AT&T developed the first modern communications satellite and launched it in 1962. Then the company planned to link the entire globe with a network of orbiting transmitters, but not everyone thought that was a good idea.
It caught on much more slowly than the automobile, partly because of the expense, partly because horses did a good job, and partly because people had to figure out just what it was and could do
Please support America's only magazine of the history of engineering and innovation, and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to Invention & Technology.