Website
A website or Web site is a collection of related network web resources, such as web pages, multimedia content, which are identified with a common domain name, published on at least one web server. Notable examples are wikipedia.org, google.com, amazon.com. Websites can be accessed via a public Internet Protocol network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network, by a uniform resource locator that identifies the site. Websites can be used in various fashions. Websites are dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news and education. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, such as a company's website for its employees, are part of an intranet. Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language, they may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors.
Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which may optionally employ encryption to provide security and privacy for the user. The user's application a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal. Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, which starts with a home page containing a directory of the site web content; some websites require user subscription to access content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, as well as sites providing various other services. End users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers and smart TVs; the World Wide Web was created in 1990 by the British CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee.
On 30 April 1993, CERN announced. Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as File Transfer Protocol and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server; these protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and where they choose files to download. Documents were most presented as plain text files without formatting, or were encoded in word processor formats. Websites can be used in various fashions. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, are dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, can be blurred. Websites are written in, or converted to, HTML and are accessed using a software interface classified as a user agent. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, tablet computers and smartphones.
A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server called an HTTP server. These terms can refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website's users. Apache is the most used web server software and Microsoft's IIS is commonly used; some alternatives, such as Nginx, Hiawatha or Cherokee, are functional and lightweight. A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format, sent to a client web browser, it is coded in Hypertext Markup Language. Images are used to effect the desired appearance and as part of the main content. Audio or video might be considered "static" content if it plays automatically or is non-interactive; this type of website displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text and other content and may require basic website design skills and software.
Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services through text, animations, audio/video, navigation menus. Static websites can be edited using four broad categories of software: Text editors, such as Notepad or TextEdit, where content and HTML markup are manipulated directly within the editor program WYSIWYG offline editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver, with which the site is edited using a GUI and the final HTML markup is generated automatically by the editor software WYSIWYG online editors which create media rich online presentation like web pages, intro, blogs, an
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, the university was named for its first benefactor, the American entrepreneur and philanthropist Johns Hopkins, his $7 million bequest —of which half financed the establishment of Johns Hopkins Hospital—was the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the United States up to that time. Daniel Coit Gilman, inaugurated as the institution's first president on February 22, 1876, led the university to revolutionize higher education in the U. S. by integrating teaching and research. Adopting the concept of a graduate school from Germany's ancient Heidelberg University, Johns Hopkins University is considered the first research university in the United States. Over the course of several decades, the university has led all U. S. universities in annual research and development expenditures. In fiscal year 2016, Johns Hopkins spent nearly $2.5 billion on research. Johns Hopkins is organized into 10 divisions on campuses in Maryland and Washington, D.
C. with international centers in Italy and Singapore. The two undergraduate divisions, the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering, are located on the Homewood campus in Baltimore's Charles Village neighborhood; the medical school, the nursing school, the Bloomberg School of Public Health are located on the Medical Institutions campus in East Baltimore. The university consists of the Peabody Institute, the Applied Physics Laboratory, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, the School of Education, the Carey Business School, various other facilities. Johns Hopkins was a founding member of the American Association of Universities. Johns Hopkins University is cited as among the world's top universities; the university is ranked 10th among undergraduate programs at National Universities in U. S. News & World Report latest rankings, 10th among global universities by U. S. News & World Report in its 2019 rankings, as well as 12th globally in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
Over the course of more than 140 years, 37 Nobel laureates and 1 Fields Medalist have been affiliated with Johns Hopkins. Founded in 1883, the Blue Jays men's lacrosse team has captured 44 national titles and joined the Big Ten Conference as an affiliate member in 2014. On his death in 1873, Johns Hopkins, a Quaker entrepreneur and childless bachelor, bequeathed $7 million to fund a hospital and university in Baltimore, Maryland. At that time this fortune, generated from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the United States; the first name of philanthropist Johns Hopkins is the surname of his great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, who married Gerard Hopkins. They named their son Johns Hopkins. Samuel named one of his sons for his father and that son would become the university's benefactor. Milton Eisenhower, a former university president, once spoke at a convention in Pittsburgh where the Master of Ceremonies introduced him as "President of John Hopkins."
Eisenhower retorted that he was "glad to be here in Pittburgh." The original board opted for an novel university model dedicated to the discovery of knowledge at an advanced level, extending that of contemporary Germany. Building on the Humboldtian model of higher education, the German education model of Wilhelm von Humboldt, it became dedicated to research. Johns Hopkins thereby became the model of the modern research university in the United States, its success shifted higher education in the United States from a focus on teaching revealed and/or applied knowledge to the scientific discovery of new knowledge. The trustees worked alongside four notable university presidents – Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, Andrew D. White of Cornell, Noah Porter of Yale College and James B. Angell of Michigan, they each vouched for Daniel Coit Gilman to lead the new University and he became the university's first president. Gilman, a Yale-educated scholar, had been serving as president of the University of California prior to this appointment.
