Satellite television C. Clarke proposed a worldwide communications system which would function by means of three satellites equally spaced apart in earth orbit. This was published in the October 1945 issue of the Wireless World magazine and won him the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963. The first public satellite television signals from Europe to North America were relayed via the Telstar satellite over the Atlantic ocean on 23 July 1962, although a test broadcast had taken place almost two weeks earlier on 11 July. The signals were received and broadcast in North American and European countries and watched by over
Satellite television first commercial North American satellite to carry television transmissions was Canada's geostationary Anik 1, which was launched on 9 November 1972. ATS-6, the world's first experimental educational and direct broadcast satellite (DBS), was launched on 30 May 1974. It transmitted at 860 MHz using wideband FM modulation and had two sound channels. The transmissions were focused on the Indian subcontinent but experimenters were able to receive the signal in Western Europe using home constructed equipment that drew on UHF television design techniques already in use. The first in a series of Soviet geostationary satellites to carry direct-to-home television, Ekran 1,