[ih] What does TELNET stand for?

[Dan Cross]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 1:42 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> Also at the time, telecommunications in general was fairly new.  In the
> early 60s, the ECHO satellites had been deployed in space. These were
> basically big metallic balloons that were inflated in orbit.  Radio
> signals could be bounced from one earth station to a distant one, using
> ECHO as a mirror.  ECHO also reflected visible light well, much better
> than the earlier Sputniks, so it was easy to spot visually from the
> ground.   ECHO was the star that moved across the sky as you watched.
>
> [snip]

I apologize for replying to an older message, but I thought list
readers might find this interesting. Around the time of the Project
Echo launches, Bell Telephone commissioned a short documentary film
about them: "The Big Bounce".  The film is short, but quite
interesting, and is available on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19kAuAVAnDc

Incidentally, the horn-shaped antenna at the Holmdel site in the film
was instrumental in the empirical detection of cosmic microwave
background radiation; clear proof of the Big Bang. Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for this
discovery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Discovery).

        - Dan C.