50 years since the first transatlantic audiovisual transmission

The Telstar 1 had the capacity to relay 600 voice calls and one black and white television channel.

On this day, July 12, but in 1962, the first transatlantic audiovisual transmission was carried out from the city of Pleumeur-Bodou in French Brittany to Andover (Maine) via the Telstar satellite.

The first non-public test television broadcast took place just a few hours after the launch. Two weeks later, on July 23, 1962, the first live public signal was broadcast, made possible thanks to the collaboration of Eurovision, NBC, CBS, ABC and CBC. It starred Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley from New York, and Richard Dimbleby from Brussels, and featured an appearance by President JF Kennedy.

Developed by Bell Laboratories (where the transistor had been invented in 1947 and, in 1954, the solar battery), Telstar 1 was not only the first telecommunications satellite, but also the first commercial payload launched into space. It was a joint initiative of ATT, the British Post Office, the French Post, Telegraph and Telecommunications Office, NASA and Bell Laboratories, which paid the US space agency $3 million for the launch of the device, regardless of the success of the mission.

Telstar 1 was a sphere weighing 77 kilos and 87 centimeters in diameter, the maximum that could fit in the cargo area of ​​the Delta rockets. Its orbit, which ranged between 952 and 5,933 kilometers, was not geosynchronous, which limited its availability for transatlantic emissions to 20 minutes of each two and a half hour orbit. It had the capacity to relay 600 voice calls and a black and white television channel.