, because he was co-responsible for the NASA budget. He had only himself to blame for the rotten time he had. Relatively untrained he suffered the whole flight from the most severe form of space sickness you may think of. It had been that heavy that the astronauts, by way of a joke or a settlement developed the ‘Garn Scale’. Normally this scale runs from 1 (slightly indisposed) to 10 (heavy vomiting). Garn got the value of 13. (Garn is shown back right of crew photo). Adaptation problems to zero gravity, SAS or Space Adaption Syndrome, are quite common : about 80% of all astronauts will get it for a while, but normally not more than to a level of 10% of the Garn suffering. Some training helps, medicines against it only are used when the fear exists that by the wearing of pressure suits there is a danger of spraying vomit around into the environment. The first one who mentioned this disease was the Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov from Vostok 2. Also Frank Borman (Apollo 8) and Russell Schweickart (Apollo 9) are known that for a certain period to have suffered from this sickness. Also Robert Springer (STS-29), Walter Schirra, Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, Don Eisele and Owen Garriott were not free from this syndrome. Normally such adaptation problems, comparable to air and sea sickness, do not last for more than two to four days. In the Mercury and Gemini flights this problem did not occur muich because the astronauts for the greater period were largely stationary. The problems started with the longer flights where astronauts had more opportunity to move around. John Beenen

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Mercury 4 MR4 : July 21

1961

“Gus” Grissom admitted the he was “a bit scared” at lift-off on the second suborbital mission. He was weightless for five minutes 18 seconds of the 15.5 minute flight, reaching an altitude of 118 miles and he endured 11G on re-entry. Recovery did not go accord to plan. The new explosive hatch cover, incorporated for quick rescue of an injured astronaut

blew off after Grissom had removed the pin from the detonator and was awaiting the arrival of helicopter. Liberty Bell began shipping water so Grissom hurriedly climbed out and swam way. Recovery efforts failed to prevent the spacecraft sinking in 15,000 feet of water but a rather water logged Grissom was hauled into the helicopter little worse for his experience.

(Further detail from Wikipedia) After logging the panel data, Grissom asked the helicopters to begin the approach for pickup. He removed the pin from the hatch-cover detonator and lay back in the couch. "I was lying there, minding my own business," he said afterward, "when I heard a dull thud." The hatch cover blew away, and salt water swished into the spacecraft as it bobbed in the ocean. The third man to return from space was faced with the first serious emergency; Liberty Bell 7 was taking on water and sinking fast.

Grissom had difficulty recollecting his actions at this point, but he was certain that he had not touched the hatch-activation plunger. He removed his helmet, grasped the instrument panel with his right hand, and climbed out of the sloshing hatchway. Floating in the sea, he was thankful that he had unbuckled himself earlier from most of his harness, including the chest restraints, otherwise he might not have been able to exit.

Substantial controversy ensued as Grissom reported that the hatch had blown prematurely without his authorization. Engineering teams believed that this was unlikely. Subsequent independent technical review of the incident raised doubts regarding the incident report's conclusions that Grissom blew the hatch and was responsible for the loss of the spacecraft. There is strong evidence that the Astronaut Office didn't accept Grissom's guilt in the fact that he was maintained in the prime rotation spot for future flights,

commanding the first Gemini flight and the first planned Apollo flight.

Two Mercury flights later, Astronaut Wally Schirra manually blew Sigma 7's hatch after recovery when his spacecraft was on the deck of the recovery ship, in a deliberate attempt to dispel the rumour that Grissom might have blown Liberty Bell 7's hatch deliberately. As anticipated, the kickback from the manual trigger left Schirra with a visible injury to his right hand. Grissom was uninjured when he exited the spacecraft, as documented by his postflight physical. This strongly supports his assertion that he did not "accidentally" hit the trigger, since in that case he would have been even more likely to injure himself than with intentional activation.

Several years later, during an interview on April 12, 1965, Grissom said he thought the hatch may have been triggered because the external release lanyard came loose. On Liberty Bell 7, the external release lanyard was only held in place by a single screw. It was better secured on later flights. On July 20, 1999, the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing and one day shy of the 38th anniversary of Mercury 4's suborbital flight, a team led by Curt Newport and financed by the Discovery Channel, Oceaneering International, Inc. lifted the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft off the floor of the Atlantic ocean and onto the deck of a recovery ship. The spacecraft was found after a 14-year effort by Newport and his team at a depth of nearly 15,000 ft (4.5 km), 300 Nm (550 km) southeast of Cape Canaveral and was in surprisingly good condition

The planned similar MR5 and 6 flights were cancelled as unnecessary but Mercury 5 on 29th November carried Enos the chimpanzee for two orbits.

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How Romania Has Celebrated Spaceflight Part Two

(Part One in our January edition covered issues from 1957—1972)

Romania’s first space related issue of 1973 related to its participation in the international celebration of the 500th birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus, with SG 3985 of 19.2.73 featuring a portrait of the great Polish revolutionary thinker and the se-tenant label celebrating the Poznan Philatelic Exhibition. In June 100 years of the World Meteorological Organisation were marked with SG 4002 (15.6.73) depicting the WMO logo and a weather satellite. In Spring 1974 Inter-European Cultural and Economic Cooperation included a stamp showing the D-2/Signe-3 satellite in orbit, with a se-tenant partner showing a stylised map of Europe. (SG 4072/3 of 25.4.73).

The following month, 100 years of the Universal Postal Union were marked with a mini-sheet with the image of a Saturn 5 rocket taking off in the top right margin: SG MS 4081 (15.5.74)

On 15.6.61 a mini-sheet for Munich 1974 Football World Cup shows a Syncom 3 satellite circling the globe, top right of MS4088 of 15.6.74.

