Telstar Beams Live TV Across the Atlantic

A satellite the size of a beach ball, orbiting at 3,500 miles per hour, bounced a television signal across the Atlantic Ocean and made the planet feel smaller in an instant. Telstar transmitted the first live transatlantic television broadcast, sending images from Andover, Maine, to receiving stations in Pleumeur-Bodou, France, and Goonhilly Downs, England. Viewers on both sides of the ocean watched the same pictures simultaneously for the first time in history. AT&T funded the project and Bell Telephone Laboratories built the satellite, a sphere just thirty-four inches in diameter packed with transistors and solar cells. NASA launched it aboard a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral on July 10, 1962, and the first transatlantic transmission occurred on July 11, though the receiving stations needed additional calibration. The broadcast on July 23 carried a fuller program of images, including footage of the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and a baseball game, reaching an estimated audience of millions. Telstar operated in a low elliptical orbit, meaning it could relay signals only during the twenty minutes of each 157-minute orbit when it was simultaneously visible from both continents. Engineers on both sides had to coordinate precisely, tracking the satellite with massive horn antennas and switching feeds in real time. The technical achievement was extraordinary for 1962, just five years after Sputnik had inaugurated the space age. The satellite lasted only seven months before radiation from the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test, detonated by the United States nine days before Telstar's launch, degraded its transistors beyond repair. But the concept it proved was permanent. Within a decade, geostationary communications satellites provided continuous coverage, creating the global television network that became the backbone of modern media. Telstar also became a cultural phenomenon, inspiring an instrumental hit by the Tornados that reached number one in both the UK and the United States.