history satillette

in homes across Romes people barely touched their dinners. Londons Pubs were packed,Butbartendersnewsletterpacked, but bartenders served nary a drink. Throughout Europe, more than 100 million people huddled around television sets on the evening of July 23, 1962, to tune in to history. With Europeans watching eagerly, a black-and-white image of the Statue of Liberty flickered onto their screens. The picture itself was not particularly noteworthy except for one thing: it was live, The historic, live transatlantic broadcast was made possible by Telstar, a spherical satellitesatellite only the size of a large beach ball. Built by AT&T and dreamed up in Bell Labs, now the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, Telstar received telephone calls, data, still pictures and fax images from ground stations in Andover, Maine, and France before amplifying them and relaying them across the Atlantic Ocean. A nickel cadmium battery and 3,600 solar cells protected by sapphire powered the 170-pound satellite, which roared into orbit from Cape Canaveral atop a NASA Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. Since AT&T paid NASA $3 million to launch the satellite, Telstar marked the first privately sponsored space initiative