Arthur C. Clarke

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was an English science fiction writer, futurist, inventor, and undersea explorer whose visionary ideas presaged the modern space age and telecommunications revolution. Serving as a radar instructor in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Clarke later chaired the British Interplanetary Society.

In an October 1945 paper published in Wireless World titled 'Extra-Terrestrial Relays', Clarke proposed placing three equidistant artificial satellites into a circular equatorial orbit at 22,236 miles altitude, where their orbital period matches Earth's rotation (24 hours). He demonstrated that this would provide uninterrupted, worldwide radio and television coverage—the theoretical blueprint for modern geostationary telecommunications satellites, leading the geostationary orbit to be officially designated the Clarke Orbit. Clarke collaborated with Stanley Kubrick to write the legendary 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey and formulated 'Clarke's Three Laws', including 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'