Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early
electronics. See articles from Radio & Television News, published 1919-1959. All copyrights hereby
acknowledged.
If my counting is correct, by 1952
only 33 of America's 48 states (Hawaii and Alaska weren't admitted until 1959, and no, there are not 57
states, either), and Washington, D.C., had television broadcasting stations. That
most of the early television experimentation occurred on the east coast is apparent
by looking at the number of stations there compared to the west coast. You might
think California would have the largest amount of TV stations, but it only had 11
located in 3 cities. New York, on the other hand, had 13 in 7 cities. Ohio had 12
stations in 5 cities, and Pennsylvania had 7 stations in 5 cities, one of which
(WICU,
since 1949 ) was my town of Erie. Vermont, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Wyoming,
both Dakota, and Oregon were among those with no television stations by 1952. That
seems unbelievable since that was only 67 years ago, but evidently was so. The network
"lines" included microwave repeaters to reach from coast to coast. On September
4, 1951, AT&T opened the network by televising a presidential address from President
Harry S. Truman at the San Francisco Peace Conference (see video below). Satellites
now handle the bulk of long distance television broadcasts.
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail"
when a new message arrived...
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