A look into the future and past

© Mark Ollig

As 2021 comes to a close, we find ourselves envisioning what new technological discoveries and breakthroughs 2022 will reveal to us.

The future of technology and discovery is one of wonderment, and as its revelations unfold, we will shake our heads in amazement and appreciate being alive to witness it.

During the summer of 2022, we will begin to see revelations about our universe unfolding from the data obtained using 18 highly-polished gold-coated mirrors attached to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) aka Webb.

Launched Christmas Day, Webb will dramatically change our understanding of the universe.

“The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it’s what we don’t yet understand or can’t yet fathom about our universe. I can’t wait to see what it uncovers,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Dec. 25, about 12.5 hours after launch, Webb’s onboard thrusters fired to maneuver the spacecraft and alter its trajectory course. It will journey 1 million miles from Earth, settling into a halo orbit around the second Lagrange point, or Sun-Earth L2 point.

L2 is a point of gravitational balance and distance from Earth, offering Webb optimal cooling and improved communications due to reduced interference from the Sun’s radio emissions.

L2 is also a desirable location because it decreases the fuel required for a spacecraft to remain in orbit.

It will take the Webb spacecraft one month to reach L2. Once there, it will always stay on Earth's night side while it orbits around the Sun.

NASA states another advantage of this orbit is that Webb will always be at the exact general location relative to Earth.

Webb will be close enough to Earth for continuous communication through the Deep Space Network, an international array of giant antennas geographically located on our planet that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages for deep space missions.

Another advantage of an L2 orbit allows Webb to be perpetually bathed in the sunshine to generate power via the solar array on the Sun-facing side of the spacecraft while providing an unobstructed view of deep space.

In addition, the orbital path Webb takes ensures it stays out of the shadows of both Earth and the Moon.

The gimbaled antenna assembly on the Webb includes a high-data-rate dish antenna that will send approximately 57.2 GBytes (gigabytes) of data back to Earth each day.

Some of the scientific instruments installed on the Webb telescope include cameras for taking pictures of astronomical objects.

Webb will use spectrographs to break light into colors of scientific analysis.

The Webb telescope will also use coronagraphs to block sunlight, allowing observation of planets.

Construction on the Webb telescope began in 2004, and over the last 17 years, there have been many breakthrough technologies and advances incorporated into Webb.

Some of these breakthroughs include lightweight deployable mirrors and advanced composite structures that align to millionths of millimeters and work at super-cold temperatures.

Webb employs large, ultra-sensitive infrared light detectors and micro-shutter devices with thousands of tiny windows, each the width of a human hair and programmable to be open or closed to enable spectroscopic measurement of hundreds of individual objects simultaneously.

Webb also contains a cryocooler that chills the mid-infrared detectors to the necessary temperature just a few degrees above absolute zero (-459.67 degrees Fahrenheit).

The scientific instruments aboard Webb will safely operate at temperatures from -380 to 260 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although it will only take one month for the Webb telescope to arrive at L2, it will be undergoing a six-month commissioning period, during which it fully deploys, cools down to operating temperatures, aligns its mirrors, and calibrates its instruments.

Routine science operations on Webb will begin during June 2022, as all 18 mirrors will be aligned, along with the final calibration of its scientific instruments and telescope.

Webb will give us a look back in time over 13.5 billion years, which is only a few hundred million years after “the big bang” theory which many astronomers and scientists say ignited the universe.

My question regarding this theory has always been, “What created the physical material leading to the energy that caused the big bang to ignite?”

Of course, who started the universe is justifiably related, but today is off-topic, so I will digress to the main subject.

The James Webb Space Telescope was designed to last five years, but is expected to be operational for 10 years.

Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) will store data from the Webb telescope at https://archive.stsci.edu, and is freely accessible to the scientific community and the general public.

MAST is part of the STScI (Space Telescope Science Institute) located in Baltimore, MD.

MAST also stores the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, Kepler, and Hubble space mission data.

The James Webb Space Telescope will use future technology to look billions of years into the past.

As we close out 2021, I’d like to express my appreciation to you for spending a few moments of your time each week reading this column.

Now, it is on to 2022.

A Christmas Eve message from the moon

© Mark Ollig

Three American astronauts, seated in the command module of a Saturn V rocket, blasted off from Cape Kennedy, FL., Dec. 21,1968.

Apollo 8 was initially planned to conduct the first crewed tests of the Lunar Module (LM) spacecraft, which would land on the moon before the decade’s end.

However, due to delays in getting the LM ready in time for Apollo 8’s scheduled December liftoff, NASA announced Aug. 19, 1968, that it was canceling the LM from the mission.

