Telstar was the first communications satellite, fired into orbit on July 10, 1962.
Telstar transmitted the first live television images between America and Europe, launching the era of the global village in which events on the other side of the world could be experienced in “real time.” Weighing 77 kilograms and equipped with 3,600 solar cells, it was to facilitate transatlantic telecommunications from a height of around 8,000 km, thereby providing an alternative to the overloaded undersea cables.
In addition, it was designed to pick up television images, amplify them and broadcast them back to earth. At the time TV signals were scarcely able to make it across the U.S., let alone across the Atlantic, as Harald Wenzel, a media sociologist at Berlin’s Free University, recalls. People watching television were fascinated by the live moving pictures. Being virtually present as events actually occurred changed viewing habits radically.
