Dan Berg
Institute Professor

"... there are two remembrances that stand out very strongly related to the launch of Sputnik.

The first was that in the shock that resulted, the laboratory with which I was then associated, Westinghouse research laboratories in Pittsburgh, hired a Russian tutor from one of the local universities to give us a course so that we would learn to read Russian technical literature.  Additionally, the laboratories created weekend lectures for science oriented high school students, which we called "Saturday Science".  This continues to this day.

The other major impression that sticks in my mind is that we had an 85 year old woman family friend, who had told us many anecdotes about being a suffragette and getting women the right to vote and her individual efforts to do so.  She, one night after dinner, insisted on viewing the skies from the hill in the back of my home to see ECHO the reflecting passive satellite as it passed overhead and was visible by reflected sunlight.  This was about 1960 and I remember her childlike amazement and her wishing to participate in this new age and the glories to come."