Category Archives: Television History

1947 Toy Telephone Crystal Set

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Twilight Zone “Long Distance Call” 1961. Wikipedia image.

You might recall the 1961 Twilight Zone episode “Long Distance Call.”  If you don’t recall, five-year-old Billy received a toy telephone from his grandmother, who then promptly died.  After her death, Billy continued to receive “pretend” phone calls from her, in which she encouraged him to join her in the hereafter.  Finally, the father stepped in, picked up the toy phone, and told Grandma, in no uncertain terms, to knock it off.

We offer a possible explanation from just

Youngster listening to 1947 toy phone, presumably tuned to strong local station.

Youngster listening to 1947 toy phone, presumably tuned to strong local station.

fourteen years earlier, in the June 1947 issue of Popular Mechanics.  That article showed how to convert a toy telephone, which looked just like Billy’s, into a crystal set.

According to the article, Daddy really made a hit with his youngster by doing the conversion, and the youngster was, indeed, able to hear voices through the toy telephone, in the form of a pre-tuned local radio station.

The conversion entailed use of a 1N34 diode, and tuning was accomplished by a premeability-tuned coil. Dad presumably preset the tuning to the strong local station, although I suppose it’s possible that he accidentally tuned it to the hereafter. The earphone that the author was able to find was a war surplus low impedance unit, necessitating the addition of an audio output transformer.

Billy's telephone just 14 years later. Coincidence?

Billy’s telephone just 14 years later. Coincidence?

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“How Great Thou Art” Comes to America, 1957

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Shea performing in 1957. YouTube image.

If you’re like me, you probably assumed that the hymn How Great Thou Art has always been a part of the American religious music scene.  However, it is actually relatively new, being first popularized only sixty years ago, in 1957.  It was performed for the first time by George Beverly Shea at Billy Graham‘s Madison Square Garden Crusade, which began on this night 60 years ago, May 15, 1957. The crusade lasted until September 1, and during its run, more than two million persons attended to hear Graham preach and Shea sing. Over 56,000 reportedly  responded to the message by making a decision for Christ.

In the video below, Cliff Barrows describes it in his introduction as “a new hymn to American audiences.” The hymn was not exactly new when Shea brought it to American audiences. The tune was a traditional Swedish melody. The Swedish lyrics, “O Store Gud” were penned in 1885 by Carl Boberg, who was inspired while walking home from church listening to church bells. A sudden storm was followed by a similarly sudden calm. According to Boberg, the words were a paraphrase of Psalm 8:

Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.

The first translation of the hymn was into Russian in 1912, “Velikiy Bog” (Великий Бог – Great God) by Ivan S. Prokhanov. It was published in a Russian Protestant hymnal in 1927.

The first English translation came in 1925 by E. Gustav Johnson, who made a literal translation of the Swedish lyrics published in the Covenant Hymnal as “O Mighty God.” Those words remained as late as the 1973 edition:

O mighty God, when I behold the wonder
Of nature’s beauty, wrought by words of thine,
And how thou leadest all from realms up yonder,
Sustaining earthly life with love benign,

With rapture filled, my soul thy name would laud,
O mighty God! O mighty God!

Credit for the now familiar English lyrics goes largely to British Methodist missionary Stuart Wesley Keene Hine, who heard the hymn sung in Ukraine in 1931. He did a paraphrase of the Russian translation, which includes most of the familiar lyrics, as well as the title, “How Great Thou Art.”

Hine finalized the lyrics in 1949, and he performed it for the first time at a convention in New York in 1951. It was first published in 1956, in the collection “Eastern Melodies & Hymns of Other Lands.”

The hymn soared in popularity after Shea’s 1957 performances at the Madison Square Garden Crusade.  It’s unclear whether the hymn was performed on the first night of the crusade 60 years ago tonight, but it was performed at most of the services.

For comparison, here is the Swedish version:

And the Russian:



1937 Electronic TV Receiver

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Eighty years ago this month, the May 1937 issue of Radio News carried an ambitious construction project, this television receiver. TV receivers had been popular projects in earlier radio magazines, but the earlier ones were all mechanical televisions, employing a spinning Nipkow disk.

This set was all electronic, employing a cathode ray tube.  The construction article did not have an individual byline.  Instead, it was attributed only to “the Don Lee Television Staff,” referring to the Los Angeles broadcaster and licensee of W6XAO.

W6XAO image taken off the air.

W6XAO image taken off the air.

The plans for this set were also included in other magazines, and the broadcaster also made it available in kit form.

While the receiver was all electronic, it appears that the camera was still a mechanical device.  A spinning disk was used to produce a flying spot to convert previously filmed footage to a video signal.  Shortly thereafter, the station appears to have adopted an electronic camera.

The set, including both RF and video sections, contained a total of 14 tubes in addition to the CRT.  It did not contain an audio section.  Presumably, accompanying audio was received on a separate radio receiver.



