A bit of the IGY at the Thailand 2023 World Stamp Championship

In a recent post, I talked about my geophilately presentation at the Geological Society of America meeting. A conclusion I reached was that if I sought to reach a greater audience with my thoughts on geophilately, the best way to do so would be via written articles for philatelic newsletters, magazines, and journals. I am not sure how much energy I have to travel down that path, but I took a first stab with a short informal piece I did for the newsletter of the Philatelic Society of Lancaster County. You’ll find my article, “A serendipitous visit to the Thailand 2023 World Stamp Championship” on page 10 of the current issue. Don’t worry, there is a little bit on an IGY stamp in there. (You also might find one typo which snuck its way into the production process.)

 The web page for the expo is here.

Logo for the expo

Antarctic ice thickness sounding, and the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition during the IGY

I try to be careful about expanding the scope of my two topical collections (IGY and North American earthquakes). This is a short explanation of the decision to expand of my IGY collection to include the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955–1958.

I was catching up on reading some old issues of magazines and journals, and I came across an article entitled "How Thick Is Antarctic Ice, and What Is Underneath? Scientists used electromagnetic fields to determine the thickness of fast ice," by Saima May Sidik, in Eos, 104, published by the American Geophysical Union,  22 February 2023.

This news article describes a paper by Langhorne et al. that provided more reliable estimates of Antarctic fast ice (sea ice that is "fastened" to the coastline, to the sea floor along shoals, or to grounded icebergs - see figure below) thickness by using a technique of airborne geophysics, specifically electromagnetic induction sounding. A sensor called a “bird” is towed beneath the aircraft at an altitude of 15 meters above ground level. A magnetic field is transmitted through the ice into the conductive seawater  below which then induces electric currents that the bird can detect. The resulting data are used to infer the ice thickness. This technique has several advantages over previous methods: a wider geographic range than drilling into the ice; penetration of saline sea ice, unlike radar; and more certain estimates than satellites.

Some of the most common sea-ice related features, including  fast ice. The bear provides an approximate scale for this scenario (Wikipedia)

The researchers used the system to survey a 700-km-long section of coast in the Ross Sea, home to the Scott Base, McMurdo, and Zucchelli research stations (see a map of the stations in this post). The area is known for its floating glaciers and ice shelves which are stabilized by fast ice. Fast ice in the region was found to be typically 2-3 meters thick. 

A search revealed that a stamp issued in 2022 by New Zealand's Ross Dependency depicts this method (Scott NZ-RO L177), showing a helicopter towing a bird (see right). This image is from colnect, not my collection. This stamp is one of four stamps comprising a Science on Ice miniature sheet.

Determining Antarctic ice thickness was also a goal of the IGY, although more for the continental ice sheet rather than for fast ice. For example, right after I left off my reviews in this blog of the IGY Bulletin with Number 9, issue Number 10 started with an article on "IGY Antarctic oversnow traverses." It describes three major oversnow traverses planned by the U.S. IGY Committee for the 1957-58 summer season, shown on the map below.

Traverses across the Ross Ice Shelf from the Little America Station, over parts of Marie Byrd Land and the Ellsworth Highland from Byrd Station, and across the Filchner Ice Shelf and parts of Edith Ronne Land from Ellsworth Station.

On these traverses, coring along with ground-based geophysical methods of seismics, gravity, and geomagnetism were used to infer continental ice sheet thicknesses of as much as 10,000 feet (3000 m).

Simplified cross-sectional profiles of the continental ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica (https://opentextbc.ca/geology/chapter/16-2-how-glaciers-work/)

Scott GB-AT 47, my collection

I wondered if there were any IGY stamps that focused on Antarctic ice thickness. Another search in colnect led me to such a stamp on seismic depth sounding from the British Antarctic Territory (Scott GB-AT 147, shown at right), issued in 1988 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58. This was from a four-stamp series which I then bought. 

The other three stamps in the series, shown here, have themes of the aurorae, aircraft, and a Sno-cat.

I also bought this first day cover with cachet including all four of the stamps.

Cover showing all four stamps from the BAT 1988 set commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (scanned from online, since my purchase has not yet arrived).

I decided this Expedition and its anniversary would be legitimate components of my IGY collection. According to Wikipedia:

The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (CTAE) of 1955–1958 was a Commonwealth-sponsored expedition that successfully completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica, via the South Pole. It was the first expedition to reach the South Pole overland for 46 years, preceded only by Amundsen's expedition and Scott's expedition in 1911 and 1912.

