Jewish Invention Myths: The Geosynchronous Satellite
Coming back to my long-running ‘Jewish Invention Myths’ series; we have the claim that jews invented the geosynchronous satellite and specifically that Harold ‘Harry’ Rosen was the person responsible. (1)
The problem with this is that while Rosen is indeed often claimed as the ‘the father of the geosynchronous satellite’ and the ‘father of the communications satellite’ but the real story about the origins of the first geosynchronous satellite (Syncom 2) are rather different from the claim that Rosen ‘invented it’.
The concept itself dates from Slovene engineer and one of the (unsung) fathers of spaceflight Herman Potočnik in his one and only 1928/1929 book ‘Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketen-Motor’ published just before his early death due to extreme poverty in Vienna in 1929 and Potočnik’s ideas – which may have been directly inspired by ideas and writings of the father of Russian spaceflight Konstantin Tsiolkovsky – included a geosynchronous satellite communicating with the earth via radio. (2)
Key chapters from Potočnik’s book were translated into English in 1929 for the magazine ‘Science Wonder Stories’ (published in the editions of the magazine for July, August and September 1929) which – despite its name - had several well-known scientists on the editorial panel and was a significant scientific periodical albeit one with a turbulent history.
Potočnik’s ideas were taken up and expanded further by famous British science and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke in an article titled ‘Extra-Terrestrial Relays’ in the October 1945 edition of ‘Wireless World’. (3)
Potočnik and Clarke’s work then formed the theoretical basis for geosynchronous satellites as well as communications satellites which is now credited to Rosen, but the story of how Rosen came to be credited with inventing the ‘geosynchronous satellite’ is an interesting one that shows how a fame hungry jew can take credit for work that clearly was not his own.
Rosen was no slouch though; he was an electrical engineer with qualifications from Caltech and worked with some of the best scientists in the field in the United States. The story of Rosen’s ‘invention’ of the ‘geosynchronous satellite’ comes into immediate question when we realise the Rosen only ‘led the team’ at the Hughes Aircraft Company which came up with the first practically demonstrated geosynchronous satellite (Syncom 2) in July 1963. (4)
That team and who was responsible for what was broken down by Guy Gugliotta in an article for ‘Smithsonian Magazine’ for September 2009.
They were Don Williams was a brilliant (and maverick) mathematician and the person who seems to have actually designed and built most of the Syncom Satellites, (5) Tom Hudspeth – an electronics engineer – who seems to have had the original idea which Rosen jumped on and presented as his own and who later became the Hughes Aircraft Company’s Chief Scientist (6) and lastly John Mendel who was an engineer who worked out how to shrink the vital electronic equipment needed for the satellite to communicate via waves and maintain geosynchronous orbit. (7)
None of these three individuals were jewish as far as I can ascertain although Rosen was. The interesting thing is that it was Rosen and Williams who promoted and eventually sold the concept of the geosynchronous satellite to Lawrence ‘Pat’ Hyland - the general manager of Hughes Aircraft Company - at the end of 1959. (8)
Williams – as I’ve stated above – seems to have actually been the principal creator of the Syncom satellites as Rosen later all but admitted. (9)
In fact, the more you dig into the history of the Syncom satellites the more you realise how little Rosen seems to have done, but why do people widely credit Rosen not Williams?
Well after the launch of the Syncom 3 satellite in August 1964 it was transferred to the US Department of Defence from NASA in January 1965 and then Williams committed suicide for unknown reasons in 1966. (10) If Williams was the true designer and inventor of the bulk of Syncom 1 to 3 – as Rosen implies – (11) then the field was suddenly clear for Rosen to claim most of the credit from the now dead Williams and people wouldn’t have really been the wiser apart from Hudspeth and Mendel who played specialist roles in the design and building of Syncom 1 to 3 but don’t seem to have contributed to the bulk of the project unlike Williams and his oversight which was Rosen. (12)
Rosen then stepped in to accept the credit and the plaudits with no one to really contradict him with Hudspeth and Mendel seemingly content with their own sub-credit and significant personal advancement.
Another interesting aside before we close this discussion is that Rosen – who was a radio operator in the US Navy between 1944 and 1946 – claims never to have read or known about Clarke’s October 1945 article in ‘Wireless World’ which basically created the idea behind Syncom 1 to 3, but this posits that Rosen somehow missed Clarke’s article in the most important and leading journal for radio engineers and operators during these years when he was a radio operator (13) which seems faintly ridiculous unless we believe Rosen ‘didn’t care’ about the subject in which he was a specialist at the time and suddenly ‘invents’ Clarke’s idea without reference to him nearly two decades later.
Does that sound plausible?
Not really but it goes to show that Harold Rosen seems to have stolen both the credit for the creation of the first practical geosynchronous satellite from Don Williams and the theory behind it from Herman Potočnik and Arthur C. Clarke.
References
(1) https://christianislamicforum.wordpress.com/dedicated-to-our-jewish-brethren/
(2) https://web.archive.org/web/20210127050434/https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4026/noord3.html
(3) Arthur C. Clarke, ‘Extra-Terrestrial Relays’, Wireless World, October 1945, pp. 305-308 (this is available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20090318000548/http://www.clarkefoundation.org/docs/ClarkeWirelessWorldArticle.pdf)
(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/business/harold-rosen-dead-engineer-satellite.html
(5) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/spin-doctors-38952524/
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid.
(8) Ibid.
(9) Ibid.
(10) Ibid.
(11) Ibid.
(12) Ibid.
(13) https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Wireless_World_Magazine.htm