Telstar is a
football made by
Adidas. The iconic 32-panel alternating black-and-white design of the ball, based on the work of
Eigil Nielsen, has since become a global standard design used to portray a football in different media.
Ball
The ball was first introduced as the "Telstar Elast" for the
1968 European Football Championship
The 1968 UEFA European Football Championship final tournament was held in Italy. This was the third UEFA European Championship, an event held every four years and organised by UEFA. The final tournament took place between 5 and 10 June 1968.
It ...
.
A slightly different ball named "Telstar" was used as the
official match ball of the
1970 FIFA World Cup in
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
.
The similar "Telstar Durlast" was one of two official balls, along with the ''Chile Durlast'', of the
1974 FIFA World Cup held in
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
.
The ball was also used in the
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using mean solar tim ...
and
1976
Events January
* January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
* January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
* January 11 – The 1976 ...
European Championships.
The Telstar was the first World Cup ball to use the now-familiar
truncated icosahedron
In geometry, the truncated icosahedron is an Archimedean solid, one of 13 convex isogonal nonprismatic solids whose 32 faces are two or more types of regular polygons. It is the only one of these shapes that does not contain triangles or squares. ...
for its design, consisting of 12 black
pentagonal and 20 white
hexagon
In geometry, a hexagon (from Greek , , meaning "six", and , , meaning "corner, angle") is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°.
Regular hexagon
A '' regular hexagon'' has ...
al panels.
The 32-panel configuration had been introduced in 1962 by
Select Sport
Select Sport A.S. is a Danish sports equipment manufacturer based in Glostrup, Denmark.
As of 2008, Select Sport provides the Danish Football Association with footballs, and also several clubs in the Danish, Belgian, Portugal and Russian top ...
,
and was also used in the official logo for the 1970 World Cup. The black-and-white pattern, to aid visibility on
black and white television
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
broadcasts (colour television was still rare worldwide during this time), was also well established before the Telstar.
The name came from the 1962
Telstar communications satellite, which was roughly spherical and dotted with solar panels, somewhat similar in appearance to the football.
Developed by
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
for
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
, Telstar was the world's first active communications satellite and was the first to send live television signals, telephone calls, and fax images through space, which inaugurated an age of instant worldwide communications via satellite.
The ball was made of
leather
Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained from the tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffalo, pigs and hog ...
.
The 1974 model's "Durlast"
polyurethane
Polyurethane (; often abbreviated PUR and PU) refers to a class of polymers composed of organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. In contrast to other common polymers such as polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethane is produced from ...
coating provided
waterproofing
Waterproofing is the process of making an object or structure waterproof or water-resistant so that it remains relatively unaffected by water or resisting the ingress of water under specified conditions. Such items may be used in wet environme ...
as well as protection from damage such as scuffs and tears.
Only 20 Telstars were provided for the World Cup; an estimated 600,000 replicas were sold subsequently.
Some 1970 matches were played with a brown ball.
[See Getty Images photos of matches in the Estadio Nou Camp, León:
]
#80752641
(West Germany v. England)
#79662284
(Bulgaria v. Morocco)
#81345734
(Peru v. West Germany)
#80752534
(Peru v. Morocco)
The Chile Durlast was all white and was used during the Italy-Germany semifinal for the first 20 minutes, then it was replaced by a 32 panel black and white due to a deflation.
A new version of the Telstar, named
Telstar 18
Telstar 18 is a communication satellite in the Telstar series of the Canadian satellite communications company
A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of ...
, was the official match ball for the
2018 FIFA World Cup. The design maintains the general pattern, except the corners of the pentagons are stretched into pixellated gradients.
Telstar is now considered a classic design. Although most footballs used in current championships had different designs and sections, in representations of footballs in cartoons, comics, caricatures and decorations in general, footballs inspired by Adidas Telstar are usually used, becoming a universal icon for association football to this day.
References
External links
*
{{UEFA Euro 1976
Telstar
Telstar is the name of various communications satellites. The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully relayed through space the fi ...
FIFA World Cup balls
1970 FIFA World Cup
1974 FIFA World Cup
UEFA Euro 1968
Products introduced in 1968
UEFA Euro 1972
UEFA Euro 1976
UEFA European Championship balls