It was headed by British explorer Vivian Fuchs, with New Zealander [mountaineer] Sir Edmund Hillary leading the New Zealand Ross Sea Support team. The New Zealand party included scientists participating in International Geophysical Year [emphasis mine] research while the British team were separately based at Halley Bay.

Route map of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Reed Gallery)

The British Antarctic Territory (consisting of the South Shetland Islands, South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula with a sector of the continent extending to the South Pole) issued stamps in 1963, 1966, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, and then annually since 1977. It's interesting that the BAT only issued these four Antarctic stamps in 1988, the lowest number in any one year. A smoothed graph I made of the issuances per year shows a 5-year decline starting after 1983, then a general rise until 2012 and another decrease since then. Whatever significance there may be in these trends is beyond me.

Issuance of stamps by British Antarctic Territory. Data from Colnect.

More on related covers in future posts.

My presentation on geophilately at the Geological Society of America meeting

For those of you only want the link to the Slides show of the presentation, you will find it here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uigQohlpkoor0E6n5_XLtwLmSy5SVKWfB4vNEo_xWQ/edit?usp=drive_link

Although I have been very quiet here, I have been keeping busy with my two geoscience-oriented philatelic collections, the one on the International Geophysical Year that I have been working on for 20-some years that I highlight in this blog, and the more recent one -- last three years or so -- on U.S. earthquakes. 

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the U.S. did not initially issue a stamp commemorating Explorer 1, which was the second satellite to orbit the Earth, after the Soviets' Sputnik 1. A document signed by CIA director Allen Dulles stated that "it might be unwise to issue such a stamp in view of the obvious disparity which now exists between our accomplishments in the satellite field and those of the USSR."

Well, apparently there is what I think is an analogous reason for the fact that the U.S. has never issued a stamp about an earthquake or any other natural disaster. I mentioned the U.S. Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee in an earlier post. The Committee stated its criteria for possible U.S. stamps in 2019 as given at https://about.usps.com/who/csac/#criteria. One criterion on the list states that:

The stamp program commemorates positive contributions to American life, history, culture and environment; therefore, negative occurrences and disasters will not be commemorated on U.S. postage stamps or stationery.

That would seem to rule out earthquake stamps, as well as being second to the Soviets. 

My collection consists of about 250 postcards, some letters, and a few cinderella stamps about U.S. (and a few other North American) earthquakes. My ideal item is a postcard that was posted from the epicentral region soon after the earth occurred with a picture of the affected region and a written message related to the earthquake.

Other nations do issue earthquake stamps, either to raise money with so called semi-postal (charity) stamps, because of the historical significance of such events, to honor those who were impacted, or to recognize recovery efforts. (I have a few such stamps, one shown below, but I am not collecting them.)

Commemorative mini-sheet of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, from my collection

Anyway, back to the presentation I will be giving. I winnowed my professional memberships after retirement. I had stayed a member of the American Geophysical Union, but resigned from the Geological Society of America. But a couple of months ago, I had a look at the GSA website, and noticed the GSA annual meeting was coming to Pittsburgh, in my state of Pennsylvania albeit on the other end. I had wondered whether my stamp collections in the general area I like to call geophilately would warrant a presentation at a professional meeting. You know, add a bit of professional veneer to my hobby. And I noticed a session at the meeting entitled Outside the Classroom, Beyond Fieldwork: Innovative Approaches to Informal Geoscience Education in Non-Traditional Settings with this description:

This session highlights informal education projects that combine innovative approaches to geoscience education with non-traditional settings and open unique opportunities to reach novel audiences.

I decided that my modest efforts to share my collections with both philatelic and geoscientific audiences, including this blog, could be the subject of a talk. So here is the Slides show of the resulting presentation that I will be making (still subject to edits) this coming Wednesday:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uigQohlpkoor0E6n5_XLtwLmSy5SVKWfB4vNEo_xWQ/edit?usp=drive_link

Two sample slides are shown below.

Happy 66th birthday, IGY

Today marks the 66th anniversary of the beginning of the IGY. 

An earlier post discussed the role of President Eisenhower in the IGY, including a video of his speech for its opening,

The Eisenhower Library lists a number of online docuuments about the IGY. That web page also excerpts a quote from President Eisenhower's speech in a video from the post above, that "the most important result of the International Geophysical Year is that demonstration of the ability of peoples of all nations to work together harmoniously for the common good. I hope this can become common practice in other fields of human endeavor."