Instead, Apollo 8’s mission became the first crew traveling to and orbiting the moon.

Saturday morning, Dec. 21, 1968, in my hometown of Winsted, I was sitting in front of the living room television watching the countdown of the tall Saturn V rocket sitting on Launch Complex Pad 39A.

In Florida, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite broadcast from Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral).

“T minus ten, nine, we have ignition sequence start. The engines are armed. Four, three, two, one, zero. We have commit,” NASA’s launch commentator Jack King informed the millions of people watching the launch.

The Saturn V rocket’s five F-1 engines clustered on the bottom of the first stage roared to life as they released massive red plumes of flames and white smoke.

At 6:50 a.m., CST, King reported, “We have liftoff,” while I watched the column of red flames and smoke continuing to shoot out of the first stage of the rocket as it slowly began its ascent into a blue Florida sky.

The 6.2-million-pound Saturn V was propelled upward utilizing 7.6 million pounds of thrust generated by those F-1 engines.

“It looks good! Oh, there’s the rumbling in our building!” exclaimed Walter Cronkite, describing the launch while looking through his binoculars.

“One minute, 15 seconds and we’re a little more than half a mile into the sky, and we’re nearly four miles downrange,” reported Paul Haney of NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, TX.

The crew aboard the Apollo 8 command module includes commander Frank Borman, command module pilot James Lovell and lunar module pilot Bill Anders (his title even though no LM was attached).

This flight was risky. Without the Lunar Module, there would be no “lifeboat” available to use in the event of an engine or environmental failure aboard the Command Module.

The LM served as a lifeboat during the Apollo 13 mission.

After Apollo 8 attained Earth orbit, for the next two hours, the astronauts checked the systems of the command and service module to make sure everything was ready for their journey to the moon.

At two hours and 27 minutes into the flight, Mission Control radioed the crew with, “Apollo 8. You are go for TLI. Over.”

TLI means Trans Lunar Injection and is an engine-firing maneuver that would take Apollo 8 out of Earth-orbit and propel it toward the moon.

“Roger. We understand; we are go for TLI,” commander Borman responded.

Apollo 8 would go farther from Earth than any previously crewed flight, which was 850 miles during the Gemini XI mission in 1966.

Apollo 8 was 234,474 miles from Earth on Dec. 24, 1968, and was under the moon’s gravitational influence.

They fired the large SPS (Service Propulsion System) main engine on the service module to slow them down and place them into lunar orbit.

According to the NASA logs, Apollo 8 obtained lunar orbit at 69 hours, 12 minutes, 30 seconds into the mission.

Apollo 8 orbited the moon at the height of 60 nautical miles.

“Apollo 8, Houston. What does the ol’ moon look like from 60 miles? Over,” radioed Mission Control.

“Okay, Houston. The moon is essentially grey, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish beach sand. We can see quite a bit of detail,” astronaut Jim Lovell reported.

Apollo 8 would orbit the moon 10 times.

The crew took photographs of specific locations for future Apollo mission landing sites.

For me, two memorable moments stand out during those 10 orbits.

The first was seeing “Earthrise” from the moon, which became a much-published photograph and a postage stamp.

Astronaut Bill Anders took the photo Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, showing Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface.

The second occurred during the ninth orbit around the moon.

Anders radioed Mission Control, “We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.”

The astronauts beamed back images of the moon and Earth and took turns reading from the book of Genesis.

They closed with, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth,” said commander Borman.

You can hear Apollo 8’s live Christmas Eve message from the moon: https://bit.ly/30K1Mig.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

"Earthrise" 
Photo taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders
on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission.

‘The Santa Colonel’

© Mark Ollig

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD, reports it will track Santa and his reindeer team again as they travel around our planet delivering toys on Christmas Eve.

The story of tracking Santa began in 1955 when NORAD was CONAD (Continental Air Defense Command), composed of Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine forces with its central operations located in Colorado Springs, CO.

The Pentagon or a high-ranking general would call the confidential, air-defense telephone hotline at CONAD during a national emergency, such as in the case of an imminent military attack against the United States.

A December 1955 Colorado Springs Sears department store newspaper advertisement was mistakenly printed with the wrong telephone number for children to call and talk with Santa on Christmas Eve.

The newspaper advertisement’s telephone number was for the hotline to the red phone sitting on the desk in the central operations center at CONAD.

The Sears children’s Christmas newspaper advertisement with a picture of Santa Claus read: “Call me on my private phone and I will talk to you personally any time day or night.”

