On the 23rd of July, 1962, the artificial satellite, Telstar, relayed the first transatlantic public television broadcast. I can’t say that I remember it, I was not quite three years of age.
Telstar 1 was one of the most important technological achievements of the twentieth century. Launched on the 10th of July, 1962, it became the first active communications satellite to relay live television, telephone and data signals across the Atlantic Ocean. Before Telstar, messages between Europe and North America had to travel through undersea cables or by recorded film carried on aircraft. Telstar made it possible for people on different continents to see events almost as they happened.
Telstar was built by Bell Telephone Laboratories for AT&T, with support from NASA and broadcasting organisations in Britain and France. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Delta rocket. The satellite itself was surprisingly small: a shiny sphere only 34.5 inches across and weighing about 77 kilograms. Its surface was covered with 3,600 solar cells that recharged its batteries.
Unlike earlier experiments such as Echo 1, which simply reflected radio waves, Telstar actively received, amplified and retransmitted signals. Inside it were more than a thousand transistors and a powerful travelling-wave tube amplifier that could strengthen signals thousands of times. This made it the first practical communications satellite rather than merely an experiment.
Only hours after its launch, Telstar successfully transmitted its first television picture: an American flag waving outside the ground station in Maine. On the 23rd of July 1962 it carried out the first live transatlantic television broadcast. Viewers in Europe saw pictures from the United States, including the Statue of Liberty and a baseball game, while American viewers saw scenes from Europe such as the Eiffel Tower. The broadcast also featured journalists such as Walter Cronkite and Richard Dimbleby. For the first time, television had crossed an ocean through space.
The effect on the public was enormous. In the early 1960s the world was still divided by distance and slow communications. Telstar suddenly suggested that the globe could become a single connected community. During the Cold War, the satellite became a symbol of American scientific achievement. John F. Kennedy described it as an “outstanding symbol” of American progress. In Britain, Telstar became even more widely recognised than Sputnik 1 had been.
However, Telstar had serious limitations. It travelled in an elliptical orbit around Earth rather than staying fixed above one point. As a result, it could only provide communications between Europe and North America for about 18 minutes at a time before disappearing beyond the horizon. Ground stations had to wait for it to come back into position. Massive receiving stations were built to track it, including Andover Earth Station, Goonhilly Downs Earth Station and Pleumeur-Bodou Ground Station.
Telstar’s working life was also short. It stopped functioning properly in February 1963 because its electronic components were damaged by radiation. Much of this radiation came from an American high-altitude nuclear test carried out shortly before Telstar was launched. A successor, Telstar 2, was launched in May 1963 with improved, radiation-resistant components.
Even though Telstar operated for only a few months, its long-term influence was immense. It proved that live communication through satellites was practical. Engineers quickly realised that the next step was to place satellites in geostationary orbit, high above Earth, where they would remain fixed over one location. This idea had been suggested in 1945 by Arthur C. Clarke. Geostationary satellites made continuous, round-the-clock communication possible, and only three were needed to cover most of the world.
The satellites that followed Telstar transformed modern life. Networks such as Intelsat created global communications systems in the 1960s. Live international television became normal, culminating in broadcasts such as Our World and the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Eventually the same technology led to satellite telephones, global news, satellite navigation, weather forecasting, internet links and direct-to-home television.
Today, satellite communication is so common that people rarely think about it. Yet every live news report from another continent, every international sports broadcast and every television signal beamed from space owes something to Telstar. Though small and short-lived, it marked the moment when humanity first began to communicate on a truly global scale.