Apropos of the international aspect of the IGY, I recently bought  my first IGY-related cover with United Nations stamps.

Cover IN245 in my collection

The stamps are United Nations (New York) 49 and 50 in the Scott catalog, representing weather satellites launched by the World Meteorological Organization. The role of the WMO in the IGY was mentioned in a previous post .

The postmark was from the USS Wyandot, dated during the IGY, and the cachet lauds its roll during Operation Deep Freeze, which provided critical infrastructure in support of the IGY program in Antarctica.

As Eisenhower hoped, if only that IGY and United Nations spirit of international cooperation in the name of scientific advances for the good of humanity were more widespread today!

Recent 65th anniversary of the issuance of the U.S. IGY stamp

The U.S. IGY stamp was issued on May 31, 1958. Recently we saw the 65th anniversary of that date. Happy, birthday, 1107! Congratulations on becoming a senior citizen.

I recently bought a cover which contained 5 of these stamps. 

Cover IGY 254 (front) from my collection

Cover IGY 254 (back) from my collection

This cover has several notable characteristics:

1. It is franked with a block of  four IGY stamps (Scott 1107).
2. The block has a first day of issue (5-31-58) cancellation for this stamp.
3. A single additional IGY stamp on the cover was cancelled (using a barrel/football) with a postmark from Quaker Hill, CT, on 7-26-1958. The cover was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. L.C. Maples in Quaker Hill.
4. Typed on the cover: "Carried on USS Skate (SSN578) on first under-ice crossing under North Pole. Achieved 12 August 1958." 
5. The cover is signed by James F. Calvert, the distinguished commander of the Skate.
6. Typed on the cover: "Courtesy of F.G. Weigle", an acoustic physicist who sailed on the Skate. I'm not sure exactly what "courtesy of " means in this case; perhaps he typed on the text and secured the signature.
7. The front includes the Artmaster IGY cachet (Mellone 4).
8. On the back of the cover is a nice cachet noting the USS Skate's polar ice cap cruise during the IGY.

The USS Skate (SSN-578) was: the lead ship of the Skate class of nuclear submarines; the third nuclear submarine commissioned by the U.S. the second submarine to reach the North Pole (8-11-58 during this voyage, after the USS Nautilus had done so in 1957); the first to surface at the North Pole through the ice cap (in 1959); and the first to make a completely submerged trans-Atlantic crossing.

The history of this cover is not 100% clear to me. I assume the International Geophysical Year FDC was produced first. The cover was postmarked again on 7-26-1958 in CT, near the ship's home in Groton. This date was before the Skate departed for the North Pole  on July 30. But the text says the cover was carried on the USS Skate's voyage underneath the polar ice cap. So I don't understand how the dates mesh. Could it have been postmarked before the ship departed, traveled on the ship, and then delivered after the expedition without an additional franking? Or sent on the ship without a postal marking, managed by Weigle, and then mailed to Quaker Hill upon its return (I lean towards this interpretation)? Or could there be another explanation? It may be worth noting that the submarine base in New London, CT, the Skate's base, is only 4 miles from Quaker Hill. Thanks for any suggestions.

I appealed for help to better understand this cover to the Facebook group of the Universal Ship Cancellation Society, and although I got some appreciation of the item, no one completely answered my questions. If any of you, dear readers, can shed additional light, please let me  know.

Hungarian National Committee for the IGY, Sopron, and the Pan-European Picnic

I recently bought an interesting item on eBay, one for which I was the sole bidder, so it was not very expensive. It was a sheet signed by the members of the Hungarian National Committee for the IGY. Countries participating in the IGY had national committees to organize and guide the work done by scientists from that country.

Members and signatures of the Hungarian National Committee for the IGY

I am assuming the officers were the key figures on this committee. Prof. A. Tározy-Hornoch is listed as academician, president of the committee, and representing the field of geodesy (shape and gravitational field of the Earth). Prof. L. Egyed is listed as secretary of the committee, representing the field of seismology. I found a little more information online about these two scientists.

Prof. A. Tározy-Hornoch (1900-1986) was a university professor in Sopron and one of the most prominent figures in 20th century Hungarian geodesy. He is the eponym for Hungary's Tárczy-Hornoch Antal Geodetic Laboratory, used for the development and calibration of geodetic instruments and devices. 

