OPINION
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD LJWorld.com Tuesday, July 10, 2012
8A
EDITORIALS
Prepare to vote Local voters need to do a little extra work this year to be sure they are ready to cast their ballots.
N
ew district lines and new voting regulations mean that voters planning to participate in upcoming elections need to make some additional preparation. Those who want to vote in the Aug. 7 primary have until July 17 to register. That can be accomplished by visiting the Douglas County Clerk’s office in the courthouse, 1100 Mass., or online through the Kansas Department of Revenue. People registering online must have a valid Kansas driver’s license or state-issued identification card. Voters must show a valid photo ID before casting their ballots this year. State election officials are encouraging voters with any questions to confirm their registration status now, before the books close next Tuesday. Even if their registration still is valid, many voters will be in different U.S. House and Kansas legislative districts. The districts redrawn only about a month ago by a panel of federal judges are significantly different from the previous districts. All of Douglas County now is in the 2nd Congressional District, and many changes were made in Kansas House and Senate districts. Some voters also will find that their polling places have changed since the last election. Maps showing the new precinct lines and legislative districts are available on the Douglas County Clerk’s website. Even if you think you know what races will be on your ballot on Aug. 7, it would be worth a look to confirm what districts you currently live in. If you have questions, it’s worth a phone call to get the answers. Because of the late redistricting action and the scramble to field candidates in the newly drawn districts, the Aug. 7 ballot will include more than the usual number of primary contests. All three Kansas Senate seats that cover Douglas County will have contested races on the Republican ballot — although one candidate in the 2nd Senate District has suspended his campaign and is supporting the other Republican in the race. There also is a three-way race for the Democratic nomination for the state’s 2nd District seat in the U.S. Congress. Redistricting, which drew a number of incumbent legislators out of their existing districts, guarantees there will be some new faces in the Kansas Legislature next January. It’s an opportunity for both the candidates and the voters. Make sure you’re registered and know which candidates will be on your ballot.
Telstar anniversary spurs reflection ANDOVER, MAINE — It was the largest air-inflated structure in the world, 161 feet high and 210 feet wide, constructed of polyester and synthetic rubber. Inside the balloon was a 177-foot-long horn-shaped antenna that weighed 380 tons. Not a trace of it remains. But here in a tiny rural town nestled in a valley that provided natural shielding from radio interference, a revolution was born 50 years ago today. That revolution doesn’t seem remarkable today, but a half-century ago the notion of sending a television signal from North America to Europe shook the world. A generation remembers the first transmitted image vividly — a fuzzy shot of an American flag fluttering in a Maine village — but millions more have been affected by the telecasts that have become unremarkable as a result of what happened here — by the televised coverage of Olympic violence, royal weddings, airplane hijackings, the fall of Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gadhafi.
Maine town changed Settled in 1789, the year the Constitution took effect, Andover for nearly two centuries was a tranquil outpost near the Canadian and New Hampshire borders, midway between Boston and Montreal but resolutely nowhere. Its citizens ran small farms and worked in the forests, always showing themselves, as a resolution by the state legislature noted, as “very resilient, resourceful and independent.” But people didn’t move too quickly here, toward the future or anyplace else; if you drove your horse over the covered bridge faster than a walk, you were vulnerable to a $3 fine. Until Telstar — a 3-footdiameter sphere weighing 170 pounds with 1,064 transistors and 1,464 diodes — was sent aloft by a Boeing Thor Delta booster that split the skies and opened the age
David Shribman dshribman@post-gazette.com
“
Today’s communications-driven world was unimaginable in Telstar’s time, but it would have been unattainable without it.” of satellite communications. The iconic black-and-white image was so stunning a breakthrough that President John F. Kennedy predicted it would “throw open to us the vision of an era of international communications.” Now the future has left Andover behind, though Verizon Wireless still runs a satellite communications operation amid the white pine, elm and birch copse that once changed the Earth. A few abandoned foundations remain at the site, which you access by passing a sign with the words painted out, but no physical evidence hints that an era began here that rendered undersea cable and radio transmissions relics of a fast-receding past. “No one incident in history has meant as much to the Town of Andover,” the Rumford Falls Times wrote in 1962, “as has the decision of the American Telegraph and Telephone Co. to erect the satellite ground station in that town.” Only memories remain. Even Telstar High School is somewhere else, in Bethel, down Route 5, more than a half-hour south. “Some people were apprehensive,” recalls Trudy Akers, secretary of the Andover Historical Society. “They
were worried that if there was a war the Russians would bomb us. But it was great for a small town. Lots of new people moved in. Some of them stayed for many years. It was a window on the world for all of us here.”
