By the 1920's radio was starting to become popular with the American people. However, within that same decade, unbeknownst to many, researchers were hard at work designing a new medium for broadcast communication which would threaten the existence of radio. In 1923, Vladimir Zworykin developed the iconoscope, an early form of the cathode-ray tubes which would be used to make televisions.1 On April 7, 1927, Bell Laboratories of AT&T transmitted a picture of Secretary of Commerce Hebert Hoover from Washington, D.C. to New York on a mechanical TV it had developed.2 Later that year, Philo T. Farnsworth developed the dissector tube. He would become known as the "Father of Television" because his invention was the foundation of the electronic TV.3 In 1929, while he was working for RCA, Zworykin developed an all-electronic system for the transmission and reception of television signals.4 Experimental television broadcasts began in 1928, and the `Radioviser' was released as the first home TV set in 1929, b
In the early thirties, the radio networks started to get nervous that this new concept of television might some day intrude on their territory, so in 1931 CBS started experimenting with television broadcasts.6 The following year, NBC started its own television broadcasts from the top of the Empire State Building.7
RCA persevered in the thirties as it worked on developing the new medium of television. In 1932, it demonstrated the television receiver it had built using the cathode-ray picture tube.8 In 1936, RCA joined the ranks of others who had already started experimental broadcasts and began its own broadcasts from the Empire State Building.9 Then, on April 30, 1939, television made its debut to the public with the opening of the New York World's Fair.10 For the broadcast, NBC placed 200 televisions in public places within a forty-mile radius of the Fair, so that as many people as possible could experience the thrill of television. The RCA building at the fair was called "The Hall of Television."
In the next few years, the new televisions really started to improve. Companies marketed televisions for purchase by consumers for the first time in 1938.11 The decade ended with the playing of the first televised baseball game in May 1939.12
By 1940, TV stations broadcast both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, as well as the election results.13 That same year, Dr. Peter Goldmark of CBS developed a color TV.14 In July of 1941, CBS and NBC both switched from experimental broadcasts to fifteen hours per week of scheduled programming.15 The seeds of television had started to take root, but World War II intervened, causing a postponement in the development of the new medium until after the war.
After the war ended, Americans began to resume life as they had known it. Television companies used this opportunity to grab the attention of many and soon televisions were becoming a part of the daily routine. In 1945-46, the television stations started to hire the actors and writers from the radio stations. The writers brought with them their scripts and many shows which had been on radio for years were adapted for television.16
Dad: After school, the kids in the neighborhood would go down to a girl's house about four houses away from ours. We would sit in the living room and we would watch something that looked like the radio, only it now had a screen on it. The screen was maybe ten inches, but we would all sit around and watch the shows they put on it. Some of the shows were the same shows that we had listened to on the radio. "The Jack Benny Show" was one of those shows that was first on the radio but was picked up by television as a comedy show.
Grandma Lawlor: Amos and Andy, they were on. They were imitating black people, but they were comics.
Dad: There were a number of other shows that transferred from radio to television. One was again, my favorite singing cowboy Gene Autrey. Then, Roy Rogers who was on the radio, he also had a television program pretty soon.
The early television shows were broadcast as live performances in a studio.
Mom: If someone fell or someone was off key, then that was all part of the program.
Aunt Dorothy: If someone made a mistake on stage the whole audience saw it.
In 1947, CBS signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers to broadcast their games on TV. That same year, NBC broadcast the first televised world series in which the Brooklyn Dodgers played the New York Yankees.17 Baseball and sports broadcasts in general were going to enjoy many decades of television audiences.
Aunt Dorothy: One thing I remember: one summer when your dad was laid up with his cast, we were all in the living room, and I used to get up on the hospital bed with him. We used to watch the baseball games because, of course, coming from New Jersey we were Yankee fans and your Uncle Tom taught us how to keep score. We had a book and we learnt at that time, if there was a hit to first base, what kind of mark you made on the book. That was kind of fun, that one summer, we learned how to do that all three of us together.
In addition to shows which were popular on radio, television produced many of its own hits. "The Howdy Doody Show" first appeared on television in 1947. Howdy Doody and Clarabell would continue to delight children across the country until their final episode in 1960.18
Grandma Lawlor: Our girls always, they always listened to the radio, and then when TV came into view, on Saturday morning they watched it. I didn't let them do too much TV because they had their school work and friends and all. But they listened to all the shows, like the Howdy Doody show and there were a lot of children's programs on Saturday morning that they used to listen to. They enjoyed it.
Mom: Another very popular children's show at that time was called "Howdy Doody." That used to be on at five o'clock in the afternoon. That was a nationwide show that was very, very popular with Clarabell and Flubadub and they had an audience that was a very important part of their show. That show stayed on the air for many many years.
On September 21, 1948, one of the most popular shows of all time started its long run on TV. Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theater" was shown on Tuesday nights, and within a month of its first broadcast had captured 92.4 percent of the TV audience in the New York area. Milton Berle had tried his hand at radio years earlier, but was not very popular because most of his jokes involved physical humor. But TV was the perfect medium for Berle's antics.19
Mom: On Tuesday night, there was a very popular show called "The Milton Berle Show." He was known as Uncle Milty. Our relatives would come from as far as six or seven miles away and would come to our house and would watch "The Milton Berle Show," it was such a popular show on television.
