Eighty years ago today, the June 20, 1938 issue of Life magazine carried these images of a broadcast by WNBT New York.

The June 7 broadcast of s scene from the play Susan and God starring Gertrude Lawrence originated at Radio City, and these images were captured by the editors of Electronics magazine.  Life noted that the blurriness of the images was due to the fact that a still camera couldn’t capture a clear image of the moving picture, and the photography was further hampered by the small size of the TV screen.