1932 Lens Disk Television

1932MarAprTV85 years ago this month, the televisionist shown on the cover of the March-April 1932 issue of Television News is working on a rather ambitious project.  He’s graduated from the tiny peep-hole sets to a larger set capable of displaying an image of 10-12 inches.

The secret to this ambitious design is the fact that it incorporates 60 matched lenses in the spinning disk itself, rather than merely relying on small holes cut into the disk.



RCA TP-16A Television Projector, 1947

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This RCA ad from the April 1947 issue of Televiser shows how film was broadcast in the early days of postwar televsision. The prewar stations generally had no way to broadcast prerecorded programming. The ability to use film meant that the television production business was a bit less frenzied, without the need to have some live action going on every moment the station was on the air. Film was still a lot more expensive than the later alternative, video tape, but the ability to use film meant that news and entertainment could be shown on a delayed basis. And since there was no live distribution between most cities, the ability to use film also mean that programs could be shipped to other stations, albeit on a delayed basis.

The RCA TP-16A Television Projector, shown at the left, was a self-contained unit which converted film to video. The unit at the right was a two-piece unit, with the film projector at left and video camera at right. The advantage of the dual unit was that it could be used with two film projectors, a mirror being used to switch from one to the other on the fly.

16mm film was already an established format, but there was one problem that had to be overcome. The 16mm format used 24 frames per second, while the video was 60 frames per second. Synchronization was accomplished according to the diagram at the lower right corner of the ad.

The film fed normally at 24 frames per second. During the first frame, the film was illuminated twice, at 1/60 second intervals, and the frame was scanned twice. The net effect was that half of the film frames were scanned three times, and the others scanned two times, for an average of 2-1/2 video frames per film frame. This resulted in the 24 frame per second film being scanned 60 times per second.

The 1000 watt incandescent bulb lit only about 1/1200 second. The video camera had enough inherent memory that it could complete the scan even though it was unlighted.



1957 Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

SpagHarvestSixty years ago, spring had come to Switzerland.  The last two weeks of March are traditionally the spaghetti harvest.  The 1957 harvest was notable due to the eradication of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, which had devastating effects on prior crops.

Switzerland’s spaghetti production is, of course, on a much smaller scale than the large Italian plantations.  The harvest of the uniformly sized spaghetti is more of a family affair in Switzerland.

You can see more in this video, which aired sixty years ago today on the BBC on April 1, 1957.



Training Navy Radiomen, 1942

1942Mar8ChiTribNavyRadioOn this day 75 years ago, March 8, 1942, the Chicago Tribune carried this description of the fever pitch at which it was training its radio experts.

It explained how the Navy was cramming a two-year college radio engineering curriculum into three months. Students were housed at the Naval armory where they woke at 5:30, and were in class by 7:00 at the Balaban & Katz television studio at 190 North State Street.  The theater company was the licensee of WBKB-TV, located at 190 North State Street, the present location of WLS-TV.

The men were in class until 11:00, at which time they marched back to the armory to eat, and were back in class at 12:15 until classes ended at 5:00. Lights were out at 9:00, and the Ensign in charge of the program reported that there were no problems with insomnia.

In a few months, the men’s duties would include RADAR, so the UHF expertise of the television engineers running the program were ideal for instruction.

The men’s former occupations were diverse, and included electricians, refrigerator servicemen, farmers, and locomotive firemen. Each was given a preliminary scholastic examination by mail, followed by the regular navy physical examination. Even though the scholastic test was tough, the Navy didn’t care whether the students had any formal education.

Many of the men were married, and many had turned down commissions as officers in the Army , instead opting for the rank of naval radioman, second class. They recognized that the training would be invaluable when they returned to civilian life, especially with the prospect of a future in television.

The men were paid $72 per month, with an additional allowance of $34.50 for dependents. It was noted that the men could live on “nothing a week,” with the exception of cigarettes or extras.

ChicagoRadioSchoolA typical classroom at the school is shown here, courtesy of an article describing this and other Navy radio schools in the November 1942 issue of QST.

 



1977 Pong-IV Kit

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Forty years ago this month, this couple is enjoying a friendly game of Pong, as shown on the cover of the January-February 1977 issue of Elementary Electronics.

As detailed in the accompanying article, they put the game together themselves, thanks to the Interfab Pong-IV video game kit. The unit contained 43 integrated circuits, and came in three forms. For the purist kit builders, the set came with all of the parts, and the builder had to populate the circuit board and solder them. To save a considerable amount of labor, it was also available with the board pre-populated with parts, held in place by a plastic blister pack. The builder then merely had to solder the multitude of small connections and then remove the plastic. Finally, it was available in semi-kit form, with the circuit board already soldered, and only minimal mechanical assembly required.

