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Sputnik 1 recording

by Simon at 08:12 04/10/07 (Blogs::Simon)

-- Just popping this back to the top of the list to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik's launch --

On October 11th 1957 my dad - Bryan Banton - and his friend Bill Wilding made a tape recording of the radio telemetry from Sputnik 1 as it orbited the Earth. The Space Age was 7 days old.

This recording was made on reel to reel tape and, on a recent visit home to see the folks, I've finally had a chance to digitise it and turn it into an MP3 for posterity before all the oxide falls off the original.

The first voice heard on the recording is Bryan, the second is Bill.

A small snippet of history :-)

Sputnik 1 recording.
--
simon

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Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 08:12 04/10/07
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Dominic Search - 06:47 03/01/05
> A small snippet of history ...and a big slice of very cool ;-) I'd love to hear it mixed into music... I'll see if my flatmate Nico can make of use it (he's a psy-trance DJ), although it's more of Holger Czukay thing :> Do you know what caused the signal to die, as noted at the end? LITL.W/L Dominic.
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	David Crowson - 07:02 03/01/05
very cool indeed, I'd always assumed it gave out a beep and much more slowly; they don't half teach you some BS in school :-/ -- bombholio
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 09:12 03/01/05
I'd love to hear it in a music track too - and my dad would be well impressed! I've no idea why the signal faded abruptly at the end, but the newspapers apparently didn't say anything about it the following day. Wikipedia says the beeps were modulated to carry info about temperature, pressure and electron density. -- simon
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Dominic Search - 03:23 06/01/05
The Wikipedia article says it transmited for 3 weeks, so presumably nothing dramatic had happened when the tape was made. BTW, I'll be off-line for the next couple of weeks as I'm off to South Africa this afternoon :)
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 09:07 06/01/05
Have a nice time in SA! Don't forget to look at the stars - southern hemisphere sky is something I've always wanted to see, but haven't managed yet. -- simon
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Bruce Ure - 13:24 06/01/05
Nah it's the same mate. Black with sparkly bits. :bu:
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 13:31 06/01/05
True, but they're upside down!!! -- simon
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	David Crowson - 13:37 06/01/05
trouble with looking at southern hemisphere stars (if you're a northerner) is that it makes you feel completely lost (as none of the constellations look right :) and if you couple that with the distance travelled to look at them, it makes you feel very very far away and isolated. (at least that's the feeling I got when I was in Aus) -- bombholio
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 14:00 06/01/05
Ah, but if you'd walked and paddled yourself to Aus instead of flying there you'd have noticed the sky changing gradually over a period of time instead of all at once. It's your own fault for going too fast :) -- simon
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	David Crowson - 14:16 06/01/05
they seem to have more stars than us, but i suspect that's cos their light polltuion is a lot less than this side of the planet... Gobsmackingly beautiful it was.... The only constellation I knew was the southern cross.. -- bombholio
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 14:42 06/01/05
I think there are actually more higher-magnitude stars in the southern sky, and there's a much better view of the milky way from down there. -- simon
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	David Crowson - 14:44 06/01/05
they have a bigger sky than here too :) -- bombholio
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Gordon Hundley - 16:29 05/01/05
Simon, give me permission, and I will indeed send this to Holger Czukay. :) -- DrGoon
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 17:26 05/01/05
Sure, go right ahead (a credit to Bryan Banton and Bill Wilding somewhere in the resulting output would be desirable) Who is he, and what does he do, by the way? -- simon
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	David Crowson - 18:00 05/01/05
founder member of Can bio -- bombholio
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Dominic Search - 03:11 06/01/05
Do it Gordo! A few years ago I emailed him to find out where I could get Snake Charmer and Full Circle on CD (they'd been 'deleted' and my vinyl was wearing out). He told me to send him the cost of postage in exchange for some CDR's. He even added a couple of his otherwise unavailable tracks made specially for EMI's sales staff :) http://www.czukay.de/ for those who don't know this musical genius.
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Bruce Ure - 07:15 05/01/05
Fantastic! What an amazing thing. Have you looked at the waveforms to see if you can see or make sense of any of the modulations? :bu:
Re: Sputnik 1 recording	Simon - 09:29 05/01/05
I haven't - but that's because I've no reference to relate them to. There's also quite a lot of noise and distortion present - this is analog and I've forgotten how to do Fast Fourier Transforms :-) -- simon