Motorola – Making history since 1928

Motorola has been at the forefront of technological advances since its inception in 1928. Beginning with radio and phone development Motorola quickly moved onto working with government agencies specifically NASA to aid space travel.

Motorola recently celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the 1969 moon landing when Apollo 11 made history with “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, however, a little known fact is the vital help that Motorola contributed to the space programme. Motorola were drafted by NASA to develop the communications equipment for the various manned and unmanned space missions. Precise tracking information during the flight of Apollo was flashed to earth’s stations through Motorola made transponders, a combination of radio transmitters and receivers. These transponders established and maintained communications between the shuttle and earth. This provided the only link the astronauts had with earth after they passed the 30,000 mile mark on their space journey.

Motorola also provided devices which increased the safety of the spacecraft to monitor the large amount of indicators, switches and lights present in the spacecraft. A unit called an “up data link” acted as a fourth pilot by receiving and decoding information from earth and provided 67 functions as it passed the information to other on board systems. This allowed the astronauts to concentrate on more urgent matters in the craft.

Most importantly Motorola produced FM demodulators which received and converted space signals into useable TV signals. Remarkably, Motorola achieved this in less than 60 days allowing the iconic images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon to be transmitted to home TV sets.