First Paris-Istanbul Run of the Orient Express / Sputnik's launch inspired satellite navigation systems - October 4

The Orient Express started its service from Paris to Istanbul, then often called Constantinople, on this day in 1883. / On this day, the Soviets launched Sputnik, which inspired scientists to begin using satellites to create navigation systems.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. Today's episode contains not just one,
but two nuggets of history. These are coming from the
T D I h C Vault, so you'll also here
to hosts. Consider it a double feature. Enjoy the show.
Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you
missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

(00:21):
the past, one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson, and it's October four.
The Orient Express made its first run from Paris to
istan Bull on this day in eight three. At that time,
Iston Bull was more often called Constantinople. The Orient Express is,

(00:45):
of course, the world's most famous train. It was conceived
by George Nagglemackers. He had gone to the United States
and he had seen the Pullan sleeper cars that were
being used on a number of United States train lines.
These were transporting passengers and relatively more luxurious accommodations than
they had in other cars. He wanted something similar and

(01:07):
even better in Europe, so when he got home to
Belgium he started working up a plan. This plan took
him a really long time to put into action, though
he first came up with this whole idea in eighteen
sixty five, and it was almost twenty years before his
train took its first journey that was not all the
way to Istanbul. It was from Paris to Vienna on
June five three. That's well over six hundred miles or

(01:31):
a thousand kilometers, so it's not like this was a
short trip, but it was not nearly to the point
of his very ambitious idea of connecting the whole continent
with an incredibly luxurious train. That first October fourth journey
from Paris to Istanbul was an eighty hour trip was
a media extravaganza. Eighty hours. That sounds like a long time,

(01:56):
but this was much faster and much more comfortable than
any of the ways that you could have gotten to
Istanbul before this. There were lots of reporters on board,
plus diplomats and dignitaries, officials from Nagolmaker's train company, and
they were all marveling at the use wonderfully luxurious accommodations,
with wood paneled cars, dining cars that served fine foods,

(02:20):
silk sheets on the bed and a staff of attentive
people who were ready to serve. Nagol Makers even used
those pullman sleeping cars that had been his original inspiration
to make his own train look better. He got some
really broken down, dilapidated ones to compare them to his
brand new extra fancy train. That last stretch of the

(02:41):
journey from Paris to Constantinople had to be made in
that first trip by steamer. The rail line wasn't completed yet.
Those rails were finished that took the eighty hour trip
down to sixty eight hours from Paris. A new station
opened in constant to Noble in eight nine, and this

(03:02):
train became associated with royalty, the rich and spies. There were,
of course, some actual murders that also did for real
take place on the train. Although this Paris to Istanbul
roots was the big name, most of the Orient Expresses
service was really connecting major European cities with daily service.

(03:23):
The run all the way to Istanbul was just a
couple of times a week. Over time, other train lines
started using the name Orient Express and offering similarly fancy
service along similar routes, and the Orient Expresses all over
fiction although not all of these books and stories and
movies are really about the Orient Express. Some of them

(03:44):
are about some of these other companies that started using
a similar name as time went on. Some of these
works include Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express and
Ian Flemings from Russia with Love. Murder on the Orient
Express is actually set on one of the other Orient Expresses,
not the Orient Express, a car from the Orient Expresses

(04:06):
where German officers surrendered during World War One. That same
car is also the one that Hitler ordered to be
used when France surrendered to Germany during World War Two.
The Paris to Istanbul run of the Orient Express ran
for the last time in ninety seven, and then the
Orient Express itself made its last run in two thousand nine.

(04:29):
Although other outfits have picked up the name or some
version of it, there are some restored cars from the
original Orient Express that are still in use today. Thanks
to Eve's Jeff Cote for her research work on today's podcast,
Antatari Harrison for all of her audio work on this show.
You can subscribe to the Stay in History Class on
Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and wherever il to get your podcasts.

(04:52):
You can tune in tomorrow for a women's march hundreds
of years ago. Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast I'm
Eves and you're listening to This Day in History Class,
a podcast that really takes to heart the phrase you

(05:12):
learn something new every day. The day was October four,
ninety seven. The Soviet Union launched the first artificial Earth satellite,
and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noticed that

(05:32):
the frequency of its radio signal increased as it moved
closer and decreased as it moved farther away. This discovery
led scientists to study how they could use satellites to
locate receivers on Earth, an idea that marked the beginning
of the development of satellite navigation systems and eventually GPS.

(05:54):
After spot Nik launched to physicists at Johns Hopkins Applied
Physics Laboratory Dr Is William Geyer and George Wifenbach tracked
the satellite using the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect is
the change in frequency or a wavelength of a wave
as the waves source and its observer move toward or
away from each other. A familiar illustration of the Doppler

(06:17):
effect is the change in pitch of sirens as an
emergency vehicle approaches and passes by. Chairman of the Applied
Physics Laboratories Research Center, Frank McClure, suggested that if the
satellite position is known, then a navigator on Earth could
receive and process the satellite signal to determine their location.

(06:38):
This led to the creation of the TRANSIT system, the
first satellite based geo positioning system. TRANSIT was developed by
the a p L and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
and it was sponsored by the U. S. Navy. Its
main purpose was to provide location updates to the Navy's
ballistic missile submarines, but it was also used as a

(07:02):
navigation system for surface ships and for surveying. Transit was
fully operational by nineteen sixty four. In nineteen sixty seven,
Transit became available for civilian use, but scientists realized that
a more accurate navigation system that could operate all day,
every day would be better than TRANSIT. Transit had high

(07:25):
accuracy compared to other navigation systems, but it still had limitations.
The technology and techniques developed for TRANSIT contributed to the
introduction of the Global Positioning System, or GPS, so did
the development of other programs like Tomation and but by
the early nineteen seventies, US defense officials realized that it

(07:48):
would be advantageous to have a single satellite based navigation
system with several military applications, rather than having a bunch
of expensive ones. The first rational GPS satellite was launched
in nineteen seventy eight, and by nine three GPS reached
initial operational capability with a full constellation of twenty four satellites.

(08:12):
Two years later, GPS became fully operational with twenty seven satellites,
three of which were spares. From the beginning, GPS was
a dual use system, meaning that it was made for
civilian and military use. The Transit System ended its navigation
service in nine six since GPS technology had improved greatly

(08:34):
and deemed it obsolete, and in two thousand, the Defense
Department ended the selective availability of GPS, which meant that
it was no longer purposefully degrading the signal for civilian users.
GPS receivers now have a much higher accuracy than they
did at the time of this switch. As GPS technology advanced,

(08:55):
it became available in more personal products like car navigation
devices and cell phones. I'm Eve stepf Coote and hopefully
you know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. You can find us on social media at
t D i h C Podcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook,

(09:15):
and you can email us at this Day at I
heart media dot com. Thanks again for listening, and have
a fantastic twenty four hours until we see you again.

(09:38):
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