History
Its first dish, Antenna One (dubbed "Arthur"), was built in 1962 to link with Telstar. It was the first open parabolic design and is 25.9 metres in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonnes. After Pleumeur Bodou (Brittany) which received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite at 0H47 GMT on July 11, 1962, Arthur received his first vidéo in the middle of the same day. It is now a Grade II listed structure and is therefore protected.
The site has also played a key role in communications events such as the Muhammad Ali fights, the Olympic Games, the 1969 moon landings and 1985's Live Aid concert.
Read more about this topic: Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (18761947)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernisms high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)