In preparation for the university's founding, Gilman visited University of Freiburg and other German universities. Gilman launched what many at the time considered an audacious and unprecedented academic experiment to merge teaching and research, he dismissed the idea that the two were mutually exclusive: "The best teachers are those who are free and willing to make original researches in the library and the laboratory," he stated. To implement his plan, Gilman recruited internationally known luminaries such as the mathematician James Joseph Sylvester. Gilman focused on the expansion of graduate support of faculty research; the new university fused advanced scholarship with such professional schools as medicine and engineering. Hopkins became the national trendsetter in doctoral programs and the host for numerous scholarly journals and associations; the Johns Hopkins University Press, founded in 1878, is the oldest American university press in continuous operation. With the completion of Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889 and the medical school in 1893, the university's research-focused mode of instruction soon began attracting world-renowned faculty members who would become major figures in the emerging field of acad
Student affairs
Student affairs, student support, or student services is the department or division of services and support for student success at institutions of higher education to enhance student growth and development in the United States and abroad. People who work in this field are known as student affairs practitioners or student affairs professionals; these student affairs practitioners work to provide services and support for students and drive student learning outside of the classroom at institutions of higher education. The size and organization of a student affairs division or department may vary based on the size and location of an institution; the title of the head of student affairs varies widely. In some institutions today, student affairs departments are led by a vice president or vice chancellor who reports directly to the president/chancellor of the institution. In other cases the head of student affairs may report to academic dean. Although institutions of higher education have had to deal with student affairs in some way for as long as they have existed, student affairs as a distinct professional field emerged first in the Anglo-American context in the late 19th century.
There it developed from the distinct positions of "dean of women" and "dean of men". The field developed much in continental Europe, where development first began in the 1950s but was spurred when the Bologna Process in the 1990s created a surge in international students with greater needs for student support. In many other countries where student affairs is still a inchoate profession, such as Uruguay, professional activity in the field has emerged in relation to the needs of international students. Student affairs did not become a unitary profession in South Africa until the end of apartheid in 1994; as in other countries of sub-Saharan Africa, South African universities have broadly followed an American model of student affairs administration. Difficulties in the implementation of student affairs principles from developed countries has been characterized as due to South Africa's status as a developing country. Student affairs draws its origins on the Oxbridge model and the Anglo-American concept that schools stand in loco parentis, creating a greater legal obligation for the university to govern student life.
However, professional student affairs administration in the United Kingdom is of recent date: student affairs departments became a feature of all United Kingdom universities in 1992, having been widespread only in the new universities. The profession of student affairs "grew from the campus up, not from theory down". Early higher education in the United States was based on the Oxbridge model of education; these men were the precursor to student affairs professionals in the United States. They served as dean of discipline and in loco parentis; these early student affairs practitioners' focus was on control of the student as opposed to modern philosophy which focuses on the development of the student as a whole, but has always connected those interested in the welfare of students with students needing assistance. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as the number of land-grant institutions increased, enrollment expanded, student populations began to include women, the idea of vocationalism began to influence academics and the institution's president began to be viewed as "the chief moral front".
With these changes it became apparent that additional staff members were needed to allow the president to respond to the issues of finance and faculty recruitment. These first student affairs professionals were the dean of dean of men and personnel workers. Many of the early deans came from "teaching roles in the liberal arts"; the first dean of men was LeBaron Russell Briggs at Harvard University in 1890, with the first dean of women being Adelia Johnston in 1869 at the Oberlin College as lady principal and named Dean of Women in 1894. Alice Freeman Palmer in 1892 at the University of Chicago was the first to hold the title of Dean of Women; the dean of men's position included discipline, but could vary depending on the institution's overall philosophy. The position description might have read, "that officer in the administration who undertakes to assist the men students achieve the utmost of which they are individually capable, through personal effort on their behalf, through mobilizing in their behalf all the forces within the University which can be made to serve this end".
