Aerospace History - Your daily dose of nerd

 I am going to divert your attention from the fascinating world of residential real estate (nerd attribute #1) and head up...way up.   

This B-29 Superfortress on the right is where we are headed.  The one and only real estate link between that plane and real estate is that I saw this actual plane fly over my Coldwell Banker office's holiday beach party two weeks ago.   Not a big deal you'd think except... of the 3,970 ever built only 2 still fly today.   They both happened to be at the airshow at Oshkosh that week and one of them flew down over the Chicago north shore area while I was outside.   SO exciting! (nerd attribute #2)  Anyone who is a Star Wars fan (nerd attribute #3) will know this plane as the inspiration for the Millennium Falcon.  Did I mention that my son the engineer was at Oshkosh and got to see the 2 B-29's fly together, the first time 2 of these planes have flown together in nearly 50 years?  (nerd attribute #4)

Back to the point - if you are still reading this I haven't lost you yet so you probably are nerdy enough to know that the GPS you have in your phone or car works because there is a circle of satellites orbiting earth.   (nerd attribute #5)  What if I told you that idea is not so new?

Here is a B-29 being used for non-military needs.  In this case the Westinghouse company along with the Stratovision Company used these aircrafts as tv antennas!   

Back in the day you didn't just turn on the tv and get Howdy Doody by magic, although it certainly felt like it I bet.   If you lived in rural America your tv set received that signal because a series of B-29's were flying across the country with giant antennas hanging down from them.  (See the illustration on the side of the plane?)   They were the precursors to today's ring of satellites.   How flippin' cool is that??? (nerd attribute #6)

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From Wikipedia (but go to the library and find a book about this):  "Stratovision was an airborne television transmission relay system from aircraft flying at high altitudes. In 1945 the Glenn L. Martin Co. and Westinghouse Electric Corporation advocated television coverage of small towns and rural areas as well as the large metropolitan centers by fourteen aircraft that would provide coverage for approximately 78% of the people in the United States This system has been used for domestic broadcasting in the United States, and used by the U.S. military in Vietnam and other countries."