technology history
New TV age: “Telstar” began broadcasting 60 years ago
The American satellite “Telstar” was launched 60 years ago, on July 10, 1962. Photo: UPI/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
It was the American response to the “Sputnik” shock: “Telstar” brought the world together peacefully. But at the same time it was also part of the Cold War. Today he is drifting senselessly through space.
It looked like a giant disco ball and threw the world into a new TV age: the American satellite “Telstar” was launched exactly 60 years ago, on July 10, 1962.
For the first time he transmitted television images live between America and Europe. The world moved closer together on the screen and, thanks to the artificial celestial body, mankind began to take part in happiness or misfortune in distant continents, in moving images and in real time.
While Telstar was a boon to civilian television, it was also a building block in the Cold War that often took place in the skies of the 1950s and 1960s. The Russians started it in 1957 with the launch of their Sputnik satellite. This “Sputnik” shock at the unexpected rapid progress of the Soviet Union in space travel electrified the western world. And then in 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first cosmonaut to orbit the earth. “Telstar” was part of the American response, which finally culminated in the American landing on the moon in 1969.
Just make a call
In this race, “Telstar 1” had downright grounded goals: weighing 77 kilos and equipped with 3,600 solar cells, it was supposed to make telephoning between the new and old world easier at an altitude of around 8,000 kilometers and offer alternatives to the increasingly overloaded overseas cables. To do this, it was necessary to pick up television signals, amplify them and then re-broadcast them to the other continent.
Because the TV signals were too weak to make the long journey across the Atlantic. They barely made it from one side of America to the other at that time. There are thick papers about the sophisticated technical components of the “Telstar” experiment, a joint project of the US telecommunications company AT&T and NASA. The people in front of the televisions were actually only interested in the moving live images.
A feast in living rooms and pubs
A waving US flag could be seen from the USA during the first tests. The first receiving station in France radioed back “Paris at night” and “La Chansonnette”, sung by Yves Montand. The event was celebrated in pubs and living rooms like a festival. US President John F. Kennedy, who knew how to use the new medium, proudly spoke of the “vision of a new age of global communication”.
In a macabre twist of history, Kennedy, television’s great friend, also became the focus of the first major global live television event. It was, however, a sad occasion: Kennedy’s funeral after the fatal assassination in 1963.
Incidentally, by this time “Telstar 1” was already broken – more powerful satellites in higher orbits gradually took over its job. The communications pioneer in the sky, which cost more than 30 million US dollars, is now one of the “technical victims” of the Cold War. The US atomic bomb tests in the atmosphere had increased the radiation in its orbit – and gradually destroyed the sensitive transistors. “Telstar 1” went offline in November 1962 – but as space junk it will only burn up in an estimated 200 years.