The kit was originally marketed with a built-in UHF transmitter to hook directly to the TV. However, the FCC cracked down and required type acceptance, which wasn’t economically viable. Therefore, the PC board was all ready to go, and the manufacturer provided a parts list and instructions to install the transmitter, using a 2N5770 transistor and a few other parts. Other options were to separately purchase a UHF transmitter, for a cost of about $8.50, or tap right into the TV’s video amplifier (this was before the days of most TV’s having a video input jack).

The kit was offered by the Interfab Corp., of Laguna Niguel, California. The completed kit sold for $89.50, with the less assembled versions being about $10 less.



1957 TV Network

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This map in the January 1957 issue of Radio Electronics, shows the status of the TV networks sixty years ago (in black), ans shows the explosive growth from the network as it had existed just six years earlier in 1950 (in red). By 1956, most American and Canadian cities were on the network, and were capable of receiving live network programming by this network of coaxial cable and microwave links. By 1957, a certain amount of redundancy was developing. For example, in 1950, Minneapolis-St. Paul got its first link, via coaxial cable to Des Moines, which was in turn linked to the nationwide network via microwave relay from Chicago. By 1957, there is a second link shown from Chicago through Wisconsin.

The diagram also shows at least two interconnections between the U.S. and Canadian networks. The U.S. Network was operated by AT&T, which had coast-to-coast service in place by 1951.

1957janradioelec2The issue also carried a listing of all stations then on the air.  The Minnesota listing here reveals that in the Twin Cities, channels 4, 5, 9, and 11 were at their familiar spots on the dial.  In Duluth, channels 3 and 6 were on the air, and Austin and Rochester each had one station.



Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

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USS Shaw at Pearl Harbor. Defense Department Photo.

1941dec15bcToday marks the 75th Anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.  Most Americans learned of the attack by radio, and the story of that coverage featured prominently in the December 15 issue of Broadcasting magazine, the first to go to press after the attack.   The photo at the left shows the news staff of stations WLW and WSAI, Cincinnati, huddled shortly after the first news of the attack broke.

According to the magazine, the first broadcast of the attack came at 2:26 Eastern Time, when WOR New York broke into a Dodger-Giant football game to read the United Press flash. Two minutes later, the news was broadcast nationwide over the NBC Red and Blue Networks.

CBS carried the announcement during its 2:30 station break. The afternoon news program was quickly reorganized. CBS newsman John Daly had spoken by telephone with KGMB Honolulu, and news of the attack on Manila, Philipine Islands, was carried live by a telephone hookup with KGMB, that signal being cut mid-broadcast.

Newsrooms came to life as staff were summoned in on an otherwise slow Sunday afternoon. At 2:45, the NBC network rang four chimes, instead of the customary three, to alert staff to report to work.

One NBC executive phoned KGU Honolulu for an immediate report. The voice from Honolulu reported that he was a station executive and did not have a microphone available. The NBC executive told him to keep talking to keep the line open as he raced to the network control room, and the call was eventually patched through live over the air. He was on the air by 4:06 PM with the live report, until a long distance operator broke in to report that the line was needed by the military. A recording of that broadcast is available at this link.  Another six minute call was aired later that hour.

Starting on Monday, December 8, West Coast stations were on a wartime basis. In compliance with an army order, stations in California, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho went off the air. In Washington, KIRO‘s 50 kilowatt signal remained on the air for Army and Navy use only.

During the blackout, which lasted until the next morning, only five minute news flashes were permitted every half hour. More organization was apparent by Thursday and Friday, when staggered schedules were followed.

The nation’s shortwave stations went on a 24 hour schedule, with broadcasts in multiple languages. CBS carried reports in ten languages to Europe, and three to Latin America. It noted that both networks were following a policy of objectivity in news, following FDR’s pronouncement that more than ever, there was a need for truth in the news.

The East Coast shortwave stations were assigned staff from the Office of Coordinator of Information to review material for any that might give aid or comfort to the enemy. In San Francisco, the Navy served a similar function for GE shortwave station KGEI.

CBS Short Wave Listening Station, Long Island. Wikipedia photo.

CBS Short Wave Listening Station, Long Island. Wikipedia photo.

The CBS and NBC shortwave listening stations were operating on a 24-hour schedule, making material available for the networks, press, and Government.

More information on radio broadcasting in the aftermath of the attack can be found at this post and this post.

Television had newly come on the air commercially in New York, and the magazine reported that the new medium developed a new presentation as the events swiftly unfolded. WCBW came on the air at 8:45 PM until 10:00, the first time the station had been on the air on Sunday. Throughout the week, it presented several news programs daily. It covered President Roosevelt’s Monday speech, with a waving flag transmitted over the visual channel.

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NBC commentator Sam Cuff uses map to show WNBT viewers strategic location of Hawaii.

WNBT moved an AP teletype into the studios, with the camera focused on the incoming wire. In the weeks preceeding the attack, WNBT had devoted much of its programming to civilian defense training, a role which continued during the war.

Sales of battery operated radios were said to have skyrocketed on December 8.