ABSTRACT
The first transatlantic television test transmission via satellite was made on 10 July 1962 via the Telstar satellite, from Andover, Maine, USA, to Pleumeu Boudou, Brittany, France. The GPO earth station at Goonhilly, Cornwall, England, should also have received the signal, but unfortunately a misunderstanding about the direction of circular polarisation employed on the down-link prevented the Goonhilly earth station from receiving a usable signal. However, this was corrected on 11 July 1962 and, on 23 July, inaugural programmes were exchanged between Europe and the USA. Telstar orbited the earth every 2 hours 30 minutes in an elliptical orbit, so it had to be tracked by the transmitting and receiving earth stations, and it was only available for transmission during about 22minutes of each orbit. The first geostationary communications satellite, Early Bird,
entered service 22,300 miles above the Atlantic Ocean in June 1965, thereby providing permanently available television connections between Europe and North America. Thereafter, Intelsat provided bigger and better geostationary communication satellites above the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Consequently, by 1967, television links could be established between most parts of the world. In fact, on 25 June 1967, the programme Our World linked up live contributions from 25 countries around the world. The introductory and closing music consisted of the words, ‘Our World’, sung in 22 different languages by the Vienna Boys Choir. In 1984, the European Broadcasting Union, which is respon-
sible for the coordination of Eurovision transmissions, leased two wideband (72MHz) transponders in the Eutelsat I-F2 geostationary satellite, and in 1991 this was increased to four leased wideband transponders in Eutelsat II-F4. These four transponders provided six contribution quality analogue television channels, using frequency-modulated carriers.