The American Skylab project which used up Apollo hardware is then given the same treatment as most of the Moon landings had been with two mini-sheet of stamps and labels : MS 4119 (?) of 16.12.74.

Note that the design of the stamp within the smaller mini-sheet faithfully shows that one of the solar panels failed to open when the lab reached orbit, a fact which many stamps tactfully disguise or ignore having been printed before launch.

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Two issues for the 1976 Olympic Games held at Montreal feature comsats in the design of their margins, acknowledging their means of worldwide transmission of the various activities. SG MS 4230 of 25.6.76 shows Intelsat 4 in the top left margin and SG MS 4248 of 20.10.76 shows the same satellite within the design of the imperf stamp.

After one design in early 1977 for telecommunications showing a satellite receiving dish at Cheia (SG 4277 of 1.2.77), two mini-sheets for the Argentina World Football Cup in 1978 show Intelsat 4 again much as they did for the Olympic Games issues above and Intelsat 5 is featured in an 1979 issue for the forthcoming Olympics to be held in Moscow the following year : SG MS 4376 15.4.78 (two minisheets) above right and SG MS 4495 23.10.79 (not shown). Intelsat 4B appears on the mini-sheet for the Lake Placid Winter Olympics (SG MS 4534 of 27.1279) with Intelsat 5 shown again on the mini-sheet for the 1980 Olympic Games MS 4592 (20.6.80).

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Manned spaceflight is once again celebrated with the 1981 issues for the Romanian Intercosmos flight to Salyut 6 on SG 4635/6 and MS 4637 of 14.5.81, shown here on a cover signed by guest cosmonaut Dumitru Prunariu.

In the following month the forthcoming unique alignment of planets in the solar system is marked with a very colourful set and mini-sheet: SG 4638/43 + MS 4644.

The 1982 Football World Cup receives the by now routine treatment with a mini-sheet including a image of a comsat (Intelsat 5) : SG MS 4682 of 28.12.81 (not shown). At the start of 1983, twenty five years of space exploration is celebrated with an issue showing American and Soviet contributions and references to Romanian input with images of Henry Coanda (their aerodynamics pioneer and spacecraft design) and Hermann Oberth (physicist and spacecraft pioneer, who was born in territory which is now part of Romania) : SG 4769/74 + MS 4775 (not shown) .

A 28.1287 issue for the Calgary Winter Olympics again shows Intelsat in the usual way (not shown). On 27.4.88 in the InterEuropa theme is covered with two mini-sheets of four stamps, one of which shows the ECS European satellite and another the Cheia satellite dish displays: SG MS 5179, cropped versions of which are shown here :

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On 28.6.88 and 1.9.88 the Seoul Olympic Games are given the now well established treatment with small images of Intelsat 5. (SG MS 5194 (?)) (Not shown). The 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 is marked in an original way with six stamps issued on 25.10.89 (SG 5259/64) showing aerospace pioneers : Conrad Haas (a medieval military engineer, who built a multi-stage rocket), Tsiolkowski, Oberth, Goddard and Korolev with one stamp depicting von Braun and a LEM. An accompanying mini-sheet shows Apollo 11 on the Moon.

The World Football Cup in Italy is marked with issues on 19.3.90 and 7.5.90—guess how ?!

The 1992 Europa theme of Space is marked with a stamp showing EUTELSAT : SG 5334 of 10.5.91 Then the Albertville Winter Olympic Games have two min-sheets devoted to them this time showing Intelsat 6 on 1.2.92. (One of two shown below).

As are the 1992 Barcelona Olympics...SG MS 5454 of 17.7.92. Expo 92, held at Seville is marked with an issue on 1.9.92 showing a three stage rocket designed by Hermann Oberth, though his name is misspelt in the text. (SG 5463 within set of six) Oberth and Henri Coanda are shown together in the 1994 Europa issue whose theme is Inventions: SG MS 5614 of 25.5.94 shown top of next page, where you also see the Columbus lab and the aborted Hermes mini-shuttle and another aeronautical concept (the U.S.-German Rockwell-Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm X-31) which did not come to full fruition, though two protoypes were built in 1990, one of which still survives, the other having crashed .

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The Football World Cup held in the USA in 1994 (SG MS 5631 of 17.6.94) and the Atlanta 1996 Olympics (1st issue SG MS 5789 of 8.12.95) are honoured in the usual way with a small picture of Intelsat included in their designs. In the Spring of 1996 comes the next major space issue, this time associated with the ESPAMER (Spanish-Latin , American and Aviation & Space) exhibition of 1996 which features the first Romanian cosmonaut Dimitru Prunariu, who had gone into space 15 years before. The specimen of MS 5809 (22.4.96) shown below has been overprinted for the 25th anniv of Pruniariu’s flight, so there must have been a large print run !

Romania marked Aeromfila 97 Stamp Exhibition held at Brazov with overprinted copies of their 1991 Europa space issue (see top of page 26): SG 5907 of 27.9.97 + “1050 L. AEROMFILA’97 Brasov” in red. Towards the end of 1998 the total solar eclipse scheduled for 11th August 1999 was anticipated firstly with SG 5990 of 17.12.98 and then with SG 6050 of 21.6.99 before an issue much closer to the day of the phenomenon marking the concert starring Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti held to celebrate it: SG 6055 of 9.8.99, the second and third of which are illustrated above right.

The new Millennium is marked with stamps celebrating some of the major scientific achievements of the previous century within SG 6133/36 of 20.8.00, depicting Sputnik, Gagarin and the Apollo 11 moon landing (along with a stamp showing a heart transplant operation).

Within further series celebrating the Millennium in 2001 we see a globe and fireworks on SG 6176 and Mariner 9 and Mars on SG 6204 .

In the third and final part of this article celebrating Romanian space issues we will concentrate on material designed by our

Romanian member, Alec Bartos, who is fast gaining a reputation as a brilliant

space stamp creator.

