Search results for ""Author Martin Collins""

In a post–Cold War world, the Iridium satellite network revealed a new age of globalization.Winner of the William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award by the IEEEIn June 1990, Motorola publicly announced an ambitious business venture called Iridium. The project’s signature feature was a constellation of 77 satellites in low-Earth orbit which served as the equivalent of cellular towers, connecting to mobile customers below using wireless hand-held phones. As one of the founding engineers noted, the constellation “bathed the planet in radiation,” enabling a completely global communications system. Focusing on the Iridium venture, this book explores the story of globalization at a crucial period in US and international history. As the Cold War waned, corporations and nations reoriented toward a new global order in which markets, neoliberal ideology, and the ideal of a borderless world predominated. As a planetary-scale technological system, the project became emblematic of this shift and of the role of the United States as geopolitical superpower. In its ambition, scope, challenges, and organizing ideas, the rise of Iridium provides telling insight into how this new global condition stimulated a re-thinking of corporate practices—on the factory floor, in culture and knowledge, and in international relations.Combining oral history interviews with research in corporate records, Martin Collins opens up new angles on what global meant in the years just before and after the end of the Cold War. The first book to tell the story of Iridium in this context, A Telephone for the World is a fascinating look at how people, nations, and corporations across the world grappled in different ways with the meaning of a new historical era.

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'They Also Serve Who Stand And Wait' tells the story of the U.S. Replacement Depot at Pheasey Farms Estate in Great Barr, Birmingham during World War II. Part of the half-built housing estate was requisitioned by the British forces at the outbreak of the war and in 1942 the first group of American soldiers moved in. The book is a fascinating insight into the day to day activity on the base, with many moving accounts from those involved, and also deals with the impact that the American soldiers had on the surrounding area of Walsall and Birmingham.

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"The Friendly Invasion of Leominster" relates the activities of a number of American units based in Leominster during World War II. During its history the Herefordshire market town had been no stranger to invasions from across the Welsh border, but in 1943 it was to encounter an incursion of another type. The invasion of U.S. soldiers was a friendly one, although not all of Leominster's residents recognised it as such at the time. On the outskirts of Leominster, Barons Cross became home to the doctors and nurses of the 76th and 135th U.S. Army General Hospitals and patients from the hostilities on the Continent. In the build up to D. Day, American units occupied camps in the grounds of Berrington Hall and in the town. Some of these units, such as the 5th Ranger Battalion and the 90th Infantry Division were to play a major part in the D. Day landings. Others, such as the 7th Armored Division and the 736th Field Artillery Battalion landed after D. Day and took part in the liberation of France. This book describes each unit's time in Leominster, using eyewitness accounts and photographs, and then follows the unit across the English Channel and through Europe.

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U.S. Army Hospital Center 804’ tells the story of five U.S. Army hospitals located on the Shropshire/Flintshire border during World War II: Llanerch Panna, Penley, Iscoyd Park, Oteley Deer Park and Halston Hall. They were built by British contractors during 1942-44 and used by American hospital units until the end of the war in Europe. When the American units left the area some of the hospital sites were used by displaced Poles. For a few months at the end of 1944/beginning of 1945 the hospital at Iscoyd Park treated German Prisoners of War. The headquarters of the 5 hospitals - Hospital Center 804 was first located in Gwemheylod (Flintshire) and later moved to Whitchurch (Shropshire). U.S. ARMY HOSPITAL CENTER 804 An AawMolltis U& Military Hospitals in lb. This book looks at the day to day activities at the hospitals using archive material and accounts and previously unpublished photos from those who were there at the time and their relatives. It also looks in depth at the stories of some of the patient-soldiers who passed through the hospitals. It touches on the impact the occupants of the camps and other U.S. camps in the area, had on the surrounding towns, with particular regard to Wrexham in Flintshire.

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