Bachelor of Arts (Honours) thesis, Department of History, The University of Melbourne, October 2004.
Summary: In 1960 AT&T surprised the Federal Communications Commission by applying to launch an experimental communications satellite, at a time when no government body had considered how such a network should be regulated or organised. Two years later the Communications Satellite Act created the privately funded Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat) and gave it a monopoly over the commercial industry, after a bitter congressional battle in which a small group of liberal Democrats filibustered against the Kennedy administration. This thesis is a legislative history of the Act, tracing its origins in the Kefauver campaign for a public alternative, the interests of industry, and the politics and ideology of the fight.