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Telstar is a football made by
Adidas Adidas AG (; stylized as adidas since 1949) is a German multinational corporation, founded and headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, that designs and manufactures shoes, clothing and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufactur ...
. 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 The 1970 FIFA World Cup was the ninth edition of the FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international Association football, football championship for List of men's national association football teams, men's senior national teams. Held from 31 May t ...
in Mexico. The similar "Telstar Durlast" was one of two official balls, along with the ''Chile Durlast'', of the
1974 FIFA World Cup The 1974 FIFA World Cup was the tenth FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial football tournament for men's senior national teams, and was played in West Germany (and West Berlin) between 13 June and 7 July. The tournament marked the first time that the ...
held in West Germany. 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 Solar time, me ...
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 Phila ...
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. The 1974 model's "Durlast" polyurethane coating provided waterproofing 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 A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
, León:
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(West Germany v. England)
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(Bulgaria v. Morocco)
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(Peru v. West Germany)
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(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 Telesat Telesat, formerly Telesat Canada, is a Canadian satellite communications company founded on May 2, 1969. The company is head ...
, was the official match ball for the
2018 FIFA World Cup The 2018 FIFA World Cup was the 21st FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's national Association football, football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awa ...
. 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 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