ON JULY 10, 1962, IN WASHINGTON, D.C., VICE President Lyndon B. Johnson picked up the telephone to chat with Frederick Kappel, the chairman of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). Kappel was calling from Andover, Maine. For about two minutes the men traded platitudes about the potential benefits of satellite communications and the need for government and industry to work together. Then they thanked each other and hung up.

While their conversation is hardly as well remembered as Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” its historical significance was just as great. This telephone chat, which was broadcast to millions of viewers on all three television networks then in existence, was the first conversation transmitted by satellite (or at least KappePs half was; because of a shortage of channels, Johnson’s words were carried on ordinary land lines). The next day the same satellite transmitted the first trans-atlantic television broadcast, with a tape of Yves Montand singing “La Chansonette” to the world from France. Britain’s segment consisted of a live transmission of slides and test patterns, climaxed with a short speech by the deputy chief engineer of the British Post Office.

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