Publication

Switzerland’s first satellite ground station was inaugurated in Spring 1974, in the alpine Canton of Valais. The antenna attached to the operations center measures approximately 30 meters in diameter and weighs, with its pedestal, 1,750 tons. Nicknamed the “Big Ear,” it has generated, from its erection until today, a diverse array of representations and discourses, as evidenced by the iconographic abundance the station has aroused and by the exhibition on the site opened to the general public in 1976. In the 1960s and 1970s, as ultravisible part of the otherwise visually unsizeable network of satellite communications, the ground stations’ parabolic antennas have come to shape a transnational imaginary that celebrates the modernity of space activities. This article proposes to explore the cultural history of the Swiss ground station through an analysis of its prevailing representations. This overview reveals the multiplicity of historically and geographically situated meanings attached to the infrastructure and evaluates their ideological implications in a longue durée perspective.