What, no Google Doodle for Telstar's 50th anniversary?

[joeekaitis]

Fifty years ago today, the future went into orbit.

Today Marks 50th Anniversary of First Global Satellite TV Broadcast

Fifty years ago today, on July 12, 1962, the first ever live television signal was transmitted across the Atlantic by the Telstar 1 satellite.

www.pcmag.com

 

[rp2813]

This does seem to be a significant omission on Google's part.

 

What's interesting is that my recollection about Telstar (I need to find the 45 for my jukebox btw) is seeing a wiggly broadcast back in 1959 or 60 and being told that it was via Telstar.  I remember it was on TV at a friend's house in the first neighborhood we lived in up until late 1960.   Maybe what really happened is that I was visiting there in 1962 after having moved.

 

Bell Labs.  Another casualty of SBC's systematic dismantling of the best communications network the world had ever seen.

 

 

 

[vacbear58]

Telstar

The sound track ....

 

[joeekaitis]

I'll see your Tornados and raise you a ukulele and a Sty

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[peterh770]

That stupid song was #1 the week I was born in 1962...

 

[washerman]

The astrological ramifications

are indeed astounding. I wonder what house the telstar was in when you were born? I certainly hope it was a fortuitous confluence of events!

 

[hunter]

actually, AT&T committed suicide in my opinion.

Bell Labs had been spun off with Lucent Technologies before SBC bought the corpse of the old AT&T.

It pains me to this day to see what has happened to one of the best (maybe the best) R&D organization this planet has ever produced.

I worked at the Labs twice, mid eighties to 1990, then left for Bellcore, came back mid 90s and worked there for a while. When they announced the AT&T, Lucent, and NCR split I believed that their days were done, and the NJ high tech economy was going to be very, very, very hard to live in soon. I was right. I'd already decamped for New England.

I'm amazed at how many bad management decisions killed them.

 

[whirlcool]

They must have shot Telstar 2 up pretty quick if Telstar 1 was killed by cosmic radiation just four months after launch. I don't remember a disruption in service. So they must have had something to replace it with.

I wonder if the original Telstar is still up there, or did it renter and burn up?

 

[norgeway]

Telstar!

Was the first record played on my Phonola Consolette Stereo, bought new in 1962 by some good friends of my parents, there Daughter said her dad let her play it first because she had just bought the record, She was 12 at the time.

 

[rp2813]

Phonographs and Inaugural Records

In 1958 my sister got a Decca portable stereo record player (not a changer, just a player) as a First Holy Communion gift.  The detachable lid contained the second speaker, which had a six or eight foot cord on it.  She received two 45's with it but I don't think my parents had the slightest clue about which selections she would like.  I'm only remembering one of them at the moment:  Twangy guitar-heavy Peter Gunn by Duane Eddy.   I remember thinking "Huh?" when I heard it, even though it was considered to be Rock 'n' Roll.  I'm pretty sure the other record was even further removed from the still-emerging Rock 'n' Roll genre.