The company took its name from element 77, because the first design called for 77 satellites circling the planet like electrons. Iridium wanted to let a person dial from a glacier, a desert or a ship at sea. Motorola engineers had dreamed it up and Motorola owned a large stake. In June 1997 Iridium World Communications sold stock at $20 a share so the public could own a piece of the network before a single call went through.

Sixty Six Moons of Motorola

The plan shrank to 66 satellites in low orbit, each one passing calls to the next until they reached a ground station. Iridium World Communications was a Bermuda holding company. Its only job was to own shares of Iridium LLC, the partnership building the system. The bet was that travelers, oil crews, soldiers and executives would pay for a phone with no dead zones. Rockets carried the satellites up through 1997 and 1998, and service opened in November 1998.

Bankrupt, Then Reborn

The offering was so popular that Iridium raised it from 10 million shares to 12 million, bringing in $240 million on Nasdaq under IRIDF. Then the phones arrived: heavy handsets that cost thousands of dollars and failed indoors. Few people signed up. Iridium LLC filed for bankruptcy in August 1999, less than a year after launch. A group of investors bought the network for $25 million in 2000. The satellites stayed up, and the business now trades as Iridium Communications on Nasdaq.

Cover: Icarus, from The Four Disgracers, Hendrick Goltzius. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for Icarus falling from the sun (a network that fell to Earth).