Telstar is a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

made by

Adidas Adidas AG (; stylized in all lowercase since 1949) is a German athletic apparel and footwear corporation headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, Germany. It is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe, and the second largest in the ...

. 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.

History

The ball was first introduced as the "Telstar Elast" for the 1968 European Football Championship. 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 9th 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 to ...

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

. 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 10th FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial Association football, 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 ...

held in

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. 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, ...

and

1976 Events January * January 2 – 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 18 – Full diplomatic ...

European Championships. The Telstar was the first World Cup ball to use the now-familiar truncated icosahedron for its design, consisting of 12 black

pentagon In geometry, a pentagon () is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple polygon, simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simple or list of self-intersecting polygons, self-intersecting. A self-intersecting ...

al 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 is de ...

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, and Portuguese top foo ...

, 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 to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

broadcasts (colour television was still rare worldwide during this time), was also well established before the Telstar. Telstar 1 replica

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, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

for

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to busi ...

, 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 (leather), tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffal ...

. The 1974 model's "Durlast"

polyurethane Polyurethane (; often abbreviated PUR and PU) is a class of polymers composed of organic chemistry, organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. In contrast to other common polymers such as polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethane term ...

coating provided

waterproofing Waterproofing is the process of making an object, person or structure waterproof or water-resistant so that it remains relatively unaffected by water or resists the ingress of water under specified conditions. Such items may be used in wet env ...

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, 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 national association football, football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awarded t ...

. 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 have 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 football to this day.

References

External links

* {{UEFA Euro 1976

Telstar Telstar refers to a series of communications satellites. The first two, Telstar 1 and Telstar 2, were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 launched atop of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962, successfully relayed the first televisi ...

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