Facebook Drones Hardly New Idea

I had to chuckle when I read about Facebook’s new venture.  Last week Facebook announced that it had successfully conducted the first test flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone, a small-scale model, was used to test the characteristics of a larger vehicle.  The proposed solar-powered drones with a wingspan of a commercial 737 aircraft, would fly for months or even years at about 80,000 ft.  If proven viable, the technology would provide affordable and reliable internet access to millions now unserved, especially in third world countries.  Google, Boeing and others have been looking at similar uses of high altitude drones.

The big benefit of such a system is that radio signals from a single aircraft flying so high can cover a tremendous area back on earth.  Using cellular technology to cover that same area would require hundreds or even thousands of cell towers, each requiring electric power and some hard-wired or radio connection back to the internet backbone. 

I had to laugh at the reports claiming this idea was so innovative because the concept and a working system, using basically the same components, was in operation right here in the tristate beginning in the 1960s. 

Dubbed MPATI (Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction) the initiative provided broadcasts of educational TV programs to schools unserved by a terrestrial station.  To accomplish this, the programs were broadcast from two DC6 aircrafts flying in a figure eight pattern about 25,000 ft. above Muncie, Indiana.  The planes, based at Purdue University, each had equipment on board capable of transmitting to an area of about 500 miles in diameter.  The local PBS station, CET, was a major supplier of programming for MPATI which operated from 1961 thru 1968.

Earlier experiments of this system were conducted by CBS.  The commercial network was investigating a way to provide pay TV and movies to viewers in the New York area.  Think of it as an HBO before satellites and modern cable.

Obviously the technology has improved exponentially over the 1960’s experiments conducted right here in our backyard.  But it does point out that innovation and creativity did not begin with the digital age.