Fun Facts Friday: Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke (16 December, 1917 – 19 March, 2008) was a a British author and futurist. Mr. Clarke is well known for his science-fiction writing including 2001: A Space Odyssey.

1)      As a child, Mr. Clarke built his own telescopes.

2)      In his 1945 magazine article, Mr. Clarke explained how satellites relaying radio and  TV signals in geostationary orbit would provide a global communication network. Mr. Clarke put the satellites at 22,236 miles above the Earth. Today’s telecommunication satellites are at that height known as the “Clarke Orbit”.

3)      Mr. Clarke was a passionate scuba diver and moved to Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka) to partake in his new passion.

4)      During a diving expedition in his first year at his new country, he discovered the ruins of a 2,000 year old Koneswaram temple.

5)      Mr. Clarke went on to publish several diving books and even opened up a diving school.

6)      At an elderly age, confined to a wheel chair, Mr. Clarke still managed to participate in smaller dives.

7)      He predicted home computers, e-mail, Skype and smart watches (even  though we’re still waiting for the space elevator and humans on Mars by 1994).

8)      2001: A Space Odyssey was loosely based on a 1948 short story called The Sentinel. Mr. Clarke wrote the novel and the screen play at the same time.

9)      Mr. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick won the 1969 Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for their collaboration on 2001: A Space Odyssey screenplay.

10)   Among the many accolades that Mr. Clarke was awarded were , the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards for his stories, and was a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and voted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Mr. Clarke was also awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Kalinga prize for helping to popularize science and a Marconi International Fellowship for his engineering work. In 2000, Mr. Clarke was formally named a Knight of the British Empire.

Zohar – Man of la Book