Early communication satellites were decidedly less sophisticated than today. Earliest versions could hardly be called satellites even – they were essentially stationary weather balloons, coated in aluminum and working by reflecting signals back down to earth (hence their names Echo 1 and Echo 2).  For transmission, and not just reflection, aiming signals at stationary satellites meant the antennae had to move and track the satellite’s location: a huge undertaking. Far easier, it was decided, was to make a satellite that moves in sync with the antennae on the earth.

On this day, April 6, 1965, the Intelsat I satellite, nicknamed “Early Bird” for the proverb, went into geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean. It was to handle data transmission from Europe to the U.S. Everything from television to telephone to fax signals across the pond went through the “Early Bird.”

Earlier satellites did go up, albeit on a somewhat experimental basis. The Syncom 3, launched six months before the “Early Bird,” went in orbit over the International Date Line and was used to relay experimental television coverage of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, to the United States. That made the 1964 Tokyo games the first to be broadcast internationally.