There were a lot of firsts involved when Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral , Florida on July 10, 1962. It was the first active telecommunications satellite, capable of relaying television broadcasts, bundled telephone calls, and fax images. Echo I , launched by NASA in 1960 had been a glorified weather balloon—a Mylar inflated sphere off which microwave signals could be bounced from one Earth station to another. Although millions of Americans, me included, spent hours watching darkened skies for the passage of the gleaming object in orbit, Echo’s usefulness as a communications device was more symbolic than real. Echo 1 sits fully inflated at a Navy hangar in Weeksville, North Carolina. T...