ON THIS DAY 7 10 2023

This Day in History: July 10

Featured Event

1962







Telstar
communications satellite




Telstar 1 launched


Telstar 1, the first communications satellite to transmit live television signals and telephone conversations across the Atlantic Ocean, was launched this day in 1962, inaugurating a new age in electronic communications.

Telstar, series of communications satellites whose successful launching, beginning in 1962, inaugurated a new age in electronic communications. The first experimental communications satellite was made in 1960 by John Robinson Pierce of Bell Telephone Laboratories in the United States, who seized the opportunity presented by the planned launching of Echo 1, an aluminum-coated balloon satellite. At Pierce’s instigation, Echo was equipped to receive telephone signals and reflect them back to Earth. Telstar, a far more sophisticated conception, was designed to amplify a signal received from the ground and to relay it back to another ground station. Weighing only 77 kg (170 pounds), it was powered by nickel-cadmium batteries, recharged by 3,600 solar cells, and contained more than 1,000 transistors. Its heart was a traveling-wave tube capable on its own of amplifying signals 10,000 times, and far more with the aid of other components. Following Telstar’s launch on July 10, 1962, a giant movable horn antenna near Andover, Maine, locked onto the satellite when its shifting orbit (apogee 5,600 km [3,500 miles]) reached an appropriate point. Minutes later the first television pictures were transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean and received, via relay stations in England and France, on European television screens. Telephone, telegraph, data, telephoto, and facsimile transmissions were also successfully made.


Telstar operated successfully until February 1963, when it ceased to communicate, probably as a result of radiation from American nuclear-weapons testing in the atmosphere. Telstar 2, a heavier but basically similar satellite, was launched on May 7, 1963, into a higher orbit (apogee 10,720 km [6,700 miles]). Successors to Telstar were placed in higher circular orbits, permitting them to keep fixed positions in respect to Earth; three such satellites can provide continuous transmission to practically all points on the globe.

Featured Biography

Sofía Vergara
Colombian American actress





Sofía Vergara, (born July 10, 1972, Barranquilla, Colombia), Colombian American actress who was perhaps best known for her work on the television show Modern Family (2009–20).
Vergara’s chance encounter with a photographer on a Colombian beach when she was 17 years old led her to abandon her plans for a career in dentistry to pursue modeling. In addition, she hosted Colombian TV shows until 1998, when her brother was murdered and her family relocated to Miami. There she hosted the Spanish-language game show A que no te atreves (“I Dare You”) and began landing small roles in American films and TV shows. She was one of the four principals of the romantic comedy Chasing Papi (2003), but the acting jobs she subsequently secured were smaller roles that primarily capitalized on her looks.

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