Telstar's 50th Anniversary
Bell Labs Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Telstar and Birth of Modern Communications
“Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent will celebrate one of its great historical achievements with the 50th anniversary of the launch of Telstar I, the world’s first active communications satellite. The launch on July 10, 1962, in partnership with NASA, ushered in the era of modern communications including real-time global telephone service, data communications and TV broadcasting. Telstar I, a sphere roughly a yard in diameter and weighing about 170 pounds, was a technology ‘tour de force,’ incorporating dozens of innovations from Bell Labs, including the transistor and solar panels, and was powered by 3,600 solar cells also invented by Bell Labs in 1954. The satellite could carry 600 voice calls and one black-and-white TV channel.”
In the 60’s there was a ridiculous sitcom called “My Favorite Martian”, … and I’m much younger … in a living room with a guy who’s working on another communications satellite TBD … and the main character (played by Ray Walston) appears to snag the wrong thing out of orbit, dragged down in front of him appears a basketball-sized roughly spherical spacecraft, where he blerts a dismayed “Telstar!”, then throws the thing back.
We both break up laughing. For a good 15 minutes.
Remember the videofeeds where the announcer would voice over “… and this is being carried to you via Telstar” as a reminder of the realtime worldwide coverage that we have long taken for granted. It was a different world then.
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Unrelated but interesting – “The hearts of astronauts who spend longer durations in space become more spherical,” noted James D. Thomas, MD, the head of the core lab analysis for the International Space Station.
A very different world indeed.
I remember that very clearly.
Mr. C,
I, too, remember My Favorite Martian and his wonderful rising antennae that would seem so silly to kids today. Man, are we really getting that old? (I still have the Telstar instrumental in my audio library.)
Thanks for the heart article. I wish the ISS bashers would read it. It’s exactly the sort of research that we need the station for if we ever want to do longer-duration manned missions to anywhere, plus the fact that knowledge applicable here on Earth is coming out of it, too. In retrospect, it’s not surprising that the heart gets spherical in zero-g. Since the valve flaps are at the exterior surface, internally I guess it’s just uniform surface tension in a fluid system, like a soap bubble or a balloon, but it seems that no one considered it until now. Wonderful stuff.
Steve
Mr. Steve,
One of my collaborators is using this to explain a medical dilemma called “compartment syndrome” on ground based medical research. Absence of gravity provokes in a related way on certain muscle tissues – changes tissue perfusion rates.
One of the problems with biomedical research is that you can’t causatively predict how things interact to inspire effective science product crossover. Big issue.
Just like the change in local to global perspectives in modern culture, in an anthropological sense, was started by Telstar, amplified by the internet, such that while rural folk are still somewhat parochial in outlook, they routinely communicate about it using global communications technologies / networks / services / products without being hung up about the means used.
So the human condition … evolves … if ever so slowly.
Too slowly for our own good, I fear.
America can move astonishingly fast, and in a sensible direction.
Getting it to do so is the immensely hard trick.
Means to cajole and bludgeon to achieve this can be highly varied by differing groups, some jackbooted, some whimsical, some outright insane ….
I must say the Telstar though quaint by today’s standards was the hot setup back then. What bothers me is Alcatel-Lucent outsourced much to China. Research laboratories like Bell Labs, PARC and other such places, if they are still around have been converted to technology applied centers.
Blame the formation of Lucent for the demise of Bell Labs. Corporate nonsense that totally wrecked an amazing institution.
Whenever I think of Telstar, I think of Arthur C Clarke and his prescient predictions regarding satellites.
In one of his later books, he predicted that the Chinese would surpass the Soviets/Russians and the US would end up working with them. There was tension, but cooperation.
Let’s hope he was right on that one too.
It is interesting that no one is talking about how the government killed commercial space in the early 60’s.
AT&T funded Telstar out of their own pockets and were in the process of designing a constellation of LEO birds based on that general format for global voice communications.
At the same time the DoD was funding Hughes to build the first GEO bird. The Kennedy/Johnson administration took that project and created a government owned corporation called COMSAT to monopolize global satellite communications.
AT&T caved and simply started buying bandwidth from the GEO birds and was COMSAT’s biggest customer.
Another example of how government “help” helped to destroy an industry.
Yes – this did happen. Partially due to the intentional misconception of global communications as a strategic resource that required control and authorization.
Few know that the Internet almost suffered a similar fate, back in the early days of what would be called the ARPANet e.g. NCP. Some of the early misadventures (dynamic routing tables that required ALL the IMPs to be powered down, flag days, wine lists, etc) caused the fear to recede as it was considered “kooky” and not a threat. The telco’s were tasked with a “safe” controlled deployment on a 40 year rollout, using the traditional telco model that would address it like a telephone, so no worry.
COMSAT slowed everything down likewise. There was talk of reigning in the cowboys who’d sell to anybody … also ironically came up again around the time of the idiocy regarding Chinese launch of comsats that spawned ITAR, as a justification of same.
No one in the 60’s believed in light process. Very, very patriarchal.
Partially due to the intentional misconception of global communications as a strategic resource that required control and authorization.
Gold old McNamara. The list of things he screwed up is a mile long.
McNamara was second only to McCarthy in my books as a dangerous menace who never, ever should have been able to reach the level of authority and power that he did. I find it damned scary that such a thing can happen, and I’m not convinced that it couldn’t happen again today, even though all of us in the technically advanced countries think we’ve evolved beyond that sort of thing. Ever wonder where we’d be today if he hadn’t canceled the X-20 program? (Among other programs.)
Steve
I had (with others) fits over McNamara too.
Met him later in life. He explained his “management style” as having ideas justify their existence … and if they couldn’t, they shouldn’t be done. Which seems like a rational position. Note – he didn’t fight for any of them, they had to do the fighting alongside others. So philosophically opposite Griffin – “only what I fight for”.
In this case, the detachment was … deadly. Because those who could fight for a position … didn’t even have a seat at the meeting. I faulted him for incompleteness – i.e. “half honest” – he didn’t do the necessary intermediate step of developing the basis to make a rational decision first.
Perhaps because being top boss of the largest govt agency at a time of great change/threat … means you take shortcuts to cope with the load?
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Not excusing just explaining.
My training for 40+ years involve fault chain/tree analysis – you always attempt to grasp root cause.
Mr. C,
Although I could never find a way to excuse his many bad decisions, I suppose we have to be fair and suspect that LBJ was behind a lot of them, canceling programs that weren’t his to try to find money for his social programs. And most of those didn’t work worth a damn, either. We can thank LBJ for making Apollo happen, but the balance of his record is mighty questionable. I wouldn’t be surprised if people in Viet Nam still use the names McNamara and Johnson in vain.
Steve
“Best and the brightest”