The gulf war was the first major conflict in which newspapers used portable satellite equipment that could be lugged by correspondents. We rented ours from Manhattan Microwave in Queens, and demand at the time was high. Phone calls cost up to $10 per minute. The new technology of portable satellite phones was particularly coveted by the military, which left relatively few units available for rent to civilians.

John Zelenka, the owner of Manhattan Microwave, recently recalled that in the run-up to the Gulf War he rented other satellite phones to the government, and they ended up on “ships and aircraft carriers.”

Shortly after we carried the satphone to Kuwait City, the Emir of Kuwait contacted Manhattan Microwave and bought our unit, effectively ending our ability to report by satellite. (For a few days, ours had been the only working civilian telephone in the city, but as other news agencies arrived our options increased.) By the time we lost the phone, however, we had already filed our stories of the liberation of the city, and were thus saved the painful necessity of hauling 130 pounds of gear back to Europe.