Future of communications Telstar I operated for less than a year — eventually its command decoders wouldn’t accept instructions from Andover — and it was followed by a second Telstar, 4 1/2 pounds heavier, positioned farther out in space and better situated for communications with Asia. But the telephone call between AT&T’s chairman and Vice President Lyndon Johnson 15 hours after blastoff, followed by the shaky image of the flag, carved a new future in communications. “Very-high-frequency radio and TV stations, which are limited to line-of-sight range, suddenly saw their future reach out beyond the horizon, around the curve of the Earth,” bellowed Time magazine. Today’s communicationsdriven world was unimaginable in Telstar’s time, but it would have been unattainable without it. “Telstar opened up an area of activity that has transformed the world,” says John M. Logsdon of George Washington University, perhaps the leading historian of the space program. “It has made instantaneous global communication possible. Before Telstar and what followed Telstar, you had to book ahead to make an international telephone call. There was very limited capability and it was very expensive. Now we have Skype.” For all its achievements, Telstar was a product of the wrong technology. It depended on movable antennae — Andover’s rotated every which way to capture Telstar’s signals — and a truly global network based on the Telstar model would have
Giant leap forward But Telstar was a giant leap forward, one of the wonders of the world, or at least of that world. “Telstar involved problems of a scope and magnitude far beyond any we had faced (before),” according to the late John R. Pierce, a Bell Labs engineer and author who wrote a history of Telstar. “The transistor and the traveling-wave tube were key components, but they had to survive a rocket launch and survive for a long time in space.” Those elements seem antiquarian today, when the word “transistor” seldom passes the lips, and that achievement seems modest given last summer’s conclusion of the Space Shuttle era. While Telstar was a precursor to dramatic and significant breakthroughs in telecommunications, it also spawned an important cultural marker — the Tornados’ hit instrumental “Telstar,” which remains familiar and irritating, and was the first single by a British group to reach No. 1 on both the American and British pop charts. Like the satellite whose bleeps it was intended to imitate, the song paved the way for even greater cultural developments. The second single by a British group to achieve those ratings was called “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” — David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh PostGazette.
OLD HOME TOWN
100
From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for July 10, 1912: “The secYEARS ond wing of the AGO new administration IN 1912 building at the University is to be built soon. The board of regents at their last meeting asked for bids for the work and will award the contract some time soon. This is to be the central portion of the building. According to the plans the completed building will be composed of three separate wings. The first is now completed, and the third is to be just like it, and built west of the present wing.”
Letters Policy
The Journal-World welcomes letters to the Public Forum. Letters should be 250 words or less, be of public interest and should avoid name-calling and libelous language. The JournalWorld reserves the right to edit letters, as long as viewpoints are not altered. By submitting letters, you grant the Journal-World a nonexclusive license to publish, copy and distribute your work, while acknowledging that you are the author of the work. Letters must bear the name, address and telephone number of the writer. Letters may be submitted by mail to Box 888, Lawrence Ks. 66044 or by email to: letters@ljworld.com
— Compiled by Sarah St. John
Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld.com/news/lawrence/ history/old_home_town.
