Andover Earth Station, Maine

This satellite communication station was built by AT&T in 1962 to communicate with the Telstar 1 satellite, the first communication satellite deployed by the US. It provided the first satellite link for TV and telephone between the US and the Europe, sending and receiving signal from here, bouncing of the Telestar non-geosynchronous satellite, to the Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall, UK. The system was designed and built by Bell Labs, part of AT&T. The giant horn antenna used for this early system, which was housed under a large (160 foot tall) radome, and had to rotate to follow the satellite as it passed by. The antenna was removed in the 1980s. New communications satellites were launched, including geosynchronous ones, which enabled uninterrupted communication links between the two stations, and simpler radio dishes. Four of these dishes were eventually built at Andover, as well as some smaller ones. With the break-up of Bell Telephone, which owned AT&T, in the 1980s, this facility was taken over by MCI in 1987, and by Verizon in 2006, which uses it still.