Adidas Telstar

Telstar was a football made by Adidas. The 32-panel design of the ball, based on the work of Eigil Nielsen, has become iconic and is the standard design now used to portray a football in different media.

Ball
The ball was first introduced as the Telstar Elast for the 1968 European Football Championship. It was also the official match ball of the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. The ball was then used in the 1972 and 1976 European Championships. The similar Telstar Durlast was one of two official balls, along with the Chile Durlast, of the 1974 FIFA World Cup held in West Germany.

The Telstar was the first World Cup ball to use the now-familiar truncated icosahedron for its design, consisting of 12 black pentagonal and 20 white hexagonal panels. The 32-panel configuration had been introduced in 1962 by Select Sport, 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 broadcasts, was also well established before the Telstar. The name came from the Telstar communications satellite, which was roughly spherical and dotted with solar panels, somewhat similar in appearance to the football.

The ball was made of leather. The 1974 model's "Durlast" polyurethane coating provided waterproofing 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. The 1974 Chile Durlast was all white.