Christmas Eve 1955, the red phone at CONAD began ringing.

Colonel Harry Shoup, the director of operations, immediately picked up the handset.

“The red phone ringing; it’s either the Pentagon calling or the four-star General Partridge. I was all shook up,” Col. Shoup recalled years later.

“So, I picked it up and said, Sir, this is Col. Shoup.”

There was silence from the phone’s receiver.

“Sir, can you read me alright?” asked Col. Shoup, who believed a military general was calling the hotline telephone.

Imagine Col. Shoup’s surprise when he heard a little girl’s voice ask, “Are you really Santa Claus?”

Col. Shoup recalls looking around the room at the faces of his office personnel and sternly saying, “Somebody’s playing a joke on me, and this isn’t funny!”

“Would you repeat that?” demanded Col. Shoup into the phone, now thinking it was some prankster randomly dialing telephone numbers.

“Are you really Santa Claus?” the small voice on the other end of the telephone line sincerely asked.

While Col. Shoup was on the phone, one of his officers told him of the local newspaper’s advertisement mistake.

Col. Shoup’s behavior quickly changed.

Instead of disappointing the little girl calling for Santa, he decided to answer her as Santa would, asking, “Have you been a good little girl?”

The now happy little girl’s voice on the phone said she knew Santa would be coming down the fireplace at her house, and she would be leaving some food there for him and the reindeer.

“Oh, boy! They sure will appreciate that!” Col. Shoup told her.

He listened as the little girl read off the items she hoped Santa would bring her on her Christmas list.

Col. Shoup then asked the little girl if he could talk with her mom or dad; he informed them of their daughter’s Christmas list items.

After saying goodbye to the little girl, Col. Shoup instructed his defense operations center to act as Santa’s helpers whenever a child called the hotline.

Children calling were provided radar updates by CONAD defense operation team members regarding the location of Santa Claus and his globe-circling reindeer sleigh team.

Santa’s sleigh travels faster than starlight, “but this is nothing that our technologies can’t handle,” a commander at CONAD reportedly told one young caller.

By 1958, CONAD became NORAD.

NORAD continues the tradition of reporting on the status of Santa and his reindeer sleigh team each Christmas, monitoring Santa’s trip with the same advanced space satellite technology to follow any airborne object approaching the Northern Hemisphere.

On Christmas Eve, NORAD will again be tracking Santa and his reindeer sleigh team as they make their journey worldwide.

Follow the official NORAD Tracks Santa website at https://www.noradsanta.org. There, you’ll find the Santa Tracker Countdown Clock, videos of Santa’s North Pole headquarters, interactive games, movies, holiday musical tunes, and the history of NORAD’s involvement in Santa’s annual holiday journey.

NORAD Tracks Santa can also be found on Twitter at the user handle @NoradSanta.

Dec. 11, @NoradSanta tweeted, “Did you know Rudolph’s bright red nose gives off a special infrared ray of light that’s invisible to the human eye, but US Space Command satellites can track?” Another tweet read: “Santa flies faster than starlight, but slows down to wave at @NORADCommand fighter escorts that keep North American airspace secure.”

Christmas Eve, Friday, Dec. 24, children and parents can call toll-free to get updates about Santa’s location at the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center at 1-877-446-6723.

Col. Harry Shoup became known as “The Santa Colonel,” a nickname he cherished until his passing March 14, 2009, at age 92.

1955 ad for Sears’ Santa hotline; Undated photo of Colonel Harry Shoup

The world looked up into the night sky

© Mark Ollig

In 1952, the International Council of Scientific Unions proposed the Internal Geophysical Year (IGY) to be recognized from July 1957 to December 1958.

Scientists worldwide planned on observing geophysical phenomena and their effects on Earth.

Two countries had much bolder IGY plans, which were literally “out of this world.”

The US announced it would place a scientific satellite into Earth’s orbit during the IGY.

The Soviet Union also announced its plans for launching an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite.

A historical event occurred Friday, Oct. 4, 1957, which caused the world to take a collective breath and look upward at the night sky.

At 10:29 p.m., Moscow Standard Time (2:29 p.m. Central Time), a Soviet R-7 two-stage rocket weighing 267 tons, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch complex in the remote Russian region of Tyuratam, inside the Kazakhstan Republic.

The R-7 was a Russian/Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile without the military warhead attachment.

Instead of a warhead, the rocket carried a 184-pound satellite payload called PS-1, better known as Sputnik 1.

Sputnik 1 was a highly-polished 23-inch diameter metallic beach ball-sized sphere made of an aluminum-magnesium-titanium combination.

