SETI Pioneers by David Swift, University of Arizona Press, pp 434, $35/£32.50
The scientist at the sensitive radio receiver was baffled by the strange signals apparently coming from deep space. 'The thought flashed through my mind that the disturbances I had observed might be due to intelligent control . . . The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.'
No, this is not a piece of science fiction. Nor is it an account of a contemporary NASA researcher into SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence). The scientist was Nikolas Tesla, tuning into 'the ether' back in 1899.
Despite a few suspicions of this kind, no one pursued SETI seriously until 1959, when interest in the subject suddenly exploded. Since then, hundreds of radio telescopes around the world have been pressed into service to scan the sky ...
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