LAWRENCE
JOURNAL-WORLD
required a long string of satellites, almost certainly at a higher orbit. That’s because in the early days of satellite communications, scientists didn’t think they could launch geosynchronous satellites, manmade space objects whose orbital period and pattern matched that of Earth, keeping them stationary over a particular location. It turned out that that ability was only a few years off.
®
ESTABLISHED 1891
What the Lawrence Journal-World stands for Accurate and fair news reporting. No mixing of editorial opinion with reporting of the news.
Safeguarding the rights of all citizens regardless of race, creed or economic stature.
Sympathy and understanding for all who are disadvantaged or oppressed.
Exposure of any dishonesty in public affairs.
Support of projects that make our community a better place to live.
PUBLIC FORUM
W.C. Simons (1871-1952) Publisher, 1891-1944 Dolph Simons Sr. (1904-1989) Publisher, 1944-1962; Editor, 1950-1979
Dolph C. Simons Jr., Editor Dennis Anderson, Managing
Ed Ciambrone, Production
Editor
Manager
Susan Cantrell, Vice President
Ann Gardner, Editorial Page
of Sales and Marketing, Media Division Chris Bell, Circulation Manager
Editor
Caroline Trowbridge, Community Editor
THE WORLD COMPANY Dolph C. Simons Jr., Chairman
Dolph C. Simons III,
Dan C. Simons, President,
President, Newspapers Division
Electronics Division
Suzanne Schlicht, Chief Operating Officer Ralph Gage, Director, Special Projects
Government costs To the editor: A recent study showed that it costs a private employer around $28/hour on average for each employee and around $42/hour for the government (not counting federal employees). Approximately one-third of this is for benefit packages. Wisconsin, San Diego and San Jose have voted in overwhelming numbers to change the entitlement culture of public employee unions after seeing their benefit costs rise three to five times and finding that their budgets could no longer support the basic infrastructure needs of their cities. Stockton, Calif., files for bankruptcy. They realized that retiring at age 50 (with 90 percent of your last salary), paying 1 percent into your retirement fund and contributing a fraction of the costs of your health care are not sustainable work practices. Kansans know that KPERS has a multi-billion dollar shortfall. Yet, over the past six years, the fastest growing segment of the Kansas economy was government. Some folks are upset with what they see as the undue influence that the Koch brothers may have on the electoral process, but they fail to
recognize the same level of influence that comes from groups like the Service Employees International Union, who back candidates, and then extract lucrative contracts from the very politicians they helped elect (buy). Where do our local public entities stand with the ever-burgeoning costs of public employees? Are they providing benefits above that of the private employer? If the private sector can hire qualified personnel and keep them at rates that are two-thirds of those in the public sector while employees pay substantially more into their retirement and health-care packages, why can’t government agencies? Ken Meyer, Lawrence
Bus debacle To the editor: All taxpaying residents must demand that City Hall and high-salaried city employees cease to rob our public treasury in the name of special interest and against the majority opinion of the electorate. The T bus is a prime example of City Hall’s loose fiscal policy that results in higher taxes.
The Republic of Lawrence obtained three diesel/electric hybrid buses through the 2009 so-called federal stimulus bill at a cost of $1.8 million. This bill was financed with new debt. Therefore, our children and grandchildren will be left with our generation’s debts long after the buses have been salvaged for scrap metal. Our T bus operating cost per passenger mile is already the most inefficient on planet Earth. Our city manager is now proposing a $250,000 budget expense to study the merits of extended hours for the T bus. Why do we need a city manager? The T bus should be allowed to suffer the same fate as Tyrannosaurus rex: extinction. No one ever rode T rex and very few ride the T bus. The electorate is paying an enormous price for allowing incumbents to remain in office. The one and only solution coming out of City Hall is, “We will have to raise taxes.” This is not leadership but rather a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility. Each of us has a duty to participate in the political process or we face the consequences of being ruled by our inferiors. J. Joe Herynk, Lawrence