Sep 8 1980
From The Space Library
DOC announced that it had upgraded the satellite division of NOAA and renamed it the National Earth Satellite Service (NESS), reflecting broader responsibilities for the former National Environmental Satellite Service. Earlier in 1980, NOAA became responsible for developing and managing a remote-sensing satellite system based on NASA's experimental Landsat program.
Since 1965, NOAA had managed operational weather satellites whose data served in navigation, commercial fishing, and water-resource management as well as weather forecasting. The greater resolution of the Landsat system should offer similar monitoring as well as data for uses such as farming, urban planning, and mineral exploration. (DOC Release 80-106)
The NY Times reviewed advances in phototypesetting technology, including satellite transmission, that had made it possible for publications to print identical copies simultaneously anywhere in the world.
"Cold type," the first generation of phototypesetting, replaced use of individual characters with a matrix of symbols on a transparent material. Light sent through characters produced an image on high-contrast photographic paper. The second generation of typesetting machines also used a photographic negative to generate characters, but used digital computer scan to produce the symbols, recreating them on a cathode-ray tube as a series of minute dots or lines, reproduced on photographic paper. The third generation, developed in the late 1960s, encoded text on a disk and printed out entirely by computer, working 10 times as fast as previous machines. By the 1970s, publications such as U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, and the New York Times had switched from either hot type or less sophisticated cold type to the third-generation technology, which was amenable to satellite transmission. Some of the machines could produce entire pages of newspapers and magazines, including advertisements, artwork, and text, reducing time and cost of publication.
A fourth generation would abandon photographic imaging altogether: using lasers, it would produce characters directly on paper without use of a cathode ray tube. One such unit had the advantage of producing its output on nonphotographic paper, made without silver, at a price a third that of conventional light-sensitive paper. (NY Times, Sept 8/80, D-5)
INTELSAT said that an "extraordinary session" of its signatories in Washington had authorized increasing the organization's capital ceiling from $990 million U.S. to $1.2 billion to buy a follow-on to the INTELSAT V series of satellites and launch vehicles that could fill "booming world demand" for international and domestic communications until the INTELSAT VI is available around 1986.
INTELSAT's announcement said that the actual cost per unit of satellite communications was dropping steadily, in spite of the increased investment required; its charges were about a sixth of the level in 1965 when the first INTELSAT went into service. (INTELSAT Release 80-18-1)
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