18 December
1958: On 18 December 1958, the world's first communications satellite, SCORE, was launched from Cape Canaveral, United States.
SCORE was an acronym for Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment. It was an experiment designed to test the feasibility of transmitting messages through the upper atmosphere from one ground station to one or more other ground stations.
The result of the project was a major scientific breakthrough which proved that active communications satellites could provide a means of transmitting messages of all sorts from one point to any other on Earth.