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Images copied from espacelollini.com and various Philatelic Bureaux sites. See also page 32. (More to come in October)

Above—The best of British !!!

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Gagarin Exhibition See also website

http://astrophilatelist.com/index/the_exhibition_at_the_6th_congress_of_fcr/0-1007

From which material on this page is taken

The 6th Congress of the Federation of Cosmonautics of Russia was held in Moscow on February 25th 2011 in the Cultural Centre of the Russian Sate Social University. Within the context of this a

non-competitive philatelic exhibition was organised by ASSS father and son members Igor and Sergei Rodin with the title “They Were

the First” . This exhibition featured a spectrum of philatelic material devoted to the first Soviet manned space flights,

including material relating to Tsiolkovski and to Korolev. Of enormous help in the organising of the exhibition was veteran

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalyonok, President of the Federation of Cosmonautics and the university administration.

Above Igor Rodin (left) with Vladimir Kovalyonok. Right Soviet veteran cosmonaut Anatoly Berezovoi with Sergei

Rodin. Below veteran cosmonaut Viktor Savinykh looks at part of the

exhibition with Igor Rodin. Below right veteran Vikto Gorbatko with Sergei

An overview of part of the exhibition. These and other pics in full colour on

the Astrophilatelist.com website referred to above.

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The Italian contribution to space discovery and exploration

In an article first published in the July-September 2010 edition of our Italian sister journal the on-line AdAstra, its editor Umberto Cavallaro reviews Italy’s earliest contribution to Space Exploration. The Centenary of the Death of Giovanni Schiaparelli in July has offered the opportunity for issuing a stamp honouring the great Italian astronomer who, after a short period in Russia and Germany worked for over forty years at Brera Observatory, in Milan (Italy). His studies on classical astronomy and his novel theories on shooting stars and the origin of meteor showers and on free movements of celestial bodies, driven only by their gravity interaction are well known. The best known Schiaparelli's contributions are his telescopic observations of Mars. During the planet's "Great Opposition" of 1877, he observed a dense network of linear structures on the surface of Mars which he called "canali" in Italian, meaning "channels" but the term was mistranslated into English as"canals". While the latter term indicates an artificial construction, the former indicates that it can also be a natural configuration of the land. From this incorrect translation, various assumptions about life on Mars derived, giving rise to waves of speculation about the possibility of intelligent life on Mars, using canals – in the absence of rain – as conduits by which the water can spread on the dry surface of the planet. The stamp represents the portrait of Schiaparelli and one of his Mars surface maps. The official “First Day of Issue” postmark, used by Poste Italiane in Savigliano (where Schiaparelli was born) reproduces the drawing of the stamp.

Other stamps have recently commemorated astronomers on Italian stamps. In 2002 Matteo Ricci was commemorated; during the 16th century he introduced into Chinese culture Euclidean geometry, western

cartography and astronomy. In the last century several stamps were produced commemorating Galileo Galilei. The first of these was issued by the Kingdom of Italy in 1933. It’s a stamp for pneumatic mail, and

reproduces the 1636 portrait by Justus Sustermans, when Galileo was 72. Considered in the first half of the Twentieth Century as a marvel of the time, pneumatic tube transport (PTT) consists of systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air to transmit telegraph messages,

small parcels and documents (as opposed to conventional pipelines, which only transport fluids). PTT was largely used in the United States, and in Europe: e.g. in London, Paris, Prague. Indeed at Prague, in the Czech Republic, a network of tubes

extending approximately 60 kilometres in length still exists for delivering mail and parcels, although – following the 2002 floods – the Prague system sustained damage, and operation was mothballed indefinitely. Italy was the only country to issue, between 1913 and 1966, specific stamps for pneumatic mail. PTT were in use in several town: Milan, Rome, Naples. The same Galileo drawing and stamp design was adopted for the 1948 issue, with updated face value, by the Italian Republic.

The three hundredth anniversary of death of Galileo (1564-1642) was celebrated in 1942 by the next-to-last commemorative issue with a set of four stamps, representing respectively: Galileo teaching mathematics at the University of Padua (10¢), Galileo

demonstrating the use of the new telescope in Venice in 1609 (25¢), Galileo pensive, holding his monocular (50¢), Galileo under house arrest in Arcetri, where he spent the remainder of his life (L1,25). Poste Italiane used again the portrait by Sustermans in the two stamps issued in 1964 to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Galileo’s birth.

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The 1983 Europe CEPT stamp reproduces the portrait by the painter and engraver Ottavio Mario Leoni, a contemporary of Galileo. One of his well known telescopes, today in the Galileo Museum in Florence, is also reproduced. A postal stationery item (shown below) was produced by Poste Italiane for the Galileo Year 1992, the cachet representing the stone “Spirale per Galileo” carved by the abstract artist Giò Pomodoro.

One more stamp reproduced the portrait of Galileo in 1995, for the celebration of the 14th World Meeting on “General Relativity and Gravitation Physics” held in Florence. The principle of relativity was first assumed by Galileo. In 1915 Einstein generalized special relativity providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time. The stamp represents the picture of Galileo and Einstein and the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence; in the background of a starry sky, the equation of the general relativity is referenced. In 1979, the centenary of his birth, one Italian stamp had already commemorated Albert Einstein who lived and studied for a few years in Italy.

ASTEROIDS Some Bits and Pieces

Congratulations To our Russian member Igor Rodin (see page 29) who has become a member of the prestigious RPSL, The Royal Philatelic Society (London).

