The Challengers

The Challengers may refer to:

The Challengers (TV series)

The Challengers was a Canadian biographical television series which aired on CBC Television from 1979 to 1980.

Premise

This series profiled various successful Canadians. Its debut on 26 January 1979 featured a winning squash player, a rodeo performer and a hockey skate blade inventor.

Scheduling

The half-hour series was broadcast Fridays at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern) from 26 January to 30 March 1979. Additional special hour-long episodes were broadcast in 1980, on 11 January, 8 February and 2 April.

References

External links

The Challengers (band)

The Challengers were an instrumental surf music band started in late 1962. They were located in Los Angeles. They represented a growing love for surf music and helped make the genre popular. Their debut album "Surfbeat" was the biggest selling surf album of all time and helped bring surf music from California to the rest of the world.

Overview

The band was formed out of the pioneer surf band called The Bel-Airs. The Bel-Airs were still in high school at the time, but scored a hit with an instrumental song titled "Mr. Moto." Their potential was cited by many, but it was an argument about use of the then new Fender reverb unit that led to their breakup. The Bel-Airs were originally formed by two guitarists, Eddie Bertrand and Paul Johnson, both 16 years old at the time they recorded "Mr. Moto". In early 1963, Eddie Bertrand heard Dick Dale using the Fender reverb unit and wanted to start incorporating heavy reverb into The Bel-Airs songs. He felt reverb was the sound that would come to define surf music. Even at 17, Johnson was something of an independent thinker and told Bertrand that The Bel-Airs had done quite well without reverb and he didn't see any reason at all to begin using it. The argument escalated until Bertrand finally left the band which then broke up for good shortly after. Johnson confirmed this story in the liner notes he contributed to The Bel-Airs reunion album released in 1986.

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 first television pictures, telephone calls, and fax images, and provided the first live transatlantic television feed. Telstar 2 launched May 7, 1963. Telstar 1 and 2—though no longer functional—still orbit the Earth.

Description

Belonging to AT&T, the original Telstar was part of a multi-national agreement among AT&T (US), Bell Telephone Laboratories (US), NASA (US), GPO (UK) and the National PTT (France) to develop experimental satellite communications over the Atlantic Ocean. Bell Labs held a contract with NASA, paying the agency for each launch, independent of success.

The US ground station—built by Bell Labs—was Andover Earth Station, in Andover, Maine. The main British ground station was at Goonhilly Downs in southwestern England. The BBC, as international coordinator, used this location. The standards 525/405 conversion equipment (filling a large room) was researched and developed by the BBC and located in the BBC Television Centre, London. The French ground station was at Pleumeur-Bodou (48°47′10″N 3°31′26″W / 48.78611°N 3.52389°W / 48.78611; -3.52389) in north-western France.

Adidas Telstar

Telstar was a football made by Adidas. The 32-panel design of the ball, based on the work of Eigil Nielsen, has become iconic and is the standard design now used to portray a football in different media.

Ball

The ball was first introduced as the Telstar Erlast for the 1968 European Football Championship. It was also the official match ball of the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. The ball was then further use in the 1972 and 1976 European Championships. 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.

The Telstar was the first World Cup ball to use the now-familiar truncated icosahedron for its design, consisting of 12 black pentagonal and 20 white hexagonal panels. The 32-panel configuration had been introduced in 1962 by Select Sport, 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 broadcasts, was also well established before the Telstar. The name came from the Telstar communications satellite, which was roughly spherical and dotted with solar panels, somewhat similar in appearance to the football.

Telstar (song)

"Telstar" is a 1962 instrumental performed by The Tornados. The track reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in December 1962 (the second British recording to reach No. 1 on that chart in the year, after "Stranger on the Shore" in May), and was also a number one hit in the UK Singles Chart. It was the second instrumental single to hit No. 1 in 1962 on both the US and UK weekly charts.

Background

The record was named after the Telstar communications satellite, which was launched into orbit on 10 July 1962. It was written and produced by Joe Meek, and featured either a clavioline, or the similar Jennings Univox, both keyboard instruments with distinctive electronic sounds. It was recorded in Meek's studio in a small flat above a shop in Holloway Road, North London. "Telstar" won an Ivor Novello Award and is estimated to have sold at least five million copies worldwide.

Plagiarism claim

A French composer, Jean Ledrut, accused Joe Meek of plagiarism, claiming that the tune of "Telstar" had been copied from "La Marche d'Austerlitz", a piece from a score that Ledrut had written for the 1960 film Austerlitz. This led to a lawsuit that prevented Meek from receiving royalties from the record during his lifetime, and the issue was not resolved in Meek's favour until three weeks after his suicide in 1967. Austerlitz was not released in the UK until 1965, and Meek was unaware of the film when the lawsuit was filed in March 1963.