Arthur Clarke was born in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England on December 16, 1917.
In 1936, he moved to London to join the British Interplanetary Society.
There he started to experiment with astronautic material in the BIS, write the BIS Bulletin and Science Fiction.
During World War II, as a RAF officer, he was in charge of the first radio talk-down equipment, the Ground Controlled Approach, during it's experimental trials.
His only non-science-fiction novel, Glide Path, was based on this.