Website Address This has been changed by webmaster Derek Clarke since our last issue and is now..

www.astrospacestampsociety.com/ With the related new email address

astrospacestampsociety@gmail.com

Articles Published Our Chairman Margaret Morris has an article on The Hubble Space telescope in Gibbons Stamp Monthly for May and your

editor has articles on Yuri Gagarin in the April issues of STAMP and of Gibbons Stamp Monthly, a review of Major Milestones in Manned Spaceflight in the June edition of Themescene and China in Space / Space Tourism in Spaceflight for June.

Giving Orbit a complete Run One of our newest members has managed to purchase issues 1—86 from a stamp dealer and with his latest new copies on joining now has a complete set. which very few members will have. Interesting that a dealer should have them for sale ! Have you thought about selling yours—or are they too cherished !

Jűrgen returns to Belgium Jurgen P. Esders, whom many members rely on for covers for spaceflight events has returned to his old stomping ground. His new address is Rue Paul Devigne 21-27, Boite 6, 1030 Bruxelles, but his email remains the same : JPEsders@web.de

Have You Heard of Catawiki yet ? No ?—you should try it soon See www.catawiki.co.uk/catalog/100271-stamps Catawiki is the online catalogue of collectables, including postage stamps. The catalogue is filled by users in the same way as Wikipedia. You can keep track of your collection and wish list for free.

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Images copied from espacelollini.com, postbeeld.com etc

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From Magnet to Multi-Media John Beenen continues his history of telecommunications……. James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

(San Marino, 1991, M1487) Already at a very young age, Scot James Clerk Maxwell, born at June 13th, 1831 in Edinburgh, showed himself to be a very intelligent young man. At the age of fourteen he wrote an essay on ovals which, however, was not

completely new as Descartes has defined such curves before, but it was nevertheless quite remarkable for a youngster of his age.

From his sixteenth birthday he entered the second Mathematics class at the University of Edinburgh where he stayed for a couple of years after finishing his studies. In October 1850 he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge and next to Trinity where he believed that it was easier to obtain a fellowship. He obtained his fellowship and graduated with a degree in mathematics from Trinity College in 1854. He remained at Cambridge, where he tutored, then was awarded a Fellowship by Trinity to continue work.

His most important pieces of work were issued in two volumes in 1855 and 1856 and concerned the mathematical formulation and extension of the discoveries of Faraday with regard to electrical induction and magnetic lines of force: ‘On Faraday’s lines of force’. He showed that a few relatively simple mathematical equations could express the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields and their interrelation.

In November 1856 he returned to Scotland and took up a position in Aberdeen.

When the subject announced by St.John’s College Cambridge for the Adams Prize of 1857 was ‘The Motion of Saturn’s Rings’, Maxwell was immediately interested. He decided to compete and won the prize with a calculation, purely on a mathematical basis, that they only could be stable when they consisted of a large number of smaller particles. In 1860 Maxwell was appointed to the vacant chair of Natural Philosophy at King’s College in London, where he stayed for six years and did his most important experimental work. Around 1862 he calculated that the speed of propagation of an electromagnetic field is approximately the speed of light and he therefore concluded that light was an electromagnetic phenomenon.

(Austria, 1981, M1677) As with many scholads of his time his interest stretched out beyond electricity and independent of Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) he formulated a theory about the kinetic behaviour of gasses, which still is known as the Maxwell-Boltzmann theory. This theory showed that temperatures and heat involved only molecular movement. (Nicaragua: 1971, WB 23) In the spring of 1865 Maxwell returned to his Scottish estate in Glenair and made periodic trips to Cambridge. In 1871 he accepted the offer to become the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. He designed the Cavendish laboratory and helped to set it up. The four partial differential equations, now known as Maxwell’s equations, first appeared in fully developed form in ‘Electricity and Magnetism’ in 1873. Moreover Maxwell took upon himself much trouble to publish the inheritance of the Scottish chemist Henry Cavendish (1731-1816), who, among other things, produced hydrogen and oxygen from water by means of an electrical current. In May 1879 Maxwell’s health began to fail, but he continued to give his lectures at Cambridge. Maxwell passed away on November 5th. Joseph Henry (1797-1878) Probably one of the most underestimated figures in the history of electricity is the American Joseph Henry.

Not only was he, almost two years before Faraday, the real discoverer of electromagnetic induction but he also became the pushing force behind the development of American science and co-founder of the famous Smithsonian Institute. Further, he was an expert on light towers and actually the father of today’s meteorology.

Henry was born to Scottish immigrants in Albany, New York at December 17th, 1797. As a young man he became interested in the theatre and was offered employment as a professional actor, but in 1819 several well-positioned Albany friends persuaded him instead to attend the Albany

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Academy and began reading textbooks on mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and chemistry. He read novels after gaining access to the church library through a hole in the floor.

After graduating he supported himself for a time as a kind of peripatetic grammarian and schoolteacher tutoring children of well-to-do families, then as a canal surveyor and eventually as an engineer for canal construction.

In 1829 he became a teacher in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at the Albany Academy and there he did also most of his scientific experiments. He was interested in terrestrial magnetism which led him to experiment with electromagnetism. His apprenticeship as a watchmaker stood him in good stead in the construction of batteries and other apparatus.

Shortly before he began his new position he went to New York where he was confronted with an electromagnet made by William Sturgeon. He wanted to build his own but time and lack of money and equipment made this impossible. He therefore was forced to build the equipment himself. He insulated copper wire with silk ribbon and wound 540 feet in nine coils of 60 feet each. He let the current run through the various lengths of wire and recorded the amount of weight the battery could hold. Doing so, he became the first to wind insulated wires around an iron core to obtain powerful electromagnets.

However, he used these magnets only as pedagogical tools in his classroom. One Autumn, when the students returned from the summer break, they found that Henry had strung a mile of wire around and around the inside of the Albany lecture hall. At one of the wires he attached a small electro-magnet with an armature that sat poised an inch or so from a small bell. At the other he stood ready to attach the wire to his battery. Connecting and disconnecting the wire led to a series of ringing signals from the bell, the principle of the telegraph.