Grandpa Lawlor: That was the most popular show at that time. That was the number one rating. It had the number one rating, and it was on for a long time.
Mom: The shows were variety shows.
Grandma Lawlor: The big commercial was Milton Berle with the Texaco. They had four fellows out there singing up around the gas pumps. They had a show in itself before the show even came on.
Mom: You would have some comedy skits, and then you would have some people who would sing, and it was just for pure entertainment.
Another popular show, Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town," began in 1948.20 The show would later be called "The Ed Sullivan Show."
Grandma Guinee: And of course, everyone was listening to Ed Sullivan on TV, his amateur show that was on every Sunday night, Arthur Godfrey and his news, Milton Berle and his crowd, Abbot and Costello. Oh, I knew Abbot and Costello cause they were from Paterson and Costello had been a student of my godmother's in school. Every once in a while, even on the television, he'd say "I remember Miss Grish, Miss Grish taught me, Miss Grish taught me." Well, we got quite a thrill out of that.
Just as radio had done in the 1920s, television served as a forum for the nation's politicians. In 1948, both the Republican and Democratic Parties held their national conventions in Philadelphia so they could be broadcast by TV from New York to Washington, D.C. Harry Truman used the television to aid in his campaigning for the presidency, and his inauguration was televised on January 20, 1949. Many schools purchased televisions so the children could watch the first televised inauguration.21
People were also starting to buy televisions to put in their homes.
Dad: When I was really young, no one had a television. Now, most of the people I know have at least two and sometimes three or four or more.
Grandpa Guinee: It took a period of maybe five to six years before TV really took on, but when it did, why, it boomeranged to the extent that almost every home has TVs today.
Grandma Lawlor: We were one of the first ones to get the TV, and everyone used to come to our house to see everything. Now we were married in `41, Carol was born in `46, that had to be about 1950, I would think, around `48 or `50, something like that, when we got our TV. That was a 12- or 13-inch, which ever ones came out, the first ones to come out. We had good use out of it too.
Dad: All around us other families were starting to buy TVs.
Aunt Dorothy: It was a big treat to go over to the neighbors who had the first television on a Sunday morning to watch "The Ted Mack Amateur Hour." This was all children who were amateurs and entertained. Then, Howdy Doody came and another I remember out of Newark was Uncle Fred. What I remember is the commercial. It was orange juice and that was the first frozen concentrated orange juice which they sponsored.
Aunt Kathy: My earliest memory of communication using the TV would be back to being very young and lying on the couch evenings and weekends watching television with my family. We were one of the first families to have television in our neighborhood and certainly in our family, so we had a house full of people all the time coming over to watch Ed Sullivan or Bob Hope or any of the specials.
Aunt Dorothy: My grandmother, I remember, had a television and they were black and white in those days with an oval screen, which was rather different. I think it was an oval Zenith.
Dad: Well, I guess it was at Christmas time and my father kind of surprised our whole family and he brought a television set, a TV, into our house.
In 1950, the country found itself involved in a war once again, this time in Korea. The war efforts again received priority over the manufacturing of television sets.22 This was bad news for CBS. In 1951, Dr. Peter Goldmark had developed a mechanical method for producing color TV.23 The picture quality was exceptional, however, the color broadcasts could not be received by the black and white TVs which people had in their homes. CBS broadcast its first color show on June 25, 1951.24 The transmission was an hour long show of Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey.25 CBS continued to broadcast using its new color system, but very few Americans were able to see these shows because of two reasons: Due to the war, not many TVs were being manufactured, and many people were reluctant to give up the black and white sets they had already purchased.
In 1953, RCA perfected an electronic method of transmitting color.26 With the RCA method, people could receive the color broadcasts on their old TVs, but the images would appear in black and white. The Federal Communications Commission selected the RCA method as the national standard for color television, putting an end to the CBS system.27 NBC, using the RCA method, broadcast the Tournament of Roses parade as its first color program.28
Grandpa Lawlor: The first, of course, was a black and white and then we graduated into the color and the size kept getting larger and larger.
Mom: I remember getting a color television set probably at the end of the fifties around 1959 or 1960, but I remember a neighbor having a color television set much earlier than that.
Grandma Lawlor: Before the real color came in, there was a screen that you were able to put over your own television and that would sort of kind of bring out a little greenish-blue colors in your TV, but it wasn't the real color.
Mom: By the time that we got our first color television set it had a much better picture, however, not all shows were in color so, in the newspaper when you were looking at the list of TV shows to be shown it would tell you whether a show was going to be in color or whether the show was in black and white.
Grandpa Guinee: The change from black and white to color was a great improvement in the picture and in the visual observation cause it seems so much more lifelike than the black and white set.
Grandma Lawlor: After the real color came, that was really beautiful.
Grandma Guinee: Color TV, that was really the thing because you just felt the people were in the room with you.
Aunt Dorothy: That was like wonderful after the black and white to see what color people wore and what color hair they had.
