1939: Television

The year 1939 marked the beginning of television program service for the public in the United States. For several years prior to this experimental transmissions had been made, particularly in Los Angeles and New York. But television receivers were not available to the public, and no coordinated effort was made to bring television out of the laboratory and into the home.

The signal for the inauguration of the service was the opening of the New York World's Fair, on April 30, 1939. President Roosevelt's opening address was televised by the cameras of the National Broadcasting Company directly from the Fair Grounds; the images were relayed to the television transmitter in the Empire State Building, New York, and thence radiated to the several hundred receivers which by that time had been installed in homes in the metropolitan area. Coincidently, four manufacturers announced lines of home television receivers in retail stores, prices were established, and a regular schedule of programs was announced. The new infant prodigy of the radio had taken its first step.

Stations.

Several months later station W6XAO, the television transmitter of the Don Lee Broadcasting System in Los Angeles, was modified to conform with the transmission standards for which the commercial receivers were designed; and receivers were made available to the people of Los Angeles. The regular program schedule, which had been maintained theretofore on an experimental basis, was continued and expanded.

At the end of 1939 these two stations were the only ones offering regular programs to the public on an announced schedule. The station of the Columbia Broadcasting System in New York, W2XAB, began experimental transmissions in November 1939, preparatory to going on the air with regular programs early in 1940. An occasional program schedule was maintained by the Philco transmitter W3XE in Philadelphia. The General Electric station, W2XB in the Helderberg Mountains near Albany, New York, went on the air in December, and announced that regular programs would begin in January 1940, and that the programs of the New York station would be picked up and relayed to the tri-city area of Albany, Troy and Schenectady. Transmissions were made, on low power, by the station of the DuMont Laboratories, W2XVT, in Passaic, N. J. Stations were under construction or operating occasionally in Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Boston, Kansas City, Bridgeport, Conn., Iowa City, Iowa, and Camden, N. J. But the sale of television receivers was restricted principally to the metropolitan areas surrounding New York and Los Angeles, inasmuch as stations in these cities were offering regularly scheduled programs.

Receivers.

At the beginning of the service, the radio industry was very optimistic about the immediate commercial success of the venture. Some early predictions looked to the sale of as many as 20,000 television sets in New York City in the first year of the service. In the first nine months, to the end of 1939, these predictions proved far in excess of the fact. Actually, the most reliable estimates place the total number of television receivers sold to the public at slightly over 1,000, most of these in the New York area. The industry at first was very much disappointed in this showing, but reasons were quickly found to explain it and to point the way to greater sales in the future. The principal bars to wide acceptance of television receivers have been the high prices, the fact that there is but one reachable source of programs, and the feeling on the part of the public that reduced prices and technical improvements would come in the near future. In support of that feeling was the fact that the Federal Communications Commission refused to accept or to reject the transmission standards proposed by the Radio Manufacturers Association, on which the television transmissions and receiver designs have been based. Lacking such government approval, there has been the chance that the standards might be revised, and the equipment already sold might thereby become obsolete or at least reduced in efficiency. Experience with the standards has shown them to be suitable as a basis for transmission, however, and there seems little likelihood of their being changed in any way which would affect equipment already in the hands of the public.

Reduction in prices, on the other hand, seems much more likely. At the beginning the prices ranged from about $200 for a simple television attachment to be used in conjunction with a standard radio receiver and producing a picture about 4 x 5 in. in size, to about $600 for an elaborate console model including television sight and sound equipment and a standard all-wave radio, the picture size being about 8 x 10 in. Several firms announced near the end of 1939 limited price reductions of about 33 per cent and it seemed probable that such a scaling down of prices would become general for 1940. By the end of 1939, approximately 20 manufacturers announced their intention of soon making television receivers available and about 10 of these had definite plans for commercialization early in 1940.

Programs.

The programs offered by the National Broadcasting Company over station W2XBS in New York included a wide variety of information and entertainment. The program schedule was increased from approximately 2 hours per week when the service started to from 11-14 hours per week at the end of 1939.

The NBC programs included plays enacted by Broadway casts. Outstanding among these were Jane Eyre, Treasure Island, The Milky Way, Dulcy, The Dover Road, Three Men on a Horse, Another Language, Stage Door and Little Women. A great variety of films, short subjects and features, were also presented. Among the educational features were several meetings of the Explorer's Club, casual gatherings of outstanding personalities in the world of exploration who discussed their exploits and showed films taken on their travels. Among those present were Sir Hubert Wilkins, Phil Plant, Col. C. W. Furlong, Capt. Bob Bartlett and Capt. John Craig, the undersea explorer. Saturday afternoons were devoted to the series 'Wings of a Nation,' giving information on all phases of aviation and air travel. Spelling bees were held frequently, proving that the eye provides half the fun in such mental tests.

