RIP : Arthur C Clarke
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It’s just been announced that the renowned sci-fi author Sir Arthur C Clarke has died at his home in Sri Lanka aged 90.
I have to admit that I’ve never read an Arthur C Clarke novel but there’s no doubting his influence on the sci fi genre and, although slightly less well-known, also on international communications. Sir Arthur is credited with inventing the concept of geostationary satellites which now enable worldwide communications in milliseconds. He came up with the idea that a satellite orbiting the Earth at a height 35786km above the surface would remain over the same point of the planet enabling it to be used to bounce signals from one part of the world to another. That orbit is now known as the Clarke orbit and that region of the Earth’s atmosphere as the Clarke belt. It was geostationary satellites that enabled us to watch live on TV so many of the events that shaped the world’s history in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Whilst best known as an author, Sir Arthur will also be remembered by people of my generation for his TV series Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World in which he investigated psychic phenomena.
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