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The first Olympics to be transmitted via television globally were the 1964 Innsbruck Games, carried via the Telstar satellite, which was engineered by the Bell System. AT&T's involvement with bringing the Olympics to the world continued in 1980 with new transmission facilities and one of the very first lightwave systems in the United States.
Lightwave, more commonly known as fiber optic transmission, had only been tested in Connecticut and Chicago when it was installed in Lake Placid for the 1980 Winter Olympics. The fiber optic system proved remarkably adaptable to extremes in temperature — when other types of cabling required recalibration of equipment, the lightguide system did not. The system was able to handle multiple camera feeds via microwave transmission to the Comstar satellite.
AT&T's assistance to Olympics broadcasts didn't end in 1980. AT&T managed the video and audio transmission facilities for NBC for the Seoul and Calgary Olympics in 1988. At the Nagano Games in 1998, the first application of digital broadcast technology was provided by the company to CBS, for television. At the Sydney Games in 2000, the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, and the Athens Games in 2004, AT&T arranged the satellite transmissions for NBC. And for Salt Lake City, AT&T built a new network of 8,000 trunk lines, dozens of new base stations, and the internal Olympics broadband network that linked 36 locations during the Games.
Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ
