When the Soviet Union launched the first spacecraft in October 1957, it proved that a man-made object could survive in space. The faint, crackling beeps received from the satellite, named Sputnik, were used to track it as it made its solitary orbits to Earth. Sputnik lasted just ninety-two days before it fell back to Earth and burned up. But the fact that signals could be received from outside Earth's atmosphere marked the beginning of a new age of communications. Within twenty years, satellites would become a billion-dollar link in a global communications chain.

Although it made history by being first, Sputnik was a crude machine. Technicians in the United States worked on a more complex satellite that would transform the communications industry. Telstar, as it was known, was launched into a 3,000-mile-high orbit on July 10, 1962. On July 11, American television (see entry under 1940s—TV and Radio in volume 3) viewers...