According to Wikipedia, Prof. László  Egyed  (1914-1970) was a professor at the Geophysical Institute of the Eötvös-University in Budapest. He published over 100 scientific articles. He wrote the book Physics of the Solid Earth in 1956; I don't think a translation exists, but it would be interesting to read this book to survey the field of geophysics just prior to the IGY. 

Egyed was a supporter of the expanding Earth hypothesis, a suggested alternative to plate tectonics. According to this post from Scientific American, Egyed based his thinking on variations of the sea level in the geological past, concluding that today's continents are the remains of the ancient crust of a smaller planet, surrounded by younger rocks generated along fractures at the mid-ocean-ridges. Popular Mechanics had an article describing expanding Earth ideas in more detail.

This document is reminiscent of my last post, about my one-page exhibit which included covers featuring three key personnel of the U.S. National Committee for the IGY: Joseph Kaplan (chairperson), A. H. Shapley (vice chairperson), and Hugh Odishaw (executive secretary).

I could not easily find much information on Hungary's activities as part of the IGY, but it did establish the Nagycenk Geophysical Observatory in 1956-57, operated during the IGY and since by the Geodetic and Geophysical Institute of the Earth Science Center, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The observatory makes continuous records of Earth electrical currents, atmospheric electricity, ionospheric and meteorological observations.

In 2009, I was at a geophysics conference in Tározy-Hornoch's Sopron, the XIth International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) Scientific Assembly. I sent myself a postcard prepared for the event. It is franked with what seems to be a somewhat standardized Hungarian postage stamp, similar to Scott 3926a, showing a surveying compass and map of Hungary. The word Belföld means domestic (I think), so other stamps were added to make the international postage. Magyarország is Hungarian for Hungary. The non-standardized label on the stamp margin gives the date and place of the IAGA meeting. There is a corresponding IAGA 2009 cancellation of the stamps. Maybe Prof. Tározy-Hornoch himself walked the halls of the conference building in an earlier era.

Front of self-addressed postcard from IAGA 2009, Sopron

Back of postcard from IAGA 2009, Sopron

While I was in Sopron, I took a wonderful bike ride into the countryside, where I saw the impressive Fertőrákos limestone quarry (photo at right). The quarry was used as early as Roman times, but nowadays there are concerts in an amphitheater among the cavernous excavations. This was also the area of the so-called Pan-European Picnic two decades earlier in 1989, the first place where East Germans on holiday were allowed to cross the border unimpeded into Austria and the West. Soon afterwards the Berlin Wall fell (I stood on top of it in the week before Christmas, 1989), and then everything else! 

This exhibit in Sopron commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Pan-European picnic

Once I got to the Neusiedler See on my bike ride, a cold beer really hit the spot

My third annual one-page philatelic exhibit - administrator-scientists of the IGY

The American Topical Association has now posted its 3rd annual round of 1-page exhibits on philatelic topics.

In 2021, I contributed a 1-page exhibit derived from my IGY collection, showing one IGY stamp from each of the 19 countries that issued IGY stamps between 1957 and 1959.You can find a copy of my exhibit here.

Last year, using my other philatelic collection on North American earthquakes, my 1-pager was about the encounter of the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides, with the Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933. You can see that poster here.

This year I have returned to the IGY for my ATA 1-page exhibit.  After I bought the IGY cover signed by Lloyd Berkner that I shared in my last post, I decided to do my exhibit featuring covers signed by significant figures in the IGY. That exhibit is posted here, or you can see it below. It shows 5 first day covers bearing the U.S. IGY stamp (Scott 1107) and involving arguably the top 5 (or at least 5 of the) most influential CSAGI (Chapman and Bartels) and U.S. (Kaplan, Shapley, and Odishaw) officers of the IGY. Four of the covers are signed. The Kaplan cover has no signature, but it does include a cachet with his picture.

My ATA 1-page exhibit for 2023

In an earlier post, I mentioned that CSAGI's (Comité Spécial de l'Anée Géophysique Internationale) five officers (see photo below) included Sydney Chapman (president) and Lloyd Berkner (Vice President). That post included the cover with Chapman's signature.

 A meeting of the Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year, known by its French acronym CSAGI, in Brussels in June 1957, included Vladimir V. Beloussov of the Soviet Union, left, Lloyd V. Berkner of the United States, [Marcel] Nicolet [of Belgium], Jean Coulomb of France, and Sydney Chapman of the United Kingdom (NASA)

 

The U.S. National Committee for the IGY included Hugh Odishaw as its executive director. I also previously showed my cover signed by Odishaw.