The one thing that remained consistent was the responsibility to deal with men and help them develop to their potential. Deans of Women were trail blazers as women in positions of authority. Not only were women at colleges and universities a new development, but women as staff members more new; the institutional leadership was dominated by men, but still they persevered including the founding of what is now the American Association of University Women in 1903. In December 1918 Robert Rienow, the dean of men at the University of Iowa, wrote a letter to Thomas Arkle Clark, dean of men at the University of Illinois, suggesting a meeting, now recognized as the founding of the organization now known as NASPA - Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. In 1924, May L. Cheney, who organized a teacher placement office at the University of California, helped form the National Association of Appointment Secretaries; that year, NAAS met for the first time
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and referred to as Washington or D. C. is the capital of the United States. Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, first President of the United States and Founding Father; as the seat of the United States federal government and several international organizations, Washington is an important world political capital. The city is one of the most visited cities in the world, with more than 20 million tourists annually; the signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. The U. S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U. S. Congress, the District is therefore not a part of any state; the states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, which included the pre-existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria.
The City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia. Washington had an estimated population of 702,455 as of July 2018, making it the 20th most populous city in the United States. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's daytime population to more than one million during the workweek. Washington's metropolitan area, the country's sixth largest, had a 2017 estimated population of 6.2 million residents. All three branches of the U. S. federal government are centered in the District: Congress and the U. S. Supreme Court. Washington is home to many national monuments, museums situated on or around the National Mall; the city hosts 177 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many international organizations, trade unions, non-profit, lobbying groups, professional associations, including the World Bank Group, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, AARP, the National Geographic Society, the Human Rights Campaign, the International Finance Corporation, the American Red Cross.
A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973. However, Congress may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, but the District has no representation in the Senate. The District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century. One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. In his Federalist No. 43, published January 23, 1788, James Madison argued that the new federal government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance and safety.
Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia. Known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution permits the establishment of a "District as may, by cession of particular states, the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States". However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital. In what is now known as the Compromise of 1790, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson came to an agreement that the federal government would pay each state's remaining Revolutionary War debts in exchange for establishing the new national capital in the southern United States. On July 9, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River; the exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, who signed the bill into law on July 16.
Formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory: the port of Georgetown, founded in 1751, the city of Alexandria, founded in 1749. During 1791–92, Andrew Ellicott and several assistants, including a free African American astronomer named Benjamin Banneker, surveyed the borders of the federal district and placed boundary stones at every mile point. Many of the stones are still standing. A new federal city was constructed on the north bank of the Potomac, to the east of Georgetown. On September 9, 1791, the three commissioners overseeing the capital's construction named the city in honor of President Washington; the federal district was named Columbia, a poetic name for the United States in use at that time. Congress held its first session in Washington on November 17, 1800. Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 that organized the District and placed the entire territory under the exclusive control of the federal
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the mission of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford, it was funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death of the two founders, the foundation owned 90% of the non-voting shares of the Ford Motor Company. Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company. Ahead of the foundation selling its Ford Motor Company holdings, in 1949 Henry Ford II created the Ford Motor Company Fund, a separate corporate foundation which to this day serves as the philanthropic arm of the Ford Motor Company and is not associated with the foundation. For years it was the largest, one of the most influential foundations in the world, with global reach and special interests in economic empowerment, human rights, the creative arts, Third World development; the foundation makes grants through ten international field offices. For fiscal year 2014, it approved US$507.9 million in grants.
After its establishment in 1936, Ford Foundation shifted its focus from Michigan philanthropic support to four areas of action. In the 1950 Report of the Study of the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program, the trustees set forth five "areas of action," according to Richard Magat: economic improvements, education and democracy, human behaviour, world peace. Since the middle of the 20th century, many of the Ford Foundation's programs have focused on increased under-represented or "minority" group representation in education and policy-making. For over eight decades their mission decisively advocates and supports the reduction of poverty and injustice among other values including the maintenance of democratic values, promoting engagement with other nations, sustaining human progress and achievement at home and abroad; the Ford Foundation is one of the primary foundations offering grants that support and maintain diversity in higher education with fellowships for pre-doctoral and post-doctoral scholarship to increase diverse representation among Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos/Latinas and other under-represented Asian and Latino sub-groups throughout the U.
S. academic labor market. The outcomes of scholarship by its grantees from the late 20th century through the 21st century have contributed to substantial data and scholarship including national surveys such as the Nelson Diversity Surveys in STEM; the foundation was established January 15, 1936, in Michigan by Edsel Ford and two other executives "to receive and administer funds for scientific and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare." During its early years, the foundation operated in Michigan under the leadership of Ford family members and their associates and supported the Henry Ford Hospital and the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, among other organizations. After the deaths of Edsel Ford in 1943 and Henry Ford in 1947, the presidency of the foundation fell to Edsel's eldest son, Henry Ford II, it became clear that the foundation would become the largest philanthropic organisation in the world. The board of trustees commissioned the Gaither Study Committee to chart the foundation's future.
