[NYTr] 50th Anniversary of Sputnik: Birth of Internet?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles


50th Anniversary of Sputnik: Birth of Internet?

By Victor Angel Fernandez
AIN Special Service

On October 4th, 1957, humanity woke up to great news:  the first 
artificial satellite was circling Earth.

Coinciding with the 8th Congress of the International Astronautical 
Federation held in Barcelona, the metallic sphere of almost one meter 
in diameter and 84 kilograms in weight have been put into orbit by the 
Soviet Union from the Baikonur station, currently Kazajastan. A 
communication sound, a bip bip bip, was heard around the world and set 
the basis for Soviet domination of the space race developed amid the 
Cold War. For the United States the event constituted not only a 
scientific defeat but created a sort of a military hysteria. There, 
circling the world almost in the view of all was a real possibility of 
a Soviet attack on the army's communication systems. The precision that 
was required to launch a rocket into space and its transformation into 
an artificial satellite around the world was superior that needed to 
launch a nuclear bomb on a target: the trump card that, since August 
1945, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Washington had had at its disposal to 
dispel any "disobedience".   These army systems were built in the form 
of rings or in series, to understand them better, as a consequence a 
blow in any one of its parts would interrupt the system completely. The 
main result was the creation of ARPA or the Advanced Research Projects 
Agency by President Eisenhower which was an advanced military research 
institute with the objective that "...America would never again be 
caught with its guard down".

According to Vannevar Bush, one of the founders of what we know today 
as the Internet, the new communications system created had as its main 
purpose never to crash after a strike on any of its components. In turn 
it set the pace for the scientific development in the young and growing 
space age. The first US achievement, already on its way, was the 
launching of Vanguard, a similar satellite, but almost 6 months later, 
on March 17th, 1958. The space race between the two great powers of the 
time, which would begin at the end of the Second World War, was gaining 
potency.

Four years later, the US was set on the alert when on April 12th, 1961, 
Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space and "America" was once again 
caught by surprise. Humanity, always the main victim in a given 
situation, would only receive the benefits of these advances in the 
early 1990's with their access to the World Wide Web.

Once again humanity for their benefit just collected the leftovers, 
often stained with blood, from the military arms race. /map