The glossy silver balloon set to go up in space did not look like much of a satellite. There was no antenna, no transmission / reception ports, no guidance system — no electronics of any kind, actually. It actually was just a large, mylar balloon, coated in reflective paint, meant to stay for a short duration, until the gases inside cooled down or leaked out. It may have been crude, but it was effective.

On this day, August 12, in 1960, the world’s first communications satellite, the Echo 1a (its predecessor Echo 1 did not make it past the launch phase) took off to go where only Sputnik had gone before.

The Echo 1 was used as a passive transmitter: signals broadcast bounced off its reflecting coating and back down to earth. In this way President Eisenhower was able to talk live with the west coast for the first time, and the military gained exact geospatial coordinates for Moscow, so they could target better in the event of a nuclear war.