According to the English Oxford dictionary, “In Russian, the word sputnik means a ‘traveling companion.’”

The Sputnik 1 satellite was jettisoned from the R-7 at about 142 miles above the Earth in the weightlessness of space.

Sputnik 1 then settled into an elliptical orbit, circling Earth once every 98 minutes at a speed of 18,000 mph.

A 1-watt radio transmitter was powered from two of three onboard silver-zinc batteries. The Sputnik 1 satellite used a third battery to power its internal temperature and other instrument systems.

The first artificially-made, Earth-orbiting satellite sent out a curious radio signal from its four “cat-whisker” antennas extending 7.9 and 9.5 feet, respectively.

For the next three weeks, people worldwide became fixated, listening to the steady radio signal audio pattern of “beep-beep-beep-beep-beep” being transmitted down through the Earth’s atmosphere by Sputnik 1.

Scientists and shortwave radio operators closely listened to Sputnik’s 20.005 and 40.002 MHz frequency radio band transmissions.

American television and radio broadcast the satellite’s beeps for the general public to hear.

Ground-based telescopes could see the small, shining metallic sphere as it speedily flew across the night sky.

People peering up into the star-filled night sky saw a small, bright sunlit ball, Sputnik 1, majestically passing by.

While Sputnik 1 orbited the planet and sent its radio beeps, American emotions ranged from shock and amazement to feelings of inspiration by witnessing the start of space exploration.

However, many people also feared the Soviet Union would turn soviet satellites into space weapons.

Instead of a harmless beeping satellite passing over the US, some folks felt the next Sputnik would be carrying a nuclear warhead that the Soviet Union could drop on them.

There was real fear, confusion, and much anxiety experienced by many Americans.

I once asked my mother about her memories of Oct. 4, 1957, and Sputnik 1.

“I was 27 years old,” she recalled. “I remember people were frightened; we didn’t know whether the Russians were going to attack us by dropping bombs from their space satellites passing over our heads,” she explained to me.

In an attempt to ease a growing US public anxiety, Oct. 9, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower announced, “Now, so far as the satellite itself is concerned, that does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota. I see nothing at this moment, at this stage of development, that is significant in that development as far as security is concerned.”

President Eisenhower, or “Ike,” may have calmed the fears of some folks; however, many now felt that the Soviet Union had taken the technological lead in the new “space race” with the US.

Starting Oct. 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 continued to broadcast beeps until Oct. 26, 1957, when the satellite’s battery power wholly drained.

Sputnik 1 burned up Jan. 4, 1958, while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Two months after Sputnik 1, the US attempted to launch a satellite into Earth orbit atop a three-stage Vanguard rocket.

At the Atlantic Missile range in Cape Canaveral, FL, the Vanguard rocket ignited and began its ascent Dec. 5, 1957; however, after rising a little more than 3 feet, the rocket stalled, then settled back on the launch pad as its fuel tanks ruptured and exploded. The irony is that the Vanguard satellite was thrown clear of the explosion and landed on the ground. Although damaged, the satellite transmitted its beacon signal while lying on the ground.

The first successful launch of a US satellite into Earth orbit occurred Jan. 31, 1958 at 9:48 p.m. Central Time, with Explorer 1.

Explorer 1 used a modified US Redstone ballistic missile to obtain the altitude needed for orbit.

Explorer 1 descended into the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated in the heat of re-entry March 31, 1970.

One minute of recorded radio signal beeps from Sputnik 1 can be listened to at http://bit.ly/2fwmc6P.

Listen to 10 seconds of telemetry transmission from Sputnik 1 at https://go.nasa.gov/2whXCtp.

The world looked up into the night sky Oct. 4, 1957, in wonderment and apprehension.

Laser optical communications in space

© Mark Ollig

For more than 60 years, NASA has been using the traditional radio-frequency (RF) wave spectrum for communicating with its spacecraft and satellites.

Soon, we will find ourselves living in 2022, and NASA knows future space missions will require enhanced communications capabilities.

NASA is testing its spacecraft and satellites using “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation,” or laser, for communication transmission and reception.

Using laser optical communications with satellites and other spacecraft will drastically increase their transfer-rate throughput speed.

These optical laser enhancements will significantly benefit space mission communications, with 100 times more spectrum bandwidth than currently used RF systems.

Using optical lasers will significantly improve voice and video communications from astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future spacecraft on the moon and Mars.

Laser communications will greatly assist NASA in obtaining data from satellites traversing within our solar system and those traveling into deep space exploring distant celestial objects.

