Our Blog

Flasback Friday: Television’s Rocky Start

Post: Apr. 22, 2016

097004

Usually we dedicate this blog to the current goings on in the manufacturing and engineering worlds, for today though we’re going to spotlight a bit of engineering history. In 1927 future president Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, took part in the first public demonstration of inter-city television broadcasting. Hoover’s brief remarks from Washington, were seen on television screens at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, 200 miles away, making them the world’s first televised spech. A serious problem that would delay major development in television at the time was that of frequency resolution. A clear image would require a frequency band of four million cycles, compared to the 400 cycles required for a clear audio transmission in radio. Although there was still decades of work to do before TV could take its place in the American home, it was nevertheless an important step forward.