Talk:Herman Potočnik

Untitled
What is this supposed to mean?

Through Clarke's work (Wireless World, 1945) his book was introduced to the first concept of geostationary telecommunication satellite and later to the artistic works (e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968).
 * Yes, what. As I understand English, it's okay for me, but I guess it is not perfect. So let's make it clearer. Once Clarke admited he had 'borrowed' many ideas directly from Poto&#269;nik. Nice gesture so rarely seen among the great people, right? Of course I've picked up the sentence from around somewhere and I think it simply says that in Wireless World Poto&#269;nik's book was mentioned as a source of an idea for GT satellite. What happened in Space Odyssey we all know, where we can admire Strauss' music together with rotating Space stations. Another thing is, I believe, this is a sort of poetical speaking and shows that it doesn't come from scientific areas but from artistic ones. You can change it somehow of course but don't change the context. There are many sentences around in Wikipedia that are not even close to perfect. Please reply if there is something else to clearify. And try not to be anonymous. Best regards. --XJamRastafire 22:10 Sep 17, 2002 (UTC)

Clarke referred to Noordung's book in his Wireless World paper, but did not fully explain its significance re communications. Many years later, people started asking Clark why he still claimed to have invented geostationary communications satellites*, when it all came from Noordung. Clark then claimed that he did not know what the book said because he did not read German (so how did he know that the book was relevant at all?). Also, there was an English translation in the library of the American Rocket Society, with which organisation Clark claimed to be in frequent contact. Of course, Clark could get away with this blatant plagiarism in 1945. At that time, who wanted to know about the ideas of a long-dead German? (Likewise, the historical fact that Radar was invented, by a German, before the FIRST world war is still dismissed even now; together with the final 'insult to British ingenuity' that the invention of the gas-turbine pre-dates Whittle's birth by well over 100 years). It is even baffling why the geostationary orbit is called a Clark orbit (as baffling as why an important scientific unit is named after a crackpot [Tesla]). The GSO concept is so trivial that Newton would not have even seen the point of addressing it. He instead amused himself by calculating orbits within a hollow Earth!
 * People (notably Playboy magazine) also started pointedly asking him why so many of his stories could be construed to be homo-erotic.

Another question? What is wrong with this:
 * With his many 'authentic' ideas he became...

His work was original those days so that's why authentic. Am I missing something here :) --XJamRastafire 22:14 Sep 17, 2002 (UTC)
 * First say original ideas if that is what is meant. "Authentic ideas" means "not counterfeit ideas" or "un-genuine ideas". I can't imagine what a counterfeit idea would be.
 * I see. This is then just my poor Slovene-English vocabulary and the differences between these two languages.

Second if as you say the other sentence means that Clarke was introduced to the idea of geosynchronous satellites by this book, I still don't know what the book had to do with 2001. I don't remember any geosynchronous communications satellites in the movie, am I forgeting something? (The way the sentence reads now Mr. Clarke taught Mr. Potocnik's book about satellites. Not sure how you teach a book anything.)  --rmhermen
 * No, you are not forgeting anything. I meant that some of his 'original' ideas from his book was later seen in the artistic works as Clarke's book and Kubrick's film were. And by chanse it is known that Kubrick also knew a lot from the Slovene world. --XJamRastafire 15:14 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Hello! I would just like to suggest the administrator or whoever responsible to erase the "The introduction to this article may be too long." banner, unless you have some further demands that were not fulfilled in today's "cleaning up". Yours faithfully, Blaz Sef (talk) 15:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Translation?
Is translation this article? Many grammar English fix need. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 08:48, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

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