Good evening, you're up. This is the North American continent live via AT&T

Telstar, July 23, 1962, 3 p.m. Eastern day lights are convinced that the ability

to portray immediacy, to realize what's new, what's going on, is the true significance

of this new communications bridge. These first 18 minutes will attempt to show you

a few of the things that are going on right now on the North American continent.

We have just been informed that this baseball game is being seen in Europe

right now over the Telstar satellite. Let's give all the baseball fans in Europe

a big hello from Chicago.

And so began on July 23, 1962, the first live transatlantic broadcast

beamed courtesy of the newly launched Telstar satellite into millions of

homes across the United States and Europe. For those able to tune in and watch

the momentous occasion, it was impossible to escape the giddy sensation that

they were witnessing something of the world changing forever right in front of

their eyes. As Telstar engineer James early later remarked,

the moment revealed unmistakably that all of humanity were members of a single

global community. Of course, not all of humanity would necessarily have felt

themselves reflected in those first few images, let alone all of those who made

up the respective populations of the nations receiving them. But certainly,

never before could an awareness of the simultaneous existence of distant

others with which we share the planet being so profoundly felt.

It was an ironic turn of events in some ways since both the United States and

the Soviet Union's space programs which led directly to the development of satellite

...