Cold Open

It’s 8:35 AM, on July 10th, 1962, in Crawford Hill, New Jersey.

Inside the headquarters of Bell Laboratories, 52-year-old engineer John Pierce hunches over a malfunctioning television. He turns the dial, searching for the station he needs—but all he gets is static. Then, John glances at the clock. He’s running out of time.

So out of frustration, John bangs his fist on top of the television…and the picture miraculously snaps into focus.

A wry smile crosses John’s lips—there’s an irony in this poor signal. Today marks the launch of a rocket carrying Telstar, a new communications satellite that John has spent the last two years developing. And if Telstar works as planned, it’ll revolutionize radio and television broadcasting—and give America a rare success in the Space Race.

But right now, Telstar is still firmly on the ground, and John is stuck with a grainy television picture. His screen shows a black-and-white image of a Thor-Delta rocket on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Telstar satellite is safely stowed inside the rocket’s hold. After fiddling with the antenna just a little bit longer, John barely has time to take his seat before a voice counts down the last few seconds.

Then, the rocket engines roar. Flames shoot out, obscuring the launch pad from view for a moment before the Thor-Delta rocket slowly lifts off, beginning a pioneering flight to take the world’s first communications satellite into orbit.

John Pierce and his colleagues at Bell Laboratories have spent years working on Telstar. But now that it’s left the ground, there’s nothing more they can do except watch and hope that all their efforts will pay off. If their technology works, and the satellite makes it into orbit, the impact of Telstar will be felt for decades, and a new age of American science will be said to have begun on July 10th, 1962.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is July 10th, 1962: Telstar Reaches Orbit.

Act One: Learning Through Failure

It’s May 13th, 1960, at Cape Canaveral in Florida, two years before the launch of Telstar.

Engineer John Pierce stands on one side of a giant lake, far from the Thor-Delta rocket on a launch pad on the other side. John’s here in an observation area to watch the rocket blast off into space. On board is Echo, a satellite which John has spent months preparing.

Three years ago, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, and the United States has been lagging behind in the so-called Space Race ever since. Soviets' success was a bitter pill for many Americans, who asked why their country was apparently being left behind. So, a few months after Sputnik was launched, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower founded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. And now it’s up to engineers like John Pierce to close the gap with the Soviets.

After being inspired by the work of science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, John has become obsessed with the concept of satellites. Right now, long-distance messages are transmitted under the sea through cables or over the air with radio waves. But both technologies are limited in how far they can carry messages without distortion. So over the past two years, John’s been part of a team at Bell Laboratories that’s hoping to use a satellite to overcome those limitations. The result of their work is Echo, a satellite designed to passively reflect microwave signals from a transmitter at one point on the Earth to a receiver at another. But until Echo reaches orbit, no one at Bell can be sure it’ll work.

John is not a superstitious man, but today’s date feels like a bad omen. Friday the 13th. John tries to push thoughts of the old superstition out of his mind as the countdown enters its final stages.

Then the thrusters fire, and the ground beneath John shakes. There’s a cheer and applause from the crowd watching as the slender rocket rises and clears the launch pad. But the cheers soon fade. Something isn’t right. The trajectory of the Thor-Delta is off. The rocket climbs several thousand feet in the air but then falls and crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. And John’s satellite is gone with it.

After the failure of this rocket launch, John has no option but to go back to Bell Laboratories and build a new Echo. He doesn’t have much time, though. Bell is given a new launch window that’s just three months from now. Given this tight deadline, the new satellite’s design remains the same as before: a 100-foot balloon squashed inside a 26-inch container. Which once it reaches orbit, will inflate the balloon automatically and provide a large surface that’ll reflect transmissions back to Earth.

Long days and nights at the lab follow, but when the next launch date arrives, John and his team are ready. On August 12th, 1960, the new Echo satellite is strapped into another Thor-Delta rocket. This time, the rocket lifts off without any hitches, and Echo successfully reaches orbit. John tracks the satellite from Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, while a second team follows it from California. They wait until the balloon inflates, then send a test signal. It bounces off the satellite and is received on the other side of the country. Echo is working exactly as designed.

So with confirmation that the satellite is operational, John hits play on a pre-recorded tape. The voice of President Dwight D. Eisenhower is soon picked up by radio operators all across America.

This is President Eisenhower speaking. It is a great personal satisfaction to participate in this first experiment in communications.

The success of Echo proves that sending signals up to space and back down to Earth is possible. But John’s work is far from finished. Echo is just a passive satellite—all it does is bounce signals back to Earth. For satellites to truly transform global communication, John knows he needs to make a new device that can amplify and process signals as well. But to do that, John will need to convince his colleagues at Bell, NASA, and the U.S. Government to invest even more time, manpower, and money before the Soviets beat them to it again.

Act Two: Interference

It’s July 27th, 1961, at Bell Laboratories in Crawford Hills, New Jersey, one year after Echo became the first passive communications satellite in orbit.

John Pierce opens the door of his team’s lab and is greeted by a flurry of activity. Engineers and scientists are all hard at work. Papers, wires, and electronics are scattered over every surface, and empty coffee cups spill over the top of an overflowing trash can. John and his team have been working around the clock for the last 14 months, and with everyone’s focus on the work, the lab’s become a bit of a mess.

