Scrapbook 3: First-Rate Reception
By CLIFFORD DAVIS, Mirror Television Editor
MILLIONS of viewers in Britain shared in the most fabulous TV spectacular of all time last night — the first live programmes to be beamed through Telstar, the Space satellite.
Altogether 200,000,000 people in America and sixteen Eurovision countries saw two brilliantly clear shows in what was certainly TV’s greatest night of triumph.
THE FIRST programme, lasting twenty minutes, came from North America to Europe. It took British viewers on BBC and ITV networks around Canada and the US, including shots of a baseball game and President Kennedy’s Press conference.
Brilliant
THE SECOND programme was Europe’s contribution—a wonderful Grand Tour. Fifty-four cameras in nine countries from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean were used—the biggest-ever TV presentation of its kind. The result? Another brilliant success.
In the next few years transatlantic TV and then global TV will be taken for granted.
The relays proved that it could be done. These were the programmes that will start it off. I’m thrilled to have seen them. This was tingling television.
The American programme was momentous, exciting. The pictures were generally clear and bold and the sound strong.
As live television from more than 3,000 miles away, the reception was as good as most outside broadcasts taking place in Britain.
This twenty minutes round-up was a stupendous triumph of Anglo-American technical achievement.
It was history being made—a once-in-a-lifetime moment as thrilling as the first transatlantic flight.
“Received loud and clear” was the report from most European capitals last night.
For Europe’s programme to America, BBC and ITV pooled their resources for Britain’s contribution.
As a programme this grand tour of Europe was even more effective than the American offering.
Problems
The technical problems which were overcome were tremendous. Different TV systems are used by different European countries.
At the end of the programme some of the pictures broke up with distortion because of a technical fault.
My colleague Stan Mays cables from New York:
“I watched British television in a 12th floor flat in mid-Manhattan. I saw Big Ben clearly.
“It is as good a picture as I saw when I was in London a week ago tonight.
“Then we switched to Paris and Rome. Again the pictures are as clear as anything I have seen in Britain and clearer than most American television.
“If there could be any criticism of this miracle of television, it is that TOO MUCH was offered. The people around me could not keep pace with the TV screen. Fortunately the programme was repeated several times during the night.
“Unfortunately, just at the end of the programme we lost the picture.
“And there we were looking at the regular American commercials, which seemed very tame and unexciting after the last few minutes, which were an enthralling experience in my life.”
How was it all done?
French TV engineers picked up the American programme from Telstar at Lannion, France, and then fed the programme into the Eurovision TV network.
British TV engineers received the European programme through the Eurovision TV network and sent this to America from Goonhilly Down, Cornwall, by way of Telstar.
The pictures on this page and on the centre pages were taken from TV screens by Mirror cameramen.
FROM LONDON . . . The face of Big Ben as it was flashed by Telstar through space to viewers across the Atlantic last night.
FROM SWEDEN . . . Millions of Americans saw this picture of a girl twenty miles inside the Arctic Circle. Behind her—reindeer.
FROM CORNWALL . . . The Lizard lifeboat is launched on a foaming sea.
FROM ROME . . . The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel with its boys’ choir.