I couldn't really find any online sites that describes the U.S. IGY Committee. In another earlier post, I mentioned that I own a copy of the Proposed United States Program for the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58, a 105-page document published in 1955 by the United States National Committee for the International Geophysical Year. It states in the introduction (p. ix) that organizations critical for each nation that developed its own IGY program would be the "adhering bodies" which would provide the focuses (foci) for those national committees and their programs. In the U.S., this body was the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. In turn, the Academy organized the U.S. National Committee for the IGY to "plan, direct, and execute the IGY program." The Committee members were listed inside the front cover shown, where you will see the names of Kaplan, Shapley, and Odishaw.

People on the U.S. National Committee for the IGY

I found a rather informative, chatty and interesting transcription of an oral interview with Alan Shapley by historians of science Ron Doell and Fae Korsmo, much of it about the IGY and its organization. Lots of interesting history and anecdotes, including about Chapman, Bartels, Kaplan and Odishaw, told with humor and some colorful observations of various participants. The interview was done in 2003, by which time Shapley had long survived these other luminaries (Chapman, 1888-1970; Berkner,1905-1967; Kaplan,1902-1991; Shapley, 1919-2006; Odishaw, 1916-1984), so that allowed him to be quite candid about the IGY program and its personnel: 

"Berkner was the wheeler-dealer" in the formulation of the IGY. 

He "didn’t want to be involved nationally in the US program ... So they hit upon Joe Kaplan, of UCLA, whose claim to fame was not really in geophysics. But he identified what are now known as the Vegard-Kaplan bands in the spectrum of the aurora. That’s almost the only thing he did except defend their football team." 

"How they hit upon me [Shapley himself], I don’t know."

"Chapman that said he had to solve or take the problems globally instead of as polar-wise [like the First and Second International Polar Years]. So I don’t think Berkner should get any credit for broadening things."

"Merle Tuve ... was a member of the US National Committee, and he was a very feisty person. A wonderful person, in contrast to some of the other people." 

"Odishaw’s first reaction on the International Geophysical Year was 'What the hell is that?' "

"Hugh and I were buddies. Joe Kaplan was a mouthpiece. Not to denigrate him, but Hugh and I did all the tactics and strategy."

"I was Staff Sergeant for the whole US program. Hugh and I were running the U.S. program. We manipulated Joe Kaplan as necessary."

Next year I may do a similar 1-page exhibit with signatures of 5 other prominent IGY scientists. Stay tuned.

A notable new acquisition - an IGY first day cover signed by Lloyd Berkner

 I recently was lucky to find a cover with a specific signature I had been looking for, at a modest price no less.

Lloyd Berkner signature on cacheted first day cover for U.S. IGY stamp            (cover US250 in my collection)

The first day cover features the U.S. IGY stamp (Scott 1107). The cachet is a common one by Art Craft, with one image showing (seismic?) measurements being made in Antarctica, and the other a montage of a rocket launch/Earth-orbiting satellite/tracking station.

But what makes this cover special is the signature by Lloyd V. Berkner, Vice president of CSAGI. Berkner (1905-1967) had a distinguished career as a radio engineer (including with the 1933 Byrd Antarctic expedition and later with the Navy in WWII), ionospheric scientist, and proponent of international cooperation in science.

Lloyd Berkner (Hales, 1992)

Berkner was vice president of CSAGI, as shown in his signature. "CSAGI is the acronym for Comité Spécial de l'Anée Géophysique Internationale, French for The Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year. This group was formed by the International Council for Scientific Unions (ICSU) to develop and coordinate the IGY. CSAGI met for the first time in October, 1952, almost 5 years before the start of the IGY, and organized a number of meetings after that to coordinate the various national committees working on the different subdisciplines of the IGY" (from an earlier post).

One of Berkner's greatest contributions to international science was his suggestion that after the First International Polar Year in 1882-83 and the Second International Polar Year 25 years later in 1932-33,  a Third International Polar Year should be scheduled twenty-five years after the second, instead of after another fifty years. Initial plans for this 3rd IPY took place in April, 1950, at a dinner party at the home of James Van Allen in Silver Spring, Maryland (where I lived from 1968-1972). Sidney Chapman later suggested it be called the International Geophysical Year (Korsmo, 2007). Berkner argued that technologies developed during World War II would enable improved studies of Antarctica, that 1957-58 would be a year of sun spot maximum, and that those present at the party would presumably still be alive and able to participate in such an endeavor in 1957-58 but not 25 years later in 1982-83 (Hales, 1992).