Henry also built the largest electromagnets of his time and observed a large spark generated when the circuit was broken and he inferred the property known as self-inductance.

In the summer of 1831 he described his experiments in a short essay: ‘On a reciprocating motion produced by magnetic attraction and repulsion’. In this article he described actually the first electromotor capable of further mechanical development.

Although it is now known that Henry did not patent the electromotor because of lack of interest and money, Henry also believed that the benefits of science did not belong the exclusive right of the individual, a point of view which we can use still today as well.

In 1830 Henry moved to the Princeton University as a professor in Natural Philosophy where he was to stay for fifteen years. He continued his experiments not only on electro-magnetism but also on phosphorescence, sound, capillary action, cohesion of matter and ballistics. In 1844 he

was a member of a committee to investigate the explosion of a gun during a demonstration on the new USS Princeton; the Secretary of State and Navy and several congressmen were among the spectators killed. He was called to testify as an expert-witness in a lawsuit between Samuel Morse and others about patent rights. However, he had to undermine Morse’s claim to originality which led to friction between both gentlemen.

(USA, 1945, Y495) On December 7th,1846 Henry became the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute and the impetus behind the organization leading American science

into the right direction.

On his initiative the Institute became active in a large number of areas. In that position he created himself a tremendous reputation. He devoted much time to construct the country’s system of lighthouses. Also the Smithsonian became the centre for optics, thermodynamics and acoustics. During the American Civil War he helped, as a member of a commission, the government to screen and evaluate the steady stream of proposals for warship designs, underwater guns, torpedoes and the like, saving a lot of money for the government to avoid unnecessary research.

He laid the foundation of a national weather service. Using his invention of the telegraph and its practical design by Morse he helped to predict storms. From 1857 on the Washington Evening Star on a daily basis published weather reports from twenty American cities. This reports were exceptionally popular with the general public.

Henry died at May 13th, 1878 in Washington. He had three daughters.

Possibly because of his relative modesty and the fact that he had published only a very little of his scientific work he did not receive much recognition national or international. Perhaps this is therefore why until today he has not received the honour of a stamp, an unforgivable omission of the American Post Office.

However, the name ‘Henry’ is immortalized in the unit of inductance. The Henry is defined as the induction in a circuit, when the electro-motive force induced in this circuit is one international volt, while the inducing current varies at a rate of one Ampère per second. The Henry also is defined as one Weber per Ampère.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) (Germany, 1994) Although it were Faraday, Maxwell and Henry who levelled the path for wireless communication it was the German Heinrich Rudolf Hertz who finally defined

radio waves in such a way that they could be used in a practice.

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Hertz was born on February 22nd, 1857 in Hamburg as son of a Jewish lawyer, converted to Christianity. When eighteen years old he passed his exams as the first of his year and started his scientific career at the University of Berlin under Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz. After only two years he obtained his Ph.D. degree magna cum laude with a thesis on the electromagnetic induction in rotating spheres and continued as Helmholtz’s assistant for a further three years. In 1883 he became lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Kiel and in 1885, at the age of 28, professor of physics at the University of Karlsruhe. It is interesting to note that in 1887 he inadvertently discovered the photoelectric effect whereby ultraviolet radiation releases electrons from the surface of a metal. Although realizing its significance he left others to investigate and explain it.

(Germany, 1993?) In 1888 Hertz was experimenting with electrical waves using an electrical circuit. The circuit contained a metal rod that had a small gap at its midpoint, and when

sparks crossed this gap violet oscillations of high frequency were set up in the rod. Hertz proved that these waves were transmitted through the air by detecting them with another similar circuit some distance away. He also noted that they travelled at the same speed of light but at a much higher frequency. He found that non-conductors allow most of the waves to pass through. These waves originally called ‘Hertzian waves’ but now known as ‘radio waves’ confirmed Maxwell’s prediction of the existence of electromagnetic waves both in the form of light and radio waves. The apparatus used by Hertz is depicted on several stamps and exposed in reality at the German Museum for Science at Munich (http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ ). Yet even then Hertz had no clue what could be done with his waves and followed the expression made by Maxwell: “It’s of no use whatsoever”. However within ten years this quote was already history with the development of radio by the Italian Guglielmo Marconi and several others. In 1889 Hertz stopped experimenting and devoted three years to difficult theoretical calculations in the field of mechanics. It is not known why Hertz stopped his electromagnetic experiments but it could be that he was already increasingly ill and unable to continue laboratory research. Suffering from bone disease diagnosed two years before, he died because of blood poisoning on January 1st, 1894 in Bonn, when not quite 37.

And so it is that Instead of Henry’s, Hertz’s discoveries are valued by stamp makers and can be found on stamps especially from both Germanies. The nicest one,

however, is a Czech stamp from 1959 (CSSR, 1959, M1174). Since 1935 Hertz also is honoured with one of the most important units from the theory of waves, the ‘frequency’’ or the amount of vibrations per second, the ‘Hertz’ also ‘cycles per second’. On the way to radio As with all inventions, there exist some forerunners who made the discovery before in one or another form. They did not succeed because the time was not yet ripe for it, they had no financial means to develop their ideas or simply because they had no idea of the implications of their invention. One of those, today forgotten, idealists was the Scot, James Bowman Lindsay (1744-1862) from Dundee, who by 1834 held lectures about electricity and constructed electrical light in his home 21 years before Edison. He also had already the idea of heating and illuminating houses and streets by electricity.