According to NASA, the “pinpoint precision of laser communications” is well-suited to the goals of NASA mission planners.

“Laser technology is ideal for boosting downlink communications from deep space,” said Abi Biswas, the supervisor of the Optical Communications Systems group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

Other advantages of laser communications include receiving greatly-improved photographic image resolution and video from satellites or spacecraft missions to other planets.

Future astronauts performing an extravehicular activity, or from inside their spacecraft will select and view optical laser video feeds from the ground to aid in quickly completing various tasks.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is currently in orbit around the Red Planet.

Its mission is to expand our scientific understanding of Mars, paving the way for our current robotic missions and helping NASA prepare to send humans there.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter transmits data at a minimum of 500 kbps (kilo, or thousand bits per second) from its furthest distance away from Earth, about 250 million miles; currently, it is about 232 million miles.

If the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used optical laser communication technology, its estimated data rate speed to Earth would be around 250 Mbps (megabits per second).

NASA’s Deep Space Network RF antennas are located in Australia, Spain, and California. These are primarily used for X-band (8 to 12 GHz) radio frequency range communications with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter via ultra-high frequency antennas.

In 2013, NASA first demonstrated an optical communications laser’s effectiveness, reliability, and long life operation in space through an experimental launch of a laser-equipped communications relay satellite with the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) mission.

The mission’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environmental Explorer (LADEE) satellite launched Sept. 6, 2013, and aligned itself in the proper orbit over the moon.

NASA technicians prepared LADEE’s onboard communications laser system for the test.

NASA’s ground station, located in White Sands Complex in Las Cruces, NM, activated its communications laser beam Oct. 18, 2013, which traveled 239,000 miles to the LADEE spacecraft in lunar orbit.

The LADEE satellite used a communications laser beam focused on a particular ground transmitting/receiving station on Earth.

The download data speed of the satellite information sent to the Earth from the moon reached a fantastic maximum rate of 622 Mbps.

The LLCD mission proved laser communications could be successfully transmitted to Earth from a satellite in space with more incredible speed and efficiency than current RF signaling methods.

Unfortunately, the LADEE ended up crashing onto the moon’s surface a couple of months later; however, it did answer the vital question about successfully using long-range laser communications in space.

The next high-profile NASA laser test is the LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration) mission. It will launch this month from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

LCRD will be the payload aboard a US Department of Defense Space Force STPSat-6 spacecraft using a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

This mission will last for two years and test long-term regularly-used laser communications from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station and ground stations in Hawaii and California.

LCRD will downlink data over optical signals at a rate of 1.2 gigabits per second, which is double the 622Mbps from the 2013 Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration.

NASA hopes the LCRD mission will be the prelude to launching future laser-communications equipped satellite, robotic, and other spacecraft missions to the moon, Mars, the other planets, and missions eventually traveling beyond our solar system.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center developed LCRD.

In 2018, NASA announced a closer study of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system, located some 40 light-years from Earth, revealed seven planets, some of which may be holding far more water than the oceans of Earth.

Perhaps, future generations on Earth will use optical laser communications technology to communicate with space satellites sent to the TRAPPIST-1 solar system containing Earth-like exoplanets, where life may have evolved.

Stay tuned.

Illustration of NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration communicating over laser links. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

More internet users and faster data speeds

© Mark Ollig

Trusting a source providing internet statistics can be questionable.

However, having Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, reference an internet statistics website helps alleviate many doubts.

In 1990, he wrote the software code application for the first web browser and named it WorldWideWeb.app.

Not long ago, Berners-Lee posted a message over Twitter, citing statistical internet data from https://www.internetlivestats.com.

Data from the same website is also used by the World Wide Web Consortium, World Wide Web Foundation, BBC News, Kaspersky Lab, and your humble Bits & Bytes columnist.

Statistical data is gleaned from more than 250 sources, using an advanced algorithm to oversee its accuracy. One source is the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations specialized agency for information and communications technologies.

“We are an international team of developers, researchers, and analysts with the goal of making statistics available in a dynamic and time relevant format to a wide audience around the world,” the website affirmed in its mission statement.

While looking through many separate groups of continually changing statistical internet peg counters, the current number of internet users in the world is listed at 5,116,500,000. The planet’s population is estimated to be 7.9 billion, meaning nearly 65% of the world can access the internet.

The ranking of countries with the highest number of internet users has not changed much over the past few years.

With 1.4 billion people, China is leading with 854 million internet users, followed by India, which has a population of 1.3 billion and 560 million internet users. The US, with a population of 330 million, has 313 million internet users.

