Adidas began manufacturing the Telstar in 1963, "The Classic soccer ball." A name derived from the first communication satellite to allow for live television broadcasting, Telstar 1. That same year Adidas debuted the ball during the European Championships. Later, it became the 1970 FIFA World Cup official match ball, which earned it global recognition. Yet, Adidas only produced twenty of them to use during the 1970 World Cup held in Mexico. As a result, teams got forced to play some matches with a brown or white ball. The company went on to sell over 600,000 replicas.
Unlike the balls used in the year before its existence, the classic soccer ball was unique in shape, weight, and style. Adidas manufactured the Telstar with a leather shell consisting of twelve regular pentagons and twenty regular hexagons. Each section of the ball is sewn in the shape of a polyhedron to form a truncated icosahedron.
The Telstar was Revolutionary. The new shape of the ball brought a unique touch, and also the ball’s trajectory changed. In addition, the introduction of the Black/white Telstar was relevant to its time as black and white televisions couldn’t early capture footage of the balls present at the time.