The committee, headed by California attorney H. Rowan Gaither, recommended that the foundation become an international philanthropic organisation dedicated to the advancement of human welfare and "urged the foundation to focus on solving humankind's most pressing problems, whatever they might be, rather than work in any particular field...." The board embraced the recommendations in 1949. The board of directors decided to diversify the foundation's portfolio and divested itself of its substantial Ford Motor Company stock between 1955 and 1974; this divestiture allowed Ford Motor to become a public company. Henry Ford II resigned from his trustee's role in a surprise move in December 1976. In his resignation letter, he cited his dissatisfaction with the foundation holding on to their old programs, large staff and what he saw as anti-capitalist undertones in the foundation's work. In February 2019, Henry Ford III was elected to the Foundation's Board of Trustees, becoming the first Ford family member to serve on the board since his grandfather resigned in 1976.
In 2012, stating that it is not a research library, the foundation transferred its archives from New York City to the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Based on recommendations made by the Gaither Study Committee and embraced by the foundation's board of trustees in 1949, the foundation expanded its grant making to include support for higher education, the arts, economic development, civil rights, the environment, among other areas. In 1951, the foundation made its first grant to support the development of the public broadcasting system known as National Educational Television, which went on the air in 1952; these grants continued, in 1969 the foundation gave US$1 million to the Children's Television Workshop to help create and launch Sesame Street. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting replaced NET with the Public Broadcasting Service on October 5, 1970; the foundation underwrote the Fund for the Republic in the 1950s. The foundation's first international field office opened in 1952 in India.
Throughout the 1950s, the foundation provided arts and humanities fellowships that supported the work of figures like Josef Albers, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Herbert Blau, E. E. Cummings, Flannery O'Connor, Jacob Lawrence, Maurice Valency, Robert Lowell, Margaret Mead. In 1961, Kofi Annan received an educati
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It was written by more than 4,000 contributors; the 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. The Britannica is the English-language encyclopaedia/encyclopedia, in print for the longest time: it lasted 244 years, it was first published between 1768 and 1771 as three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size: the second edition was 10 volumes, by its fourth edition it had expanded to 20 volumes, its rising stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, the 9th and 11th editions are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Beginning with the 11th edition and following its acquisition by an American firm, the Britannica shortened and simplified articles to broaden its appeal to the North American market. In 1933, the Britannica became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted, with every article updated on a schedule.
In March 2012, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced it would no longer publish printed editions, would focus instead on Encyclopædia Britannica Online. The 15th edition had a three-part structure: a 12-volume Micropædia of short articles, a 17-volume Macropædia of long articles, a single Propædia volume to give a hierarchical outline of knowledge; the Micropædia was meant as a guide to the Macropædia. Over 70 years, the size of the Britannica has remained steady, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. Though published in the United States since 1901, the Britannica has for the most part maintained British English spelling. Since 1985, the Britannica has had four parts: the Micropædia, the Macropædia, the Propædia, a two-volume index; the Britannica's articles are found in the Micro- and Macropædia, which encompass 12 and 17 volumes each volume having one thousand pages. The 2007 Macropædia has 699 in-depth articles, ranging in length from 2 to 310 pages and having references and named contributors.
In contrast, the 2007 Micropædia has 65,000 articles, the vast majority of which contain fewer than 750 words, no references, no named contributors. The Micropædia articles are intended for quick fact-checking and to help in finding more thorough information in the Macropædia; the Macropædia articles are meant both as authoritative, well-written articles on their subjects and as storehouses of information not covered elsewhere. The longest article is on the United States, resulted from the merger of the articles on the individual states; the 2013 edition of Britannica contained forty thousand articles. Information can be found in the Britannica by following the cross-references in the Micropædia and Macropædia. Hence, readers are recommended to consult instead the alphabetical index or the Propædia, which organizes the Britannica's contents by topic; the core of the Propædia is its "Outline of Knowledge", which aims to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge. Accordingly, the Outline is consulted by the Britannica's editors to decide which articles should be included in the Micro- and Macropædia.
The Outline is intended to be a study guide, to put subjects in their proper perspective, to suggest a series of Britannica articles for the student wishing to learn a topic in depth. However, libraries have found that it is scarcely used, reviewers have recommended that it be dropped from the encyclopaedia; the Propædia has color transparencies of human anatomy and several appendices listing the staff members and contributors to all three parts of the Britannica. Taken together, the Micropædia and Macropædia comprise 40 million words and 24,000 images; the two-volume index has 2,350 pages, listing the 228,274 topics covered in the Britannica, together with 474,675 subentries under those topics. The Britannica prefers British spelling over American. However, there are exceptions such as defense rather than defence. Common alternative spellings are provided with cross-references such as "Color: see Colour." Since 1936, the articles of the Britannica have been revised on a regular schedule, with at least 10% of them considered for revision each year.