The number of internet users worldwide has been steadily increasing.

Reasons given for the increased number of people using the internet include having accessibility to mobile devices, smartphones, and access to computers having an internet connection due to more countries upgrading their communication networks.

Other factors cited are continuous installations of broadband networks and fiber-optic submarine cables worldwide by major global internet and communication service providers.

Another contributing factor is the coronavirus requiring people to use the internet while working from home.

The top countries with the fastest average fixed broadband internet speeds as of May are:

1. Monaco, 262 Mbps.

2. Singapore, 255 Mbps.

3. Hong Kong (China), 255 Mbps.

4. Romania, 232 Mbps.

5. Switzerland, 230 Mbps.

6. Denmark, 228 Mbps.

7. Thailand, 224 Mbps.

8. Chile, 217 Mbps.

9. France, 214 Mbps.

10. South Korea, 212 Mbps.

The US has an average fixed broadband internet speed of 204 Mbps.

The Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) definition of broadband speed is a minimum of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload. The FCC defined these speeds in 2015.

It will soon be 2022. FCC regulators need to revise minimum broadband data speeds dramatically; upwards to meet the needs of small businesses, schools, and work-at-home users.

Ookla has been around since 2006, and is a well-known internet speed testing specialist. They report the global average download speed on fixed broadband as of September 2021 was 113.25 Mbps. The average download speed on a mobile device was 63.15 Mbps.

Both are notable improvements over the scores of 85.73 Mbps broadband, and 35.96 Mbps mobile just one year earlier in September 2020.

Being curious, I ran an Ookla cellular data speed test from my 5G smartphone with its local Wi-Fi connection disabled. The results showed a download speed of 65.5 Mbps and an upload speed of 12.1 Mbps.

You can run internet speed tests from your mobile smartdevices or home computer at https://www.speedtest.net.

The speed test app for your Android and iOS device can be downloaded at https://www.speedtest.net/apps/android and https://www.speedtest.net/apps/ios, respectively.

I also ran the speed test on the work computer connected to my employer’s network. The download speed was 1.1207 Gbps, and the upload showed 149.59 Mbps.

With continued improvements in technology, computing devices, and communication networks, the data speed of fixed broadband and future “G” cellular mobile devices will continue to get faster.

Speed test from my 5G smartphone 

Speed test on the work computer connected to my
employer’s network

Several pathways and venues to our news

© Mark Ollig

Of course, we still use printed media, as many of you are reading this column in your local newspaper.

Or, you may be reading or having the words of today’s column audibly spoken to you through your smartphone, computer, e-reader, or another digital device.

Familiar sources for obtaining our news include print, television, radio, and online digital venues.

Our good friends at Pew Research recently released information about our news consumption habits across digital, television, radio, and print platforms.

Of adults polled during 2021, a total of 84% reported they often and/or sometimes got their news from a digital device such as a smartphone, computer, tablet, or other digital sources.

When looking at digital devices as their news source, 51% of adults polled said they often get their news from them. In comparison, 33% responded with sometimes, 8% said rarely, and another 8% said they never get their information from digital devices.

In 2020, 60% responded by saying they often get their news from digital devices.However, this year saw a 9% drop with a polling result of 51%, which surprised me.

In 2020, 40% said they often used television as a news source, while in 2021, 36% said they did. So again, we see a percentage drop.

Polling results from adults getting their news from radio showed that in 2020, 16% often did, 34% replied sometimes, and 28% said rarely.

This year, 15% responded with often using radio, 36% said sometimes, and 27% reported rarely getting their news from radio sources.

This year’s response is the same as in 2020; 10% of adults polled said they often use newsprint publications as their news source.

Interestingly, in 2020, 22% of adults responded saying they sometimes used print media for their news source, compared with this year’s 24% response.

Asked which platforms they preferred to get their news over, 50% responded with digital devices; the same as when polled in 2020.

Looking at digital news sources online, Pew asked adults where they obtained their news. Again, leading are websites or news apps, with 28%. Last year, 34% preferred them, so this year’s polling shows a 6% decline.

This year, some 20% of adults reported using a search engine often to obtain news, a 3% decline than in 2020 when 23% often used one.

In 2021, a reported 43% said they sometimes used a search engine, while 19% responded with rarely using one.

Using social media to obtain news often was the preference for 19% of adults, a 4% drop from 2020.

Podcasts have seen their popularity go up and down over the years; this year, 7% of adults often use it for their news source. In 2020, it was 6%. For 2020 and 2021, 16% report sometimes using a podcast for their news consumption, with 53% and 56% in 2020 and 2021, respectively, saying they never use it.