I have this book, published shortly after the IGY, in my library: Science in Space, Lloyd V. Berkner and Hugh Odishaw (editors), McGraw Hill, New York, 1961, 458 p.

The 20 articles review basic science that can be done in space and the use of experiments in space to learn about the Earth and our solar system.

I'll return to Lloyd Berker and Hugh Odishaw in an upcoming post.

A new way to subscribe to this (and other) blogs?

If you are looking for my last post with IGY content, look at the previous one. My posts continue to be less frequent than they used to be. But I have a couple ideas for posts up my sleeve.

I briefly had this post up earlier, hence the date of Jan. 5. But I unposted it in order to do a little more testing. It seems like a few months ago, Blogger disabled the ability to subscribe to receive email notifications of blog posts, and also no longer sends out notifications of posts for those who had previously subscribed. My editor found something online verifying this had happened, although I can't relocate that. I don't know why this useful feature was disabled. As an alternative, I am planning to email previous subscribers or anyone who is interested when new posts come out. Email me if you want to opt out of that.

So I am testing one alternative with this post. I came across the website Blogtrottr. The home page says that "Blogtrottr delivers updates from all of your favourite news, feeds, and blogs directly to your email inbox, giving you the flexibility to stay updated whilst on the go." Ok, maybe it is Canadian or British, but that's ok.

From the Blogtrottr web page

To get started you input the URL of the blog feed you wish to subscribe to and your email address. I did this for myself for this blog and a few others to see if it worked.

It indeed seems to work fine, generating an email to me when one of my selected blogs has a new post. You receive an email with the text of the blog that you registered. The email does come with "personalized" ads, and you don't get the option to skip or change what some algorithm thinks is an ad that is right for you. Of course, it is hard to be sure what happens to any information about ourselves that we reveal on the internet. But you could consider using Blogtrottr if you are so inclined. If you know of an alternative approach, please let me know.

This post has pretty much nothing to do with the IGY itself, although sharing information effectively was a key part of that endeavor.

Anniversary of the end of Sputnik 1

Happy 2023 to everyone. I notice that I did not blog once in December. I am not planning to stop, but my pace has certainly languished. I will probably not return to the biweekly pace I tended to keep for much of the last couple of years. No resolutions here, but we will see what the New Year brings.

I was looking for a historical event to post on the right sidebar, and it turns out today is the 65th anniversary of the death of Sputnik 1, first satellite into space, launched as intended during the International Geophysical Year. In a previous post I noted the anniversary of Sputnik 1's launch on Oct 4, 1957, three months into the IGY. Another post filled in additional technical details of the mission. Three months later, on Jan. 4, 1958, after 1,440 orbits each lasting 90 minutes, the satellite burned up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is a cute video on how satellites stay in orbit, and why their orbits eventually decay.

By the way, the European Space agency defines low Earth orbit (LEO), where atmospheric drag degrades satellite orbits, as an elevation of less than 1,000 km above the Earth's surface. Sputnik 1's orbital elevation ranged from 215 km at perigee to 939 km at apogee, so it qualified as being in LEO.

Forbes.com actually posted an article in 2018, This Is Why Sputnik Crashed Back To Earth After Only 3 Months, by Ethan Siegel. It states that even though Sputnik's orbit was above the so-called Kármán line, hence in outer space, "Such disaster [of a satellite's demise] is inevitable due to satellite drag, which is a way to quantify how much speed a satellite loses over time due to the atmospheric particles it runs into at high relative speeds. Any satellite in low-Earth orbit will have a lifespan ranging from a few months up to a few decades, but no longer than that."

I came across an interesting web site, the Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space (including Earth satellites) from the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. I could not seem to sort the table, but using the filter by launch year, I was able to obtain and graph (I love making graphs!) the number of launches by year, starting with the first two Sputnik launches in 1958 (see graph below). There are currently 10,100 still in orbit, and 4,176 objects not in orbit. After averaging 131 launches/year from 1965-2015, the number of launches has started going up exponentially, due to the Starlink program of SpaceX, which plans to deploy nearly 12,000 microsatellites to provide Internet access coverage to 45 countries and global mobile phone service. 

Objects launched into space by year (my graph, data from United Nations)

My editor pointed out that one of her favorite podcasts, Planet Money, had  a series, Planet Money Goes To Space, about the relative ease of getting a satellite into space these days.

We've come a long way since that 3-month lifetime of Sputnik 1!