|
Telstar's Andover Earth Station
Photo: Courtesy of the IEEE History Center |
And the Emmy Goes To...
by
Mike Geselowitz
What is the difference between
Everybody Loves Raymond and the Telstar Satellite? Telstar
is an
IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing, but
Everyone Loves Raymond isn't. However, thanks to the
IEEE History Center, they do have something in common…they both
won Emmy Awards from the Academy
of Television Arts & Sciences in 2005.
No, the historians at the History
center are not moonlighting as comedy writers.
Everyone knows about the Academy's
Emmy Awards, which honor achievements on television
in a range of categories such as acting, writing and directing.
However, the Academy also gives awards for engineering
achievements, present and past. Having heard about the Telstar
anniversary celebrations in 2002 — celebrations led by the IEEE — the
Academy's Engineering Committee decided to recognize Telstar as well. With difficulty finding a corporate partner to
prepare the application, the committee turned to the IEEE
History Center, which came through with a proposal that the broader Academy
eventually endorsed.
It seems quaint now, but many of us
grew up in an era when the voice from the television set saying
"Live, via satellite…" promised a real-time, dynamic view of
faraway lands we had previously seen only in still
pictures and our imaginations. In this era of satellite
phones, the World Wide Web, wireless Internet, and global
positioning systems, it is important to remember the engineering
heritage that brought us to where we are today.
The IEEE honored the Telstar
achievement at the original three earth station sites of the Telstar communications system. As the citation at the main
station in Andover, Maine, reads:
On 11 July 1962 this site
transmitted the first transatlantic TV signal to a twin station
in Pleumeur-Bodou, France via the TELSTAR satellite. The success
of TELSTAR and the earth stations, the first built for active
satellite communications, illustrated the potential of a future
world-wide satellite system to provide communications between
continents.
More information on Telstar is
available at the Bell Labs Web site:
www.lucent.com/minds/telstar/fit.html.
E-mail
this page
