Space Rocket History #20 – Tiros 1 and Echo 1 – The First Weather and Communications Satellites

“Who can say what contraption the future will bring?

There can be not a doubt, some more wonderful thing.

And if anyone ventures the future to scan,

Why indeed should it not be your old Weather Man?

Have you noticed how often in times that are past

We have used new inventions to improve the forecast?

Television is coming, it is not far away;

We’ll be using that too in a not distant day.

Photographs will be made by the infra red light

That will show us the clouds both by day and by night.

From an altitude high in the clear stratosphere

Will come pictures of storms raging far if not near

Revealing in detail across many States

The conditions of weather affecting our fates….” By George Mindling (Weather Bureau), 1939