A camera-that is what they told us we were building. Actually, it was a really expensive camera. “Psh” is all I could say at the time; we all knew better. There was no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks that the government was spending millions of dollars on a camera. I knew that Eisenhower thought he was a good looking man and liked photographs of himself, but I thought it was brainless of him to send a camera into space just so he could take pictures. Oh, I forgot to mention that one little detail-they wanted me to build a camera that they could send into space.

Before I go any further, my name is Michael Canon, and I build cameras, and not just any cameras, but powerful cameras. I design and construct custom order cameras. These aren’t your regular everyday just-picked-these-up-at-Walmart cameras either. These babies have higher resolutions than an eagle’s eye.

Now picture this: it is the early 1950’s. I picked up this juicy military contract for spy plane cameras, and I have been regularly producing cameras for the military’s U-2 reconnaissance planes. I receive a call from my military contact, a General Tom Gunne who tells me I will be working on a new top secret project with a group of Caltech scientists. At the time, all I could think about is how much I hate Caltech graduates, and if it wasn’t for the money, I wouldn’t be doing the job at all.

Against my better judgment, I fly down to D.C. for our “Top Secret” meeting. We are told that we must design and build a camera that will be sent into space. Well, you should have heard the eruption of laughter that ensued. At the time, it seemed impossible. They really wanted us to send a camera into space. As in the same space that Jules Verne wrote about in his science fiction novels. They thought that we could build a man-made object for them to send into space. We thought it was a joke. After General Gunne reassured us that it was not a joke, we told him it was impossible. Nevertheless, it was their money that they wanted to waste.

There were just so many logistical problems that resulted while developing the camera, resolution being the most prevalent. At best, we could produce a resolution of about 7.5m. To give you a little perspective, if you were to stick three elephants side-by-side, that would be the resolution of the camera. At this resolution, a suburban house might be the size of six to ten dots on the film. We had the problem of transporting the film through the atmosphere. Our camera had to be designed to withstand overwhelming temperatures.

We finally built their camera, but too little too late. In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik. General Gunne said that they would have to be satisfied with the 7.5m resolution, and they sent our first camera into space in 1959. Apparently the camera was more useful than we thought because the US government commissioned us to improve the camera for future missions. That, my friend, is how I was involved in designing and building our first space camera. Now when you use Google Earth, remember me, Michael Canon, one of the first people to design a camera built space tough.