The mobile transmitting equipment of W2XBS, consisting of two trucks of apparatus including camera equipment and a relay transmitter, was active in bringing to the air all manner of sporting events and occasions of public interest. Many telecasts from the World's Fair were presented during the 1939 season. The first 'television ball' held at the Waldorf-Astoria for the benefit of the Goddard Neighborhood Center was telecast, as was the occasion of the opening of Gone with the Wind at the Capital Theater in New York. The cameras picked up almost every sport on the calendar, such as collegiate and professional baseball and football, bicycle racing, professional wrestling and boxing, track and field events, skating, and jujitsu.

Transmission Technique.

The achievement of true television, that is, the instantaneous transmission of half-tone images in motion over the air, dates back to 1925. Since that time, steady progress has been made in refining the clarity of the images, as well as in increasing their size and removing the flicker and unsteadiness which characterized early attempts. Today, the modern electron television system stands as one of the greatest achievements in electrical communication, if not the greatest.

Some idea of the television system's capabilities may be gained from the following brief description of the technique involved: Pictorial reproductions consist ordinarily of half-tone dots, such as are familiar in the printing of pictures by half-tone engravings. A picture suitable for portraying the usual range of subject matter must contain several hundred thousand such dots. In television images the picture or scene to be televised is divided arbitrarily into about 200,000 dots, which are arranged in about 400 parallel horizontal rows. The television camera explores each of these rows from left to right, one after the other, in much the same manner as the eye reads a page of printed matter. The camera, in thus exploring the picture for the information it contains, converts each little half-tone value of light or shade into a corresponding electrical impulse, and as the picture is 'scanned' row by row, a succession of such electrical impulses is produced. These impulses are imposed on the radio carrier wave and intercepted by the receiver, which converts the succession of impulses to corresponding values of light and shade which are assembled, row by row, before the eye on the viewing screen.

The eye would see each half-tone dot separately if it were not for the great speed at which they are reproduced and assembled before the eye. In fact, all of the 200,000 dots in the picture are reproduced within 1/30th of a second, and as a result the eye appears to see them all at once, because of the persistence of vision. Each picture reproduced in 1/30th second is immediately followed by the transmission of another picture in the same manner, each picture differing slightly from the picture preceding and following it, in the same manner as motion pictures are reproduced. Thus 30 complete pictures, each containing 200,000 dots, are sent in each second: and any motion which occurs within that time is divided into 30 small motions which appear to blend smoothly one into the next, as viewed by the eye. The detail and the motion of the scene are thus reproduced artificially.

Since 30 pictures, each containing 200,000 half-tone dots, are sent in each second, the television system must be capable of transmitting no fewer than 6 million items of information per second. This extraordinary rate of transmission has imposed severe engineering requirements on the system. One result is the necessity of using very short waves (from 4-7 meters in length) for transmission. Another is the necessity of using a very wide 'path' in the ether, about 600 times as wide as is required by an ordinary radio sound broadcasting station. This fact limits the number of television stations which can be accommodated simultaneously on the ether within a given transmission area. At present 7 frequency assignments are available for television stations in the currently useful portion of the ether spectrum. Room for more stations will be found, and in fact has already been reserved for television purposes; but for the present no more than two or three stations can be assigned in any one city. Fortunately the problem of interference between stations is not so serious on the ultra-short waves as on the conventional broadcast wave-lengths, so that the frequency assignments may be duplicated many times across the country if not in any particular city.

National Network.

The use of television in theaters was demonstrated in New York during the summer of 1939. The equipment required is elaborate and expensive compared with the cost of a receiver for the home, but it is capable of bringing telecasts to large gatherings in a manner comparable to that of the motion picture. No commercialization of this service is in immediate prospect, but eventually it may well be an auxiliary service by which local theaters may bring to their audiences events of national importance as they happen. At present, one obstacle to a national network of stations is the impracticability of sending television programs over conventional telephone wires; but eventually special wire circuits and radio-relay circuits, now being developed will in all likelihood, link stations in a national television network comparable to the present networks of the sound broadcasting system. See also PHOTOGRAPHY; RADIO.