Tech Time Warp of the Week: Telstar, 1962

It’s the evening of July 9, 1962, and in the tiny town of Andover, Maine, a group of “telephone men” are making the final tests on “electronic gear that may or may not find and communicate with a tiny spinning globe thousands of miles in space.”

No, it’s not an episode of The Twilight Zone — despite the overly dramatic voiceover and rather eerie soundtrack. It’s a promotional film for Telstar, the seminal telecommunications satellite cooked up by AT&T, NASA, the British General Post Office, and the French National Post Telegraph and Telecom Office. The Telstar is due to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida the next day, and up in Maine, those AT&T men are preparing one of the many radio stations that will talk to the satellite as it orbits the Earth.

Sputnik — launched by the Soviets in 1957 — may have been Earth’s first artificial orbiter, but it didn’t provide all that much help with our everyday lives. Telstar — short for “telecommunications star” — was designed to give us a very real boost, beaming telephone and television signals to American homes from across the oceans. Normally, such signals were transmitted via massive microwave towers, but you couldn’t install those on water.

The good people at AT&T — who commissioned this promotional film — figured that “if such a tower could fly, then Americans and all the people of the world would have an exciting addition to their communication toolkits. A ring of flying microwave towers could assure continuous overseas transmission, help meet the communication demands that are growing with each passing day.” It would also secure AT&T’s place as the most powerful telecommunications company on the planet — and beyond.

At least that was the plan. The voiceover warns that the whole project could result in “crashing failure.”

In this case, the drama is warranted. AT&T had picked up the more-than-$33-million tab for the project, including the satellite’s launch aboard a NASA Thor-Delta rocket and the installation and operation of the various satellite ground stations that would communicate with the 34.5-inch-wide, 170-pound satellite. The project “set a Space Age precedent for private investment,” according to a 1962 National Geographic article.

To avert a crashing failure, scientists don surgical scrubs and caps and proceeded to shake, rattle, and zap each one of Telstar’s 15,000 components — including its 3,600 sapphire and platinum solar cells and radio wave amplifiers — hoping to ensure that “the bird” was strong enough to withstand its rocket launch and a harsh life in space. “With this sort of survival of the fittest approach, Telstar should have the makings of a champion. It’s a million dollar baby and every move it makes is watched by anxious guardians,” the voiceover says.

After Telstar completes the 1,000-mile journey from its birthplace in New Jersey to Cape Canaveral, a team of strapping, shirtless men prepare the rocket that will take the satellite skyward, and a group of (fully-clothed) technicians put the thing through another physical exam. The $33 million baby bird must prove it’s ready to soar before it’s “mated” to the booster that will thrust “from its nest” and into space.

The bird did fly into orbit on July 10, 1962. It successfully brokered a call between AT&T board chairman Fred Kappel and a stiff-sounding, overly-rehearsed Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson — the first telephone call beamed by an active satellite. And, days later, it transmitted a press conference in which President John F. Kennedy gave it a special shout-out — and mispronounced its name. But failure wasn’t far away. This fittest of champions was no match for nuclear radiation.

The day before Telstar’s launch, the U.S. Air Force had performed some high-altitude nuclear tests, and the fallout fried the space bird’s brain. The satellite stopped working just months after its launch.

But you wouldn’t call it a crashing failure. The Telstar is still orbiting the Earth, and its legacy is secure.

It inspired The Tornados‘ eponymous Space Age novelty song, which became the first instrumental single to hit number one on both British and U.S. weekly charts. This pioneering tune featured the clavioline, a forerunner to the synthesizer, and it may have been the first electronica hit in music history.

Telstar also helped Computer H14, Jim Henson’s early-1960s Muppet computer, educate American CEOs about the virtues of telecommunications, and it lives on as the namesake of video games, cars, and even projectors.

Video courtesy of AT&T.