Word: calling
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...began in 1985 while Barry Bertiger, an engineer at Motorola, was vacationing in the Bahamas with his wife Karen. She wondered aloud why she couldn't call home from their secluded getaway on Green Turtle Cay. Good question, thought her spouse. By 1988, Bertiger and two colleagues had drafted blueprints for a revolutionary new system that would blanket the heavens with communications satellites--77 in all--bounce a cellular call from one to another, then beam the data stream downward 420 miles to one of 12 earth stations where the call would enter the terrestrial telephone network. Motorola dubbed...
...first to suggest a band of geosynchronous satellites, dubbed "extra-terrestrial relays," hovering 22,000 miles above the equator and bouncing signals back to the ground. Until recently, most communications satellites have imitated that high-cost-and-high-altitude model, drifting in what scientists call the Clarke orbit...
...miles up, was founded by Loral Space and Communications and by Qualcomm, a leader in cellular technology. Its European partners include France Telecom, Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Britain's Vodafone Group. Globalstar's plan is much less expensive than that of Iridium, which has built intelligent satellites that route calls among themselves, sometimes halfway around the planet. That kind of smarts makes for a system that's more flexible but more expensive and time-consuming to debug. Globalstar is betting on a network of satellites that will act as simple repeaters with all call-setup and processing accomplished...
Will sat phones follow suit? Well, here's one clue: in 1979, Neiman Marcus featured a $36,500 home-satellite TV system in its Christmas catalog. This year, its stores are selling Motorola's Iridium handset. Those who buy it will not only be able to call home and wish folks Happy Holidays from their Caribbean vacation this December; they'll also be able to look up and watch the three large-array antennas on an Iridium satellite line up with the sun, triggering a flash of light for careful observers back down on Earth...
...worried, but about different things: freshmen haven't had the chance to bring home pork-barrel projects; members fighting to survive in marginal races are sifting through their polling data trying to figure out which way to go. Safer veterans need to be bridled before any more of them call for Clinton's head, and members of the black caucus, who by and large have safe seats but great misgivings about the whole thing, need to be given regular opportunities to vent. To make sure members don't openly criticize their colleagues who have to take a different path...