Sputnik shock of the century

Never before had so small and so harmless an object created such consternation.
-Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience
"Listen now," said the NBC radio network announcer on the night of October 4, 1957, "for the sound that forevermore separates the old from the new." Next came the chirping in the key of A-flat from outer space that the Associated Press called the "deepbeep-beep." Emanating from a simple transmitter aboard the Soviet Sputnik satellite, the chirp lasted three-tenths of a second, followed by a three-tenths-of-a-second pause. This was repeated over and over again until it passed out of hearing range of the United States.
The satellite was silver in color, about the size of a beach ball, and weighed a mere 184 pounds. Yet for all its simplicity,small size, and inability to do more than orbit the Earth and transmit meaningless radio blips, the impact of Sputnik on the United States and the world was enormous and unprecedented. The vast majority of people living today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, were born after Sputnik was launched and may be unaware of the degree to which it helped shape life as we know it. Now is anespecially good time to take a fresh and focused look at the event whose impact looms even larger with the passing of time. In the last decade an incredible amount of once-secret material has been declassified and made public. Scholars and writers both inside and outside government have coaxed key Cold War documents out of hiding. Collectively, this material has given new dimensions and twists to almostevery aspect of the events leading up to and following the launch of Sputnik.
For example, one recently released document reveals evidence of a long-forgotten pre-Sputnik "olive branch" extended by Russian scientists, who asked their American counterparts to supply a piece of scientific equipment for a planned launch. By most indications, this piece of equipment was meant for the third Sputnik.It is not widely known even now that one of the reasons President Dwight D. Eisenhower and those around him did not react with alarm over Sputnik going into space ahead of an American satellite was that Eisenhower welcomed the launch to help establish the principle of "freedom of space." At the time of the Sputnik "crisis," the White House, Central Intelligence Agency, Air Force, and a few highlyselect and trustworthy defense contractors were creating a spy satellite that was so secret that only a few dozen people knew of it. Even its name, CORONA, was deemed secret for many years. Instead of being concerned with winning the first round of the space race, Eisenhower and his National Security Council were much more interested in launching surveillance satellites that could tell Americanintelligence where every Soviet missile was located.
For many of us born before the 1950s, the fascination and astonishment engendered by the launch of Sputnik remain fresh in our minds. Like many of my generation, I can recall exactly where I was when I heard about Sputnik's launch. I was eighteen years old, a college freshman at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. A friend stopped mein the middle of the campus to say that he had heard about it on the radio. Instinctively, we both looked up.
Within hours I would actually hear its signal rebroadcast on network radio. Before the weekend was over, I got to hear it directly on a shortwave radio as it passed overhead.
Not only could you hear Sputnik, but, depending on where you were, it was possible to see it with the naked eyeon certain days in the early morning or the late evening when the Sun was still close enough to the horizon to illuminate it. While standing in the middle of the college football field a week or so after the launch, I first saw the satellite scooting across a dark evening sky orbiting the Earth at a speed of 18,000 miles per hour. Watching Sputnik traverse the sky was seeing history happen with...