As soon as Echo was shown to be operational, John was tasked by his bosses at Bell with designing a new and improved satellite. John's project was given the name Telstar. And its aim was to transmit not just phone conversations, but live television and telegraph transmissions as well. Recently, though, work on the satellite has taken on a new urgency.

Two months ago, the Soviet Union stunned the world by passing two major milestones in the Space Race. With the flight of Vostok 1, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space and the first to enter orbit. He circled the globe in a tiny capsule for one hour and 48 minutes before returning to Earth in south-west Russia.

The Soviet press seized on Gagarin’s flight as yet another propaganda victory over the West, and its impact is still evident today in the long, tired faces of John’s colleagues. They’ve been working nonstop to give America a much-needed win over its Soviet rivals. So, despite John’s own tiredness and full workload, he stops at every desk, giving his workers as much time as they need to explain what they’re working on.

Whenever John is in town, he always tries to inspire his team this way—but more and more, John’s being forced to spend time away from the lab. Over the last few months, he’s been distracted by complex negotiations with NASA and the federal government over funding.

The Echo satellite was a fairly basic piece of engineering. It didn’t rely on any electrical circuitry once it reached orbit. The satellite itself inflated from its small container thanks to a chemical reaction—benzoic acid reacting with heat from the Sun and transforming from a solid into a gas.

But Telstar is a far more complex device. It’s a 34-inch sphere filled with transponders, transistors, and solar panels. And whether such fragile parts will survive the trip into space and hold up in the harsh conditions there is still purely theoretical. John doesn’t even have all the parts they need yet—Telstar will require signal boosters with a price tag of $3.5 million each, and NASA is reluctant to spend so much money on an unproven technology.

So, John's spending much more of his time in Washington, DC, lobbying. Although he feels out of his element among the politicians and lawmakers, he still passionately argues that placing an active communications satellite like Telstar in orbit is a goal worth pursuing. He emphasizes the advantage that America will gain over the USSR if its military forces are able to communicate across the world in mere seconds. And he also reminds the politicians that satellite communications are the only part of the Space Race where the USA has the lead; the country needs Telstar for propaganda reasons as much as anything else.

Eventually, John’s months-long lobbying campaign pays off. The politicians in Washington and the officials at NASA agree to release the funds necessary to build Telstar. But John can tell that many are still reluctant to send so much money to Bell Laboratories. Bell is a private company owned by corporate giant AT&T, which is under fire for the monopoly it holds over America’s telecommunications industry. In off-the-record conversations, several politicians confirm that NASA is soon going to phase Bell Laboratories out of the American space program. Telstar will be John’s last involvement in a space mission—and if anything goes wrong this time, all his team’s hard work over the last year will have been wasted.

But that hasn't happened yet, Telstar is given a launch window in the summer of 1962. But once again, the success of a satellite produced by John Pierce and Bell Laboratories will depend on whether a Thor-Delta rocket can make it into orbit without malfunctioning—and John will be powerless to do anything but cross his fingers and hope.

Act Three: A New Dawn

It’s July 10th, 1962, in Andover, Maine, in the final few seconds of the countdown to the launch of Telstar aboard a Thor-Delta rocket.

Rising from an enormous plume of white-gray smoke, the rocket begins to climb into the sky. As it soars higher, the rocket’s first stage sputters out and breaks away. Then the second stage engine takes over, climbing higher still. Finally, a third stage ignites and pushes Telstar into orbit.

For Fred Kappel, it feels like he’s been holding his breath for hours. But when it’s confirmed that Telstar has reached orbit successfully, he takes his seat in a high-tech laboratory and then straightens his tie. The 59-year-old chairman of AT&T is here for the first test of the Telstar satellite, and he wants to look sharp for the cameras. But Fred’s not just here to watch. He’s also been given the honor of saying the first words ever broadcast via active satellite communication.

Fred picks up the telephone in front of him. If all goes to plan, the voice on the other end of the line will be that of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington. Now it’s the moment of truth. Fred clears his throat and speaks into the receiver.

KAPPEL: Good evening, Mr. Vice President. This is Fred Kappel. Calling from the Earth station at Andover, Maine. The call is being relayed through our Telstar satellite as I am sure you know. How do you hear me?

JOHNSON: You’re coming through nicely, Mr. Kappel.

Over the next few minutes, Fred and Vice President Johnson speak of the great potential of satellite communications and make it clear that Telstar is a victory for the American people in the space race.

A few hours later, the first television broadcasts are sent from the U.S. across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom and France. And the first face to be seen is that of Fred Kappel, talking about the benefits Telstar will bring to the world.

The successful launch of Telstar will prove that John Pierce’s dream of reliable, long-distance communication is possible. And over the next few decades, NASA will launch thousands more satellites, revolutionizing global communications and allowing events from around the world to be shared in real time. And although the original Telstar will cease to function and be replaced by more advanced satellites, it will continue to orbit the Earth for more than sixty years after its groundbreaking launch into space on July 10th, 1962.

Outro

Next on History Daily. July 11, 1833. As the British seize control of Australia, an Aboriginal freedom fighter is murdered by colonists.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Supervising Sound Designer Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nicholls.

Edited by Scott Reeves.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.