According to one Britannica website, 46% of its articles were revised over the past three years. The alphabetization of articles in the Micropædia and Macropædia follows strict rules. Diacritical marks and non-English letters are ignored, while numerical entries such as "1812, War of" are alphabetized as if the number had been written out. Articles with identical names are ordered first by persons by places by things. Rulers with identical names are organized first alphabetically by country and by chronology. Places that share names are
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957, orbiting for three weeks before its batteries died silently for two more months before falling back into the atmosphere, it was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. Its radio signal was detectable by radio amateurs, the 65° inclination and duration of its orbit made its flight path cover the entire inhabited Earth; this surprise success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race, a part of the Cold War. The launch was the beginning of a new era of political, military and scientific developments. Tracking and studying Sputnik 1 from Earth provided scientists with valuable information; the density of the upper atmosphere could be deduced from its drag on the orbit, the propagation of its radio signals gave data about the ionosphere. Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No.1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR.
The satellite travelled at about 29,000 kilometres per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete each orbit. It transmitted on 20.005 and 40.002 MHz, which were monitored by radio operators throughout the world. The signals continued for 21 days until the transmitter batteries ran out on 26 October 1957. Sputnik burned up on 4 January 1958 while reentering Earth's atmosphere, after three months, 1440 completed orbits of the Earth, a distance travelled of about 70 million km. On 17 December 1954, chief Soviet rocket scientist Sergei Korolev proposed a developmental plan for an artificial satellite to the Minister of the Defence Industry, Dimitri Ustinov. Korolev forwarded a report with an overview of similar projects abroad. Tikhonravov had emphasized that the launch of an orbital satellite was an inevitable stage in the development of rocket technology. On 29 July 1955, U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced through his press secretary that, during the International Geophysical Year, the United States would launch an artificial satellite.
A week on 8 August, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union approved the proposal to create an artificial satellite. On 30 August Vasily Ryabikov – the head of the State Commission on the R-7 rocket test launches – held a meeting where Korolev presented calculation data for a spaceflight trajectory to the Moon, they decided to develop a three-stage version of the R-7 rocket for satellite launches. On 30 January 1956 the Council of Ministers approved practical work on an artificial Earth-orbiting satellite; this satellite, named Object D, was planned to be completed in 1957–58. The first test launch of "Object D" was scheduled for 1957. Work on the satellite was to be divided among institutions as follows: the USSR Academy of Sciences was responsible for the general scientific leadership and the supply of research instruments the Ministry of the Defence Industry and its primary design bureau, OKB-1, were assigned the task of building the satellite the Ministry of the Radiotechnical Industry would develop the control system, radio/technical instruments, the telemetry system the Ministry of the Ship Building Industry would develop gyroscope devices the Ministry of the Machine Building would develop ground launching and transportation means the Ministry of the Defense was responsible for conducting launchesPreliminary design work was completed in July 1956 and the scientific tasks to be carried out by the satellite were defined.
These included measuring the density of the atmosphere and its ion composition, the solar wind, magnetic fields, cosmic rays. These data would be valuable in the creation of future artificial satellites. A system of ground stations was to be developed to collect data transmitted by the satellite, observe the satellite's orbit, transmit commands to the satellite; because of the limited time frame, observations were planned for only 7 to 10 days and orbit calculations were not expected to be accurate. By the end of 1956 it became clear that the complexity of the ambitious design meant that'Object D' could not be launched in time because of difficulties creating scientific instruments and the low specific impulse produced by the completed R-7 engines; the government rescheduled the launch for April 1958. Object D would fly as Sputnik 3. Fearing the U. S. would launch a satellite before the USSR, OKB-1 suggested the creation and launch of a satellite in April–May 1957, before the IGY began in July 1957.
The new satellite would be simple and easy to construct, forgoing the complex, heavy scientific equipment in favour of a simple radio transmitter. On 15 February 1957 the Council of Ministers of the USSR approved this simple satellite, designated'Object PS'; this version allowed the satellite to be tracked visually by Earth-based observers, it could transmit tracking signals to ground-based receiving stations. The launch of two satellites, PS-1 and PS-2, with two R-7 rockets was approved, provided that the R-7 completed at least two successful test flights; the R-7 Semyorka was designed as an intercontinental ballistic missile by OKB-1. The decision to build it was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on 20 M
