Scrapbook 3: French See 3min Film

FRENCH SEE 3min FILM

STABLE PICTURE

From Our Own Correspondent PARIS, Wednesday.

French television screens showed the first pictures transmitted from the American Telstar satellite in a lunchtime news programme to-day. They were generally good, fairly clear and stable.

Viewers likened them to the early Eurovision programmes. Some three minutes of film were shown, beginning with a picture of the American flag, followed by a discussion among American experts who were responsible for Telstar.

The images were received “under excellent conditions” at the receiving station of Pleumeur-Boudou in Brittany at 12.48 a.m. The original film was over seven minutes long, but only about half was shown. The sound track varied in quality, but was continuously audible.

Gift from France

The French Government has given the BBC the pictures from Telstar picked up in France, M. Peyrefitte, French Information Minister, said in Paris yesterday. “The BBC offered to buy them for a high price but France has asked the BBC to accept them without financial consideration as a gesture of Anglo-French friendship.”—Reuter.

MR. BEVINS’S PRAISE

Mr. Bevins, the Postmaster-General, said at Battersea last night that the radio-telescope base at Goonhilly Downs in Cornwall, which received the Telstar pictures, was a “great tribute” to British Post Office engineers. “Ours is the only country outside the United States to construct a ground station to our own design, and a relatively little cost.”