Also the American dentist Dr Mahlon Loomis (1826-1886), somewhat better known than Lindsay, was such a visionary. He wanted to use electricity to stimulate plants to grow and to gather his electricity he flew kites. Doing so, he

discovered that a discharge in one kite created a current in the other, the electrical induction, years before Hertz. He got the idea that in this way it should be possible to make a telegraphic call without the use of wires and he even patented it. In 1879 he carried out experiments with kites and was able to bridge a distance of 11 miles. He build two high towers on two hills (Cohocton Mountain and Beorse Deer Mountain) which stood 20 miles apart and between 1855 and 1856 transferred messages by means of a telegraph and telephone system. In 1870 he telegraphed between two ships 2 miles apart in Chesapeake Bay. He even got a subvention for such experiments from the US Marine. Unfortunately he did not gain recognition and became a embittered man. When his wife left him he moved to live with his brother in Terra Alta in the mountains between Maryland and Pennsylvania. There he continued experimenting and made a wireless connection between the local station and the pharmacy to report the arrival of the train—actually the first construction of a kind of radio. But still he was not able to raise funds as too few people were confident in his ideas. Yet a local newspaper still wrote in 1865: “We do hope that the American pride will not accept that this discovery slips through our fingers, and others will get the honour and praise for it”.

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(CSSR, 1955, M914) Yes indeed! That honour felt to Guglielmo Marconi, who was certainly not the first to discover radio - we note that the Russian Alexander Popov probably was earlier also - but certainly the most slick and rich and certainly the most commercial thinking fellow.

But to gain success with radio, the spark transmitter, first some other inventions had to be made. It looks nice to generate huge electrical sparks by means of electrical induction, but to produce such sparks in a regular way is another thing. Therefore we need the ‘coherer’ a kind of one-way switch. About the same time such switches were invented by different persons: the Frenchman Edouard Branly, the Englishmen Sir Oliver Lodge and David Edwald Hughes, the Italians Augusto Righi and Temistocles Calzecchi-Onesti and the Russian Alexander Popov. Literature http://en.wikipedia.com/ Different biographies http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/ Popov, Hertz, Henry http://www.geocities.com/bioelectrochemistry/ http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/ Kirchhoff, Neumann, Maxwell http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Faraday, http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/ Ruhmkorff, Loomis

11. The Coherer (CSSR 1959, M1172) In 1890a French professor of Physics at the Catholic University of Paris Edouard Branly (1844-1940), constructed a glass tube filled with loose filings of zinc and silver and with contacts at both

ends. After a first spark discharge in this tube the grains coalesced (or cohered) together. A further discharge only could take place when the particles were set loose again. The apparatus was called ‘coherer’ by Sir Oliver Lodge and later was used in radios constructed by Marconi. In German Slaby called the apparatus ‘Fritter’.

Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (1851-1940) also used Branly’s coherer when he demonstrated a radio telegraph set with receiver in 1894. In 1888 Lodge demonstrated that radio waves could be transmitted along

electrical wires and already in 1894 supposed that the sun emitted radio waves, a fact that only was proven in 1942. His inventions are of the utmost importance as on August 16th 1898 he patented a wireless transmitter and receiver (609.154) which could be synchronized by means of a adjustable induction coil. This ‘tuning’ patent won him a high place in the history of wireless, for it established him as one of the pioneers in

experiments that recognized the necessity of tuning in order to select a desired station. The patent finally was bought by the Marconi Company in 1912. Unfortunately at the end of his life Lodge became involved in all sorts of paranormal activities and would for instance communicate with supposed inhabitants of Mars by means of telepathy and laying gigantic figures in the Sahara sand. He also intended to try to communicate with Earth after his death. (Italy 1994, M2313) With respect to this the Italian professor Augusto Righi (1850-1920) from Bologna was a lot more down-to-earth with his over 200 publications about electro-atomic phenomena, magnetism, electrical charges particles in gases, electrical waves, Hertz’s waves and wireless telegraphy. Righi improved the oscillator of Hertz and made lower wave lengths (2,5 cm) possible than Hertz (30 cm). Furthermore he is credited with encouraging Marconi in his experiments. (Italy, 1993, M2275) The Italian Temistocle Calzecchi-Onesti (1853-1922) experimented with loose-packed metal particles in an electrical circuit. Finally also the Russian Alexander Popov (1859-1906), who we will see later on as one of the inventors of radio, occupied himself with the development of a coherer based upon the Lodge’s publications. He developed the ‘trembler’, a device that shook the filings loose, a coherer with platinum electrodes, and a tube filled with iron powder of a very specific particle size, by which the ‘sensitivity’ was greatly improved. The trembler detected Morse code signals transmitted by radio waves and enabled them to be transcribed on paper by an inker. By the trembling the contact between the particles was disconnected and a bell placed in the system stopped ringing. The signal of the bell also served as the trembling mechanism. Lodges’ device, first demonstrated before the Royal Institute in 1894, quickly became the standard detector in early wireless telegraph receivers. It was surpassed in the

following decade by magnetic, electrolytic and crystal detectors. (USSR 1955, M1784) Popov showed that in this way he was able to detect thunderstorms at a long distance by connecting one end of a coherer to an antenna and the other end to the ground. By placing a pen on a slowly

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rotating cylinder he also could write down the results. On May 7th,1895 he demonstrated the apparatus to the Russian Chemical and Physical Union. Because this was only the receiver and not a transmitter the merits for the invention of radio are given to Marconi who invented both. 12.Radio Marconi, Preece, Popov, Slaby, Fleming, Karl Braun, Ducretet, Pupin, Alexanderson, Tesla, Thomson That spark transmitters could be used for ‘wireless communication’, especially where the installation of cables or wires was not possible or very expensive, was mainly the idea of the Italian Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) and the Russian Alexander Popov (1859-1906). In Germany Prof. Adolf Slaby (1849-1913) was active and in 1897 covered a distance of 500 metres at the TH at Charlottenburg, Berlin, and in cooperation with Graf von Arco in the same year already 21 km. In the following year it resulted in the foundation of the ‘Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie System Professor Braun und Siemens und Hallske GmbH’ (Wireless Telegraphy System Company) which in 1903 merged together with ‘Systeme Slaby-Arco’ (AEG) to ‘Telefunken’ under pressure of the German Emperor, Wilhelm II. With this the century of wireless communication had really started. For myself it is interesting to know that my grandfather, Johannes Beenen, during that period worked for three years at the Siemens & Halske Company at Berlin. The electronic business he started afterwards in a small Dutch village in the North of Holland, Gorredijk, still exists and is run today by two of his grandsons. Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)

