What was the first artificial satellite and who invented it?

The first artificial satellite was Sputnik 1. It was the size of a Basketball and was made by the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) or Russia. It was launched on October 4, 1957. The Soviets beat the first US satellite, Explorer 1, by four months. The main designers and developers of Sputnik 1 were M.S.Khomyakov, M.V.Krayushkin, S. Lidorenko and O. G. Ivanovsky.

Although workably invented by the Soviets, it is thought by some that the concept may have been postulated and triggered by a British Science Fiction writer named Arthur C. Clarke. In October 1945, Clarke published an essay in Wireless World (a British radio and electronics enthusiast magazine) titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays - Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?", in which he proposed geosynchronous communications satellites. This was twelve years before the USSR launched Sputnik.

The workability of artificial satellites was postulated by Robert A. Heinlein, an American science fiction writer, nearly a decade before Sputnik. Heinlein laid some scientific and engineering groundwork in his technical and creative involvement in the movie Destination Moon that was released in 1950.