Telstar back in the Eredivisie after 47 years
The time has finally come. On August 10, 2025, football club Telstar will play at the highest level again, the Eredivisie. It has taken 47 years for them to play top matches. The very first match is immediately an away game against Ajax. In the 1977/78 Eredivisie season, the club finished 18th and last, and was relegated to the Eerste Divisie, despite the presence of footballer Louis van Gaal. In the past, they played derbies against HFC Haarlem at the grounds on the Jan Gijzenkade. Many a member of OHVZ knew this location and attended HFC Haarlem's matches. But do you know why the Telstar logo looks the way it does?
Telstar
Telstar is a professional football club from Velsen. The club was founded on July 17, 1963, when rivals VSV and Stormvogels decided to merge their professional divisions and continue as amateur clubs. Both clubs were originally from IJmuiden, but because the German occupiers had destroyed their stadium during World War II, they relocated (for their first teams) to a new home ground in Velsen-Zuid, just outside IJmuiden. The new club was named Telstar, after the communications satellite that had just been launched at the time. The club is playing in the Eredivisie again in the 2025/26 season, after an absence of 47 years.
Telstar plays its home matches at the BUKO Stadium, traditionally known as Sportpark Schoonenberg. Since its founding in 1963, the football club has used the instrumental track "Telstar" by The Tornados as the opening tune for home matches.
The Tornados – Telstar (1962)
Telstar is an instrumental track by The Tornados composed by the British Joe Meek. It is one of the early songs of electronic rock. The single was released in 1962 and reached number 1 in Flanders, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two covers subsequently charted in the American charts as well. Five million records were sold worldwide.
Telstar communication satellites
Telstar is a series of communications satellites. The first two, Telstar 1 and Telstar 2, were experimental and virtually identical. Telstar 1 was launched on July 10, 1962, aboard a Thor-Delta rocket and transmitted the first television images, telephone calls, and telegraph images into space. It also provided the first direct transatlantic television feed. Telstar 2 was launched on May 7, 1963. Telstar 1 and 2 – although no longer functional – still orbit the Earth.
Telstar's owner, AT&T, paid NASA 3 million dollars to launch the satellite on July 10, 1962, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station using a Thor Delta rocket. The orbit had a perigee of 952 km and an apogee of 5632 km. The inclination was 44,79°, the eccentricity 0,241 86, and the orbital period just over 2 hours: 157,8 minutes. Contact between North America and Europe was possible for 20 minutes per revolution. Three ground stations were primarily used for signal transmission: Andover in the US with a horn antenna, Goonhilly Downs in England, and Pleumeur-Bodou in France.
Telstar, designed to orbit the Earth at an average altitude of 3.200 kilometers, provided television, telephone, and data transmissions between three ground stations in America and Europe. The American station in Andover (Maine) belonged to Bell Labs, while the British and French stations were owned by their respective postal services (at that time, many European postal services claimed a monopoly on both telecommunications and mail).
That same day, the first telephone call took place over a distance of 640 km between Fred Kappel at the ground station in Andover and then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. It began with: “This is Fred Kappel speaking. I am at the receiving station in Andover, Maine. This call is going through our Telstar satellite. How are you receiving me?” Johnson replied: “You are coming through just fine, Mr. Kappel.” In the first television broadcast, the waving American flag in New England was seen with the ground station in Andover in the background. After 15 hours, this was retransmitted to ground stations in England, France, and an American station in New Jersey. Two weeks later, millions of people in America and Europe saw that two people could see and speak to each other via Telstar 1.
Encouraged by their initial success, however, the French could not wait. On July 12, Pleumeur broadcast a seven-minute program that was aired by American channels. It opened with “Relax, you are in Paris!” and starred the popular singer Yves Montand. The British rushed to release their own program, while complaining that France had violated the broadcasting agreement.
On September 29, 1962, France issued a 25-centimeter stamp featuring the Pleumeur station and a 50-centimeter stamp with an artistic depiction of Telstar 1 in orbit. The highest-value stamp bore the pointed inscription “11-12 July 1962 / First television broadcast via satellite”. The French stamps were overprinted for use in the colony of Réunion, while other French territories celebrated the achievement (and capitalized on the growing philatelic market for space-themed stamps) with their own Telstar issues.
As for the satellite itself, Telstar 1 began behaving strangely after crossing the radiation belt of a high-altitude nuclear test. On February 21, 1963, it finally disappeared for good. According to the American Space Objects Registry, Telstar 1 still orbits the Earth as “space debris” object 1962-029A, but the memory of it lives on in thousands of stamp albums.
So we start with football club Telstar, and via the song Telstar by the Tornados, we arrive at the Telstar communication satellites. And everything is connected to everything else. Do you have these stamps in your collection?
A fine example of a Joint Stamp Issue of France and its colonies.
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