A report on Beat Generation and Sputnik 1

A section devoted to the beat generation at a bookstore in Stockholm, Sweden

This metal arming key is the last remaining piece of the Sputnik 1 satellite. It prevented contact between the batteries and the transmitter prior to launch. It is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

30k USSR stamp depicting Sputnik 1 orbiting the Earth, the Earth orbiting the Sun and the Sun orbiting the centre of the Milky Way galaxy

Artist's impression of Sputnik 1 in orbit

"BEEP ... BEEP ... To Bob's" spaceship ad spoofs Sputnik in the California Institute of Technology yearbook of 1958.

A Soviet 40 kopeks stamp, showing the satellite's orbit

Sputnik 1, Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko on a 2007 Ukrainian stamp

The term "Beatnik" was coined by Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958, blending the name of the recent Russian satellite Sputnik and Beat Generation.

- Beat Generation

The American writer Herb Caen was inspired to coin the term "beatnik" in an article about the Beat Generation in the San Francisco Chronicle on 2 April 1958.

- Sputnik 1

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Beat, Beat, Beat (1959) by William F. Brown

Beatnik

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The news photo caption for this 1959 event in Venice, California read: "Beatnik Beauties: Posing before a sample of beatnik art are contestants for the title of Miss Beatnik of 1959, which will be conferred Sept. 12 under sponsorship of the Venice Arts Committee. From left are Michi Monteef, Sammy McCord, Patti McCrory, Shaunna Lea and, in rear, Jan Vandaveer."

Jules Feiffer's ad art for the Beat musical The Nervous Set was used on the 1959 cast album (reissued in 2002).

The Beatnik was a media stereotype prevalent from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation (the people born between 1928 and 1945) literary movement of the late 1940s and early to mid-1950s.

However an earlier source from 1954, or possibly 1957 after the launch of Sputnik, is ascribed to Ethel (Etya) Gechtoff, the well-known owner of a San Francisco Art Gallery.