The most preferred news consumption sources among digital devices are websites and news apps, of 24% of adults polled.

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder.

While I use digital devices to obtain news from various online media sources, I still watch television news programs and read news stories via print media.

For one, I am old-school and enjoy holding and paging through the newspaper, its tactile feel, and how the print looks in the light.

One advantage a newspaper does hold over a digital device is that it does not require the charging of batteries.

Submarine cable successfully installed

© Mark Ollig

While looking through a box of old pictures, I found a late 1960s photo regarding Winsted Lake.

As most of my readers know, I lived and worked in Winsted for many years.

In 1968, the local telephone company placed just over one-half mile of underwater marine copper-paired (submarine) cable along the bottom of Winsted Lake to provide telecommunication services for new homes being built on the east side of the lake.

This event occurred years before cellular telephones or fiber optic cables arrived on the scene; technicians physically spliced a telephone line to a pair of copper wires.

Why install a submarine cable?

It was decided this would be the quickest (and least expensive) way to get telephone service to the new homes. In addition, it was thought the submarine cable would operate reliably underwater until the telephone company trenched a permanent telephone cable into the ground going around the lake.

The submarine cable route started in Winsted near the east end of McLeod Avenue and the corner of Kingsley Street.

That day, Winsted Telephone Company employees Frank Roufs, Jim Ollig, and Tom Ollig placed a metal stand holding a large wooden reel of submarine cable in the pontoon boat they would be traveling on across the lake.

“When we first loaded the cable reel onto the pontoon, we thought it was going to sink. The reel had to be perfectly centered on the pontoon, so it didn’t tip over,” recalled Tom Ollig, who was one of the three people reeling off the submarine telephone cable into the lake on the pontoon that day.

The telephone crew guided the pontoon as they slowly made their way across Winsted’s most famous body of water, traveling in a west to an easterly direction.

Being carefully pulled off the reel by hand, the submarine cable was prepared to be lowered into the water.

“Another concern was making sure the submarine cable was weighted down correctly, so it didn’t float to the top of the water,” Tom added.

As it was gently lowered into the lake’s murky depths, about every 10 feet, the telephone crew securely strapped a heavy steel bolt onto the submarine cable to weigh it down.

The three successfully placed the submarine cable across the lake.

The west end of the submarine cable was trenched underground into the metal pedestal enclosure fastened to a telephone pole located about 40 feet from the lake at the end of McLeod Avenue East.

Next, a telephone technician spliced the submarine cable’s copper wired pairs to an aerial telephone cable terminating at the central office of the local telephone company.

The east end of the submarine cable was terminated in an above-ground pedestal enclosure about 50 feet from the shoreline where the new homes were being built.

Winsted Telephone Company technicians opened the outer casing of the submarine cable. Then, they spliced the copper pair wires to wires from the telephone “drop” lines feeding into the new homes.

Phones in the new homes were wired to the submarine cable directly attached with the dial tone from the local telephone office at 171 2nd Street South.

“I remember cutting in the new phone lines using the submarine copper cable pairs for Jerry Sterner and Jack Littfin,” said Mike Ollig, a former Winsted Telephone Company technician. He recalled his memories of the submarine cable with me.

For many years, the submarine cable provided reliable telecommunications service to homes on the east side of Winsted Lake.

However, as we know, nothing lasts forever.

During the early 1980s, some of the submarine cable’s copper wire pairs had begun to fail, and there was growing concern about the remaining good spares.

And so, during the mid-1980s, the local telephone company installed a new underground telephone cable around the lake to replace the aging submarine cable.

I suspect a few of you are wondering about the fate of the abandoned submarine cable on the bottom of Winsted Lake.

After disconnecting both ends of the submarine cable, we (I was employed at the telephone company) attached the east end to our Ditch Witch tractor/trencher and slowly removed (pulled) it from the lake.

The trencher drove in an easterly direction until the entire length of the previously submerged submarine cable was out of the water and lying on the ground.

We rolled up the old submarine cable (with assistance from a John Deere tractor) onto a large wooden cable reel. We then transferred it onto a cable trailer, where it was driven to and stored inside the telephone company’s warehouse.

The submarine cable was later recycled for its copper.

Today, the improved construction of submarine cables (using fiber-optic pairs) has given them an average lifespan of 25 years.

Currently, 487 fiber-optic submarine cables traverse the oceans of the world. The total length of these cables is 807,782 miles. They pass through 1,304 above-ground landing stations and are spliced into telephone cables providing internet, voice, video, and data communications to thousands of cities, towns, and villages.

