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. 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