Video: 'Telstar Satellite Brings World Closer 1962/7/12'

(Tuesday, July 10, 1962, 4:35:00 a.m. EDT) — Telstar 1, the world’s first commercial communications satellite, was launched today from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on top of a Thor-Delta rocket, marking a historic, highly successful first step toward achieving a revolutionary new global communications system in space.

Video: 'The Day Television Went Global'

Telstar 1, developed by AT&T in a joint government-industry venture into space, would successfully relay through space the first television pictures, telephone calls, and telegraph images, and provided the first live television feed between the United States and Europe.

The first image transmitted between the continents was a black-and-white photo of the American flag sent from the U.S. transmitter at Andover, Maine, to Pleumeur-Bodou in France.