No, there was no reliable measurement before satellites. Quoting wikipedia: Useful satellite data concerning sea ice began in December 1972 with the Electrica

No, there was no reliable measurement before satellites. Quoting wikipedia: Useful satellite data concerning sea ice began in December 1972 with the Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer (ESMR) instrument. However, this was not directly comparable with the later SMMR/SSMI, and so the practical record begins in late 1978 with the launch of NASA’s Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) satellite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_of_sea_ice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_of_sea_ice