Fiber-optic submarine cables connect to every continent on the globe, except for Antarctica.

To view and interact with the world submarine cable map from TeleGeography, visit https://www.submarinecablemap.com.

This article was originally published Nov. 23, 2018. However, I was recently asked about it by one of my readers. As a result, this column includes moderate updates in its content by the writer.

Winsted Telephone Co. pontoon crew prepares to lay submarine cable

across Winsted Lake. L2R: Frank Roufs, James Ollig, and Tom Ollig.

(1968)

Days of playful banter and camaraderie

© Mark Ollig

While writing today’s column on this early November morning, I paused and looked out the living room window.

The sky is filled with clouds. Checking the thermometer, it reads 32 degrees.

What happened to our beautiful summer? Why is autumn passing so quickly?

Another year is speeding by. Very soon, 2022 will be upon us.

In online news, Facebook recently announced a name change to Meta.

Anyone who writes HTML code knows meta-tags or meta elements are used on web pages.

Also, my aging brain realized meta spelled backward is atem. Atem in German translates to “breath.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could have renamed it Breathbook.

Okay, enough of my futile attempts at humor.

Before Facebook came into existence, many of us were using the MySpace online social media site.

In late January 2009, I was convinced to join Facebook by my oldest son, who, at the time, was preparing for his trip to Italy.

“What would be a good way to stay in contact with you?” I asked him.

“Go to Facebook and request to add me as a ‘friend’,” he told me.

“What about using MySpace?” I suggested.

“No, you want to get on Facebook,” he confidently replied.

When I first started Facebook 12 years ago, it reminded me of the dial-up online community known as Prodigy.

The Prodigy interactive online service began in 1984, and by 1990, it had grown to be the second-largest online service behind CompuServe.

I was an active Prodigy user and still have my original porcelain Prodigy coffee mug shaped like a computer terminal screen and keyboard.

By 1992, being part of a dial-up online virtual community was becoming popular all across the country, so I decided to start a hobbyist computer BBS (bulletin board system) called; “WBBS,” which was the abbreviation for Winsted Bulletin Board System.

I began with a text-only interface BBS software program by Galacticom, Inc.

WBBS users sent and received email messages with each other, text-messaged in real-time in the chat rooms, played games, and sent and received software files within the BBS community.

The WBBS computer used six telephone lines connected to six modems.

Most dial-up users were from the Winsted and Lester Prairie areas, where the telephone number to reach the BBS was a free, local call.

Sometimes, users would log in for hours to text chat; others stopped by to play a few games, check their messages, or share files. It was a virtual community.

Jumping back to early 2009, I was on the phone and praising the many advantages of Facebook with former Herald Journal and Enterprise Dispatch editor Lynda Jensen, who sadly passed away June 15, 2010.

I frequently spoke with Lynda on the phone while writing my columns. I very much miss her and our playful bantering.

During one conversation, I said to her, “Lynda, it would be so much fun for you to get on Facebook.” After some hesitation, Lynda eventually agreed and decided to get her own Facebook account.

Of course, once Lynda established her account on Facebook, we included it as a venue for our back-and-forth bantering.

It was a lot of fun for both of us.

We posted photos and links to interesting stories and shared humorous comments via Facebook’s status and text chat program for a little over a year.

Lynda told me, because of Facebook, she was able to find her best friend from college, her pastor, a former co-worker, and other people she knew, which made me feel good.

She also penned a few columns about her adventures on Facebook.

Lynda’s March 2, 2009 column is titled “Dragged into the 21st Century,” which can be read here: https://bit.ly/3buxkdB.

At the start of the column, Lynda wrote, “Learning new technology is kind of like taking a ride on Valleyfair – you get an intense thrill and then feel like throwing up, I always say. Anyway, taking this love/hate thing to a different level, I decided to open a Facebook account; being prodded into this a bit by fellow columnist Mr. Mark Ollig.”

She continued, “This is great because if I don’t like it, I can blame him for my troubles and make him buy me chocolate in compensation.”

The following week, Lynda’s column was titled “Hacking my way through the digital jungle on Facebook,” you can read it at https://bit.ly/3jURnqu.

Lynda began her column March 23, 2009 with, “I must confess that Facebook is more fun than I thought it would be. Part of the blame ... er, I mean reason ... is because I goof around with fun people online who have a great sense of humor and are fun to bug. It’s a pick-me-upper that only takes a few seconds to check online once a day when I get home from work.”

I truly miss those days of playful banter and camaraderie.