Scrapbook 3: Firm's £17m Venture

FIRM’S £17m VENTURE

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT WASHINGTON, Tuesday.

A THOR-DELTA rocket soared up from Cape Canaveral to-day in an almost perfect launching to put Telstar into orbit. Scientists of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, owners of the satellite, were jubilant.

They considered it well worth the £1 million the company is paying the Government Space Agency for use of the rocket and launching facilities, and the total of over £17 million already spent.

Fore-runner of a satellite system that will make world-wide television possible, Telstar is circling the earth every 158 minutes. The 178lb satellite is swinging between a low point 593 miles from the earth, and a distant point 3,502 miles away.

It was midnight, London time, before Telstar was in position for the first test transmissions between Andover, Maine, and Holmdel, New Jersey.

The plan was for the tests to be picked up by the station on Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall, and transmitted in Britain. Next week, if all goes well, television pictures relayed to Britain will go out on the Eurovision network too.

FILMED TALK

In sight on fifth orbit

Company technicians were ready at Andover and Holmdel to-night to transmit and receive news pictures, telephone conversations and a film talk by Mr. Frederick Kappel, chairman of the company. The satellite would be “in sight” for only a few minutes on its fifth orbit.

Telstar has nearly 15,000 parts inside its 34-inch diameter. It is designed to pick up signals that will be faint by the time they reach it, amplify them and retransmit them on another frequency.

It will draw its power from the 3,600 solar cells on its surface, that will convert the sun’s light into electrical energy. At Andover, Maine, a 380-ton horn antenna will scoop up the weak signals from Telstar and convert them for television and telephone circuits.

IMAGINATION CAUGHT

Use for telephones

The idea of an eventual satellite system that will enable Americans to watch the Trooping the Colour ceremony or the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo while they are taking place has caught the public imagination.

But it is the possibilities for greater international telephone services that excite the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. This is why it has committed £17 million to the scheme already, and is prepared to spend more.

It now operates 600 circuits for overseas telephone calls. By 1980, it estimates, 10,000 will be needed.

It would take 50 underseas cables to handle the work, about 100 million overseas telephone calls a year. The company believes a satellite system, using as many as 50 or 60 Telstars, would carry most of the burden more efficiently.

CONGRESS ROW

Enormous expense

Pointing to the enormous expense of creating such a system, the company insists this is no “get rich quick” investment. This has not forestalled a first-class row in Congress.

A Bill now before the Senate would set up a Corporation to run it.

Several objectors, protesting vehemently that the company would benefit unduly from scores of millions of pounds of tax money spent on space research, are threatening to talk the Bill to death.

SATELLITE IN POSITION FOR 15-30 MINUTES

By L. MARSLAND GANDER, Daily Telegraph Television and Radio Correspondent

POST OFFICE engineers waited at the £750,000 Goonhilly Downs receiving station in Cornwall last night for the climax to years of scientific effort. The aerial was adjusted to receive radio whispers from the satellite 12 and 15 hours after its launching.

Telstar was in a position visible mutually to Goonhilly and the American ground station at Andover, Maine, only on the fifth and sixth orbit. No pictures were received during the fifth orbit between 9.30-10 p.m.

During the two hours and 36 minutes of the orbital time, the ideal position occurred for a period that would permit communication for, at the most, about 30 minutes and more probably 15 minutes.

OPEN TO 1.30 A.M.

Amplified 10,000m times

The BBC obtained permission from the Postmaster-General last night to keep its television network open until 1.30 a.m. to put on home screens any transatlantic pictures received through Telstar.

In the BBC’s London studio Richard Dimbleby introduced a preliminary programme called “Project Telstar” and Raymond Baxter gave a commentary from Goonhilly Downs, where BBC cameras had been installed.

Telstar was designed to receive a radio signal beamed at it from the ground and to amplify it 10,000 million times, transmitting back to earth 600 telephone conversations or one television channel.

ONLY CHANCE FOR DAYS

Transmission plan

The sixth pass offered the only chance of seeing transatlantic television pictures for several days. It was intended to transmit five minutes of live pictures, two minutes of pulses and bars to give engineering information and 10 minutes of Videotape.