(GB 1995, Y1589) Perhaps Guglielmo Marconi was not a great inventor, but he was a great experimentalist and especially a great businessman who ingeniously built on the inventions of Hertz, Branly and Righi to construct a practical usable instrument, the radio. Marconi was born on April 25th, 1874

at Bologna, Italy as a son of very rich parents. As a young man he was very much interested in electrical phenomena and the work of Hertz and Righi. From 1895 on he started to experiment with the oscillator of Hertz, improved by Righi and the coherer of Branly and Lodge. Half a year later already he telegraphed without wires over a distance of about 1 km with an apparatus where he replaced the bell by a Morse telegraph. As he found little interest in Italy he went to England where after months of work on June 2nd 1896 he succeeded in introducing a patent which was granted the next year under number 12039/96.

That he went to England was mainly the result of the fact that his mother was of Irish origin – she was a relative of the well-known Jameson whiskey family – and she stimulated him very much in his work.

To exploit the patent in 1897 he founded the ‘Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company’

Together with Sir William Henry Preece (1834-1913), an English electro-engineer, Marconi carried out his first experiments in England on the roof of the London Post Office were Preece was working. Later on he also did experiments on Salisbury Plain. In May 1897 he extended the experiments

over larger distances over the Bristol Channel. Witnessing one of those experiments was German investigator Dr. Adolf Slaby (1849-1913), (GBR Berlin 1974, Y435) one of Marconi’s rivals. Marconi accepted his presence because he felt himself protected by

his patent and also because Marconi was interested in anybody who could supply him with additional information. The Marconi system succeeded in covering the distance between Lavernock Point in South East Wales and Brean Down at the coast of North Somerset successfully. The development of wireless telegraphy got into top gear now. By 1897 a permanent Marconisystem was installed in Alum Bay in the Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight. The receiver/transmitter stood in Bournemouth at a distance of about 22 km. The first paid messages were transmitted at June 30, 1898 coming from a ship on which the reporter of The Daily Express from Dublin watched the Kingstown Regatta. No less interesting were the memorable tests a few days later when Marconi was called upon to set up wireless communication between Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight, and the royal yacht, with the Prince of Wales aboard, as she lay off in Cowes Bay. The Queen wished to be able thus to get frequent bulletins in regard to the Prince’s injured knee and not less than 150 messages of a strictly private nature were transmitted in the course of sixteen days, with entire success. In 1897 Marconi was allowed to register his Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited under the laws of England and he promptly started selling transmitters to shipping companies. (CSSR 1959, M1173) The value of a wireless system was proved in 1899 when the lightship ‘East Goodwin’ in heavy seas tore away part of the lightship’s bulwarks,

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which could be reported to Trinity House by wireless link. The first use of radio for preserving life at sea occurred on March 17th 1899 after the German ship ‘Elbe’ went ashore on the Goodwin Sands in dense fog. Marconi’s wireless link was used to summon the Ramsgate lifeboat. Soon afterwards the lightship itself was rammed by the coal ship ‘R.F.Matthews’, causing international distress signal to be given for the first time by wireless. The next step was taken on March 27 1899 when Marconi’s equipment was able to take a signal across the Channel between South Foreland by Dover and Chalet d’Artois in Wimreux close to Boulogne-sur-Mer. With a speed of 15 words per minute telegrams were exchanged in both languages. When in 1901 from his station on Wight Marconi covered a distance of 300 km he started to think about transmitting his signal over the Atlantic Ocean, a possibility which many physicists thought impossible. The preparations started in the late summer of 1900 in Poldhu, close to Lizard Point in Cornwall.

Marconi established a transmitting station with a huge antenna. 20 wooden poles each 60 metres high were placed in a circle with a diameter of 70 metres. At the top 400 antenna wires were fitted in the form of a cone standing on his top. A similar station was constructed at South Wallfleet near Cape Cod in

Massachusetts, USA. However, on September 17th 1901 a storm destroyed the

main antenna and another storm also the antenna at Cape Cod, which forced Marconi to use his emergency antenna of 54 wires in the shape of a V at distances of 1 metre and an altitude of 50 metres. Also the receiving station was transferred to Signal Hill in St.Johns, New Foundland, Canada (Cabot Tower on Signal Hill is shown here on a stamp

from New Foundland, Sc155) (Antenna from kites, Montserrat) Unfortunately the experiments were not without failure because the first antennae connected to kites were lost and afterwards the wires of the large kites

came down. Canada 1974, Y554) On the first of December the experiments started with the telegraphing of ‘S’, three small dots in the Morse code system. The next day the signals were

received and a distance of 3500 km was conquered. During the experiments, lasting over a year, a more powerful station was installed in Glace Bay, Canada, via which on December 15th 1902 the first transatlantic telegram was transmitted. Since the very PR conscious Marconi desired that the Kings of England and Italy should receive this first telegram it only was delivered six days later. Poldhu stayed in use until June 10th 1922, after which it was restructured to a short-wave transmitter. The fact that the Atlantic Ocean built a ridge of 240 km altitude quickly started speculation of the existence of a conductive layer of air. Such a layer at an altitude of 150 km later has been demonstrated, and today is known as the ionosphere, a layer of ionized particles caused by the radiation of the sun. About the wavelength applied in Poldhu no exact data exists, though one Marconi engineer gave an estimation of 366 m, but a wavelength between 1000 and 2000 m seems more likely. The power of the transmitter was 10-12 kW. In 1910 Marconi received signals from Buenos Aires and in 1918 he sent a message from England to Australia. However, not everything went smoothly. Thus, the Marconi Company prohibited contacts with ships not provided with the Marconi apparatus. Also Slaby could not change this opinion. Only by intervention of the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, finally the monopolistic instructions of Marconi were withdrawn and an agreement with ‘Telefunken’ was set. That after that the Nobel Prize of 1909 was offered to Prof. Karl. F. Braun (1850-1918), chairman of Telefunken and Marconi proved not to be completely coincidental.

