The 2 June 1953 coronation of British queen Elizabeth II drove the already furious competition among the television networks to anew height. While all four networks — NBC, CBS, ABC, and Du Mont — planned coverage, NBC and CBS engaged in a frenzied race to provide the first taped coverage of the royal events. With combined costs running in excess of five hundred thousand dollars, the two largest networks spent months planning strategies to film independently the coronation and surrounding hoopla. The networks made elaborate, and some would say ridiculous, plans to speed the pictures back to the United States. NBC wanted to bounce a television signal off the moon; CBS wanted to use a guided missile. More-practical ideas triumphed, however, and both networks planned to use high-speed airplanes to fly the tape back to broadcast studios in the United States...