It's 50 years Sputnik 1 was launched. And pretty much all it had was a
few transmitters keying on and off carriers at 20.005 and 40.002MHz
(when on was off the other was on) and the rate of keying was related to
the internal air pressure inside the transmitter housing (they use
convective cooling). I would imagine that they used a few vacuum tubes,
probably filament "pencil" tubes, as transistors were not enough
advanced to run at these frequencioes. I've seen pictures of the
physical hardware boxes, but are there any diagrams of the circuits used
on the web?

I suppose a satellite is the inverse of a boatanchor. :-)