(Sweden 1969, M664) Braun owes his share in the prize also to the improvements he made on Marconi’s transmitter, the invention of the crystal as a replacement for the unreliable coherer and the invention of the cathode ray oscillograph, the precursor of our present TV-screen. As above the fact that he was the Director of the German Telefunken, a company merged under pressure of the German Emperor from the Slaby-Arcogroep (AEG) and Siemens & Halske group, a major competitor of the Marconi Company, possibly had played a role. Other scientists improved the Marconi system as well such as: the thermionic valve, a two-electrode radio rectifier (J.A.Fleming) and the audion tube of de Forest, but more about that later.

Antenna system at Poldhu

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At this point we have to talk about ‘tuning’. Without it multiple radio traffic would not have been possible. At the end of the 19th century Marconi was promised a major order from the American Navy if he could distinguish between multiple messages sent at the same time by different transmitters. In that time spark transmitters were functioning over a relatively wide spectrum of frequencies, and other transmitters in the neighbourhood made a hotchpotch of it. In order to solve this problem he engaged the English electrical engineer Prof. Sir John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945) which resulted in patent #7777 for the Marconi Company. By building in an oscillatory circuit in the transmitter which decreased the dispersion of the frequencies transmitted, and tuning the receiver to it, he was able to solve this problem. The principle had already been formulated earlier by Lodge in 1889: adjust the coil of the receiver in such a way that it has the same length of that of the transmitter. Fleming also invented the vacuum diode, the radio bulb as a replacement for the coherer and the crystal. After the bulb was replaced by the invention of the transistor in the 1940s today it goes through a revival because of its quality. Mihaljo Pupin (1854-1935)

(Rep.Srpska 2004) Next to Fleming Mihajlo Pupin is called the father of the tuning. In 1893 he developed a tuning system which became the standard in many radio transmitters. Pupin was an all-round man : he invented the ‘Pupin coil’, an induction coil which amplified the signal in

telephone lines and made telephone calls over a long distance possible. He also improved the X-ray system invented by Roentgen in such a way that the exposure time from one hour could be decreased to some seconds only. Still a major break-through in radiology. Marconi himself was more interested in short-wave transmitters and in 1922 he got maximum results with focusing the waves with a parabolic reflector behind the antenna, a solution which we know very well from space communication and satellite receivers. He also pioneered with ultrahigh frequencies (UHF) for voice transmission over short distances. Ernst Alexanderson (1878-1975)

Another expert was Ernst Alexanderson, an employee of General Electric, who made a large series of improvements to the radio. Originally from Sweden he moved to the United States to work for Charles Steinmetz, who we will meet later again. Between 1904 and 1906 he developed the high-frequency generator of 100 KHz via which Reginald

Fessenden, who we will also see later, could broadcast his first radio programme in 1906 in Brant Rock, Mass. The ‘alternator’ is a device that converts direct current into alternating current and produces a continuous stream of radio waves. In those days, radio was an affair only of dots and dashes transmitted by inefficient crashing spark machines. The usual generator worked with 60 cycles (Hz), but Prof. Fessenden aimed to work with 10.000 cycles. Hence, the creation of this new generator was an enormous achievement which made the first voice transmission a fact. After a series of additional improvements the device was that much better than Marconi’s that Marconi himself installed the Alexanderson alternator in his station at New Brunswick, first with a power of 50 kW, later even of 200 kW. This transmitter transported the ultimatum of President Woodrow Wilson to Germany, which ended The Great War in 1918 Also at the Peace Conference of Versailles after, he could stay in contact with his homeland. Marconi tried to get the exclusive rights for the alternator, but it was then that President Wilson appealed to General Electric not to sell and instead help organize an American company to use the alternator. This led to the formation of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), with Dr. Alexanderson becoming its chief engineer. His first task at RCA was the installation of a then very advanced transmitting station at Long Island, which could cover the whole world. The station was officially inaugurated by the Swedish King, Gustaf V, in 1925 with a telegram to US President Coolidge. The station became extremely useful when in W.W.II all cable connections across the Atlantic were broken. At GE Alexanderson made many more inventions in the field of radio and finally had 344 patents in his name. One of his inventions also was related to ‘selective tuning’, tuning of receivers and was applied many years later beside Pupin’s solution. In the following years Alexanderson became more and more interested in television and gave his first demonstration in public on May 22nd, 1930 in the Proctor Theatre in Schenectady. That he is not so well-known as some of his colleague inventors is possibly caused by the fact that he did not work as an individual and did not place himself in the limelight as did Marconi and Edison. (GB 1995, M1590) But Marconi became a well-respected man. In 1919 he even joined the Italian Representation at the Peace Conference of Versailles. In 1929 he was knighted as a marchese. He lost the use of his right eye in an automobile accident in 1912. Politically Marconi was a Fascist and a supporter of Benito Mussolini. He passed away at July 20th, 1937 in Rome. He was remembered by a radio silence of two minutes all over the world, a highly meaningful and appropriate tribute.

Next the contribution of Alexander Popov

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Apollo 15 Celebrated