Shortly after midnight on October 5 at precisely 0015 GMT, the British Broadcasting Corporation listening station at Tatsfield, just south of London, recorded the now famous “beep‐beep” of Sputnik I on its very first transit. News of this detection and the official Russian announcement of the satellite launching were flashed almost simultaneously to a startled world. Thus began two months of feverish but magnificent improvisation and observation which saw the British in the forefront of the Western scientists engaged in tracking the Russian satellites.