Tests Show Pacific TV Link Possible

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30177, 8 July 1963, Page 11

Tests Show Pacific TV Link Possible

(N .Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) TOKYO, July 7. A television link will probably be established across the Pacific to report the Olympic Games in October, 1964, using the communications satellite Telstar IL

The link would be technically possible, Japan’s International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation said today. Viewers in the United States —and possibly Europe and Australia—would be able to watch the Olympic events as they take place in Tokyo. As a step towards establishing an inter-continental television link, the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation today began tracking Telstar II in a series of tests.

was being used for the series of the tests.

The corporation said an attempt to establish a television link with the United States would be made in tests next spring, using a larger parabola antenna, 20 metres across. The antenna was expected to be completed in September. Mr C. S. L. Keay, “The Press” astronomical correspondent, said last evening that although the satellite was well within range of New Zealand, it would not be possible to receive its relayed signals as there was no suitable antenna in the Dominion.

The corporation said radio signals sent from the space communication centre at Andover, Maine, in the United States, were received by an experimental station near Tokyo. The corporation said a special tracking parabola antenna, six metres across, completed at the end of last May,

It might be possible to install a radio-telescope for about £3 million, he said. Entertainment would only be a minor use for it; scientific uses were limited only by the imagination of the persons who operated it, he said.