Scrapbook 3: The Western world shrank to the size of a television screen
THE Western world shrank to the size of a television screen last night.
As the blue-and-silver Telstar satellite swung in orbit 3,000 miles overhead, Europe and America exchanged their first “live” programmes.
In both continents reception was good and clear—though a fused wire in Brussels hit the closing minutes of Britain’s contribution to the European programme.
Two hundred million viewers in America and Western Europe watched the programmes.
16 countries
And they were joined by many in Communist East Germany, tuning in their sets to the West Berlin channel.
TELSTAR ORBIT No. 123 brought the American programme to 16 watching European countries.
They saw the afternoon skyline of New York, baseball in Chicago, midday at the World Fair in Seattle on the Pacific, a buffalo herd in South Dakota, a “Macbeth” rehearsal from Stratford, Ontario, and President Kennedy holding a Press conference in Washington.
Apart from breaks and flutters from time to time, the picture reception was near perfect. And later it was discovered that the breaks were due to a faulty switch on the American side.
TELSTAR ORBIT No. 124 bounced Europe’s programme back to America via the G.P.O. station at Goonhilly in Cornwall.
The B.B.C.’s Richard Dimbleby introduced Europe’s programme, which came from 54 cameras in nine different countries.
Arctic Circle
Big Ben cued “Telstar Europe” in and out. A London policeman was seen in the shadow of Big Ben, talking to American visitors.
The only daylight picture came from Northern Sweden, 40 miles inside the Arctic Circle, by the light of the midnight sun.
Then the programme switched 2,000 miles to show Sicilian fishermen with their boats.
From there to a French mobile camera driving up the Champs-Elysée, to the Arc de Triomphe.
The cameras crossed to Vienna and the Spanish riding school with horses cantering to Chopin.
Eamonn Andrews was seen a thousand miles from Vienna at The Lizard as the lifeboat was launched. And then the programme switched again to Belgrade with waving crowds in the Square of the Republic.
At Tower
There was difficulty in getting back to London after all this, but eventually the screens showed a hovercraft on Southampton Water and the ceremony of the keys in the Tower.
Then, as the cameras switched to the Tower, a wire fused in Brussels, and a technician reported: “America has lost us.”
Viewers in Europe were unaware of the drama, and the programme continued to the end, though in America the pictures faded.
One of the team of British scientists at Goonhilly said later: “One link caused the fade-out before the programme was quite completed. But in every other way things were perfect.
“We’re overjoyed that everything has gone so well.”