From the article: Hearing aids, lasers, and the artificial larynx:
inside AT&T's surprising archives
I noted the claim of "the first
demonstration of broadcast
television". There are several firsts in the history
of
broadcast television. A good overview (AFAICT) can be found
at
earlytelevision.org
under several headings. One of the
many firsts happened at the
University of
Iowa, and might help put AT&T's
accomplishments in perspective. It
doesn't really say where
this demonstration fit in on the timeline, so I can't
comment on how significant it was.
I've known since I was a student at Iowa
that there was a
plaque in Iowa City at the corner of Dubuque Street & Iowa
Avenue that claimed that on that site, W9XK broadcast the
first public
television transmission. I haven't time to go
double-check this, and can't find
record of the plaque on
the UI website, but the UI library says this:
The switch to digital telecasts is
on, and to mark the
occasion the Iowa Digital Library has released a new online
collection celebrating the birth of American prime-time TV
more than 75 years
ago.
This “birth” didn’t happen in a laboratory at AT&T, General
Electric or RCA, however. Instead, regularly scheduled TV
programs were
launched on the University of Iowa campus, in
a building at the corner of Iowa
Avenue and Dubuque Street
in Iowa City.
W9XK, as the experimental TV
station was known, went on the
air in 1933. For six years the station presented
a two-
nights-per-week schedule of “sight and sound” lectures,
musical
performances, and drama. A small but loyal audience
using special receivers
viewed the telecasts from as far
away as Pennsylvania and
Oklahoma.
Television was in its infancy in the 1930′s when the
U.S.
government licensed about 30 such experimental stations
around the country,
mostly in large cities. What set W9XK
apart from the others was its pioneering
schedule of
programs, according to university archivist David
McCartney.
“While other stations were airing test signals to prove the
viability of certain types of transmission systems under
development, W9XK
went one step further and offered programs
on a regular basis,” he said. “It
was not only a technical
effort of the College of Engineering but faculty from
the
School of Music, the Department of Speech and Theatre Arts,
and other
areas of campus also collaborated.”
W9XK stopped broadcasting
(or became WSUI-TV, I'm not sure
which) in 1939, right before WWII, and
right
when RCA demonstrated broadcast TV at the 1939 World's
Fair.
I think that
what W9XK can claim is that it was the first
public broadcast of television
with associated sound at a
regular schedule using real programming. This may
have to be
qualified with "in the US" or "for educational television".
The
sound was provided by the UI's radio station WSUI (UI
was originally the State
University of Iowa - SUI).
The UI Spectator magazine provides an
article with a recap of the history of W9XK, as well as
a link to the UI
LIbrary Special Collections archive on W9XK,
including a technical article by Dr. E. B.
Kurtz, the professor who got W9XK
broadcasting,from the
March 1933 issue
of the Iowa Transit, the student
published magazine of the College of
Engineering. I later
served as the General Manager of that organization for 3
years, after it had changed its name to "The Hawkeye
Engineer".
Carl
Menzer, who is mentioned in the article, was also the
founder of a radio
fraternity back in 1919 that later merged
with a professional engineering
fraternity that I joined
much, much later.
Finally, W9XK, and later
stations, was to become Iowa Public
Televison and the Public Broadcasting
System. This history
is laid
out on Wikipedia, oddly enough on the entry for
WQPT-TV.
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