The 11 July 1962 should be remembered as the day the world got smaller. Not literally, of course, but metaphorically; it was the day of the first transatlantic satellite communication between Britain and the United States of America.
Racing through the skies, approximately 950km overhead, was the world's first commercial communications satellite. Telstar 1 had been launched the day before from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The size of a large beach ball, the satellite was the thin end of a technological wedge because an international consortium of companies had built a string of antenna stations around the globe to receive and transmit the signal. The stations were in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the UK.
The UK's station was on Goonhilly Downs, on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. This windswept plain was chosen because it looked out over the Atlantic. Its excellent view of the sky to the west meant that it could see satellites for
