The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

196 Intelsat (International Telecommunications Satellite Organization)
Intelsat Three crew members of Shuttle mission STS-49 hold onto the 4.5-ton Intelsat 6 after a six-handed “capture” made minutes
earlier. NASA
Intelsat 1, also known as Early Bird, was launched in
April 1965 and became the first comsat to provide regular
commercial telecommunications. It could support
either one TV channel or 240 voice circuits but not
both, a limitation that made it costly to use. In the
spring of 1967, Early Bird was joined by two larger com-
panions—Intelsat 2 over the Pacific and Intelsat 3 over
the Atlantic. With these three satellites, all the world’s
TV networks could be linked together, and the first
global telecast was broadcast on June 25, 1967, which
included the Beatles’ live performance of “All You Need
Is Love.”