Grandma Guinee: Why even voices started to sound different.
Dad: As the popularity and technology for television increased and made television cheaper, the shows on television also developed. They went from being fifteen-minute Perry Como shows, fifteen minutes of news, fifteen minutes of another actor to the half-hour shows like "The Lucille Ball Show," "Milton Berle Show."
The 1950s produced a number of shows whose popularity has lasted into the nineties. One such program is "The Tonight Show" on CBS. The first broadcast was hosted by Steve Allen on Christmas evening, 1950. Another popular program, "I Love Lucy" with the late Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, was introduced in 1951.29
Mom: The early days of "I Love Lucy" were of course in black and white, and they were not on film.
Dad: There was one show called "I Love Lucy" where Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a comedy half hour.
Mom: The show stayed on the air for many, many years. It eventually became a color show, and had a couple of different spin-offs, and really seemed to progress almost the whole era of television.
Grandma Lawlor: We lost the greatest of all, Lucille Ball, we really lost her. I think she was one of the greatest.
Mom: The "I Love Lucy" show was just a comedy show, and it was a situation comedy with Lucy and her husband, Ricky Ricardo, and their neighbors, Ethyl and Fred, and the different things that would occur in the apartment building that they lived in and the different things that they would get involved in. And over the years, Lucy and Ricky had a child, and the child became part of the show.
On April 3, 1953, Desi Arnaz, Jr. appeared on the cover of the first TV Guide.30 In 1952, "The Today Show" premiered on NBC with Dave Garroway as the host.31 Like "The Tonight Show", "The Today Show" has lasted into the nineties. The "Jackie Gleason Show" began a long, popular history in 1953.32
Grandma Lawlor: Then you had "The Jackie Gleason Show" which was a must every week.
The first episode of "Captain Kangaroo," a popular children's show, aired on television in 1956.33 Before starring in his own show, Captain Kangaroo had a radio program, and played Clarabell on "The Howdy Doody Show." His new show remained on the air until the mid-80s. When I was growing up, I remember watching Captain Kangaroo with Mr. Green Jeans, his sidekick.
By the mid-1950s, Rock `n' Roll had hypnotized American teenagers. Also in 1956, Elvis Presley appeared for the first time on Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town."34
Grandma Lawlor: Elvis Presley, he was the one that started all this fancy action.
Mom: It was in the 1950s, I imagine probably towards the end of the 1950s, and people had heard of him, but had not really seen him on television. Ed Sullivan had a variety show on Sunday night and managed to get Elvis Presley to appear on his variety show. He was only allowed to be shown from the waist up because of all of the movement he did during his singing. Some people did not feel it was suitable for something like that to be shown on family television.
Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" was an instant smash when it hit the airwaves in 1957.35
Aunt Kathy: Another very important part of television to me was coming home after school and watching "American Bandstand." Once again, that wasn't just watching because I was always up with my girlfriend dancing along with them. The people on the show became very good friends for us, that's how closely you were drawn to them. We would know all of their names, all of the dancers names by heart, Annette and everybody else. Magazines came out following what they did, showing their bedrooms and all their stuffed animals, and how they dressed, and what they did after the show. So, it was a whole new form, and really quite an adventure to see how other people lived and what other people were doing.
Children seemed to enjoy the new television shows the most.
Mom: One of the first children's shows that I remember seeing was "Miss Francis and Ding-Dong School." It was a show that was on every morning. She did nursery school type activities with the children. She would teach you how to finger paint, teach you some songs and the alphabet and numbers.
Aunt Dorothy: With our family you watched television after dinner or after your homework was done. While we were doing the homework at the dining room table, the television wasn't on, my mother read the paper, my father would usually help me with my math.
Aunt Kathy: I remember on Saturday mornings always getting up to watch a show called "Winky Dink" ...
Mom: ... which had a little character on it called Winky Dink.
Aunt Kathy: As a matter of fact, I had a box game that came with the show that you could write to them and they would send to you ...
Mom: ... and you would have a plastic screen that you would put over your television and then you had a crayon and they would draw lines and shapes on the TV.
Aunt Kathy: and you would draw along with what they were doing.
Aunt Dorothy: I know my brothers right before supper liked to watch "Captain Video." Of course, I thought it was crazy, all this science fiction stuff.
Mom: The first cartoon that I remember was something called "Junior Frolics." It was filmed in Newark, NJ which wasn't very far from where we were living. It had Farmer Gray as the main character of the cartoon series.
Aunt Kathy: We would never miss this show because it was a lot of fun to us and it looked so exciting and everybody was having such a grand time.
Mom: When they showed the cartoons, they would have an audience in the background who would being watching the cartoons. Of course, all of the cartoons were in black and white because everything was in black and white in those days.
Aunt Kathy: And one day my mother announced that she was taking us over to be in this show. Well, we didn't sleep the night before because we were so excited about going on the show.
Mom: I guess it was probably in maybe around 1953 or 1954 that I remember going over to see a production of "Jr. Frolics" being filmed.
Aunt Kathy: And we got there, we left the house at five o'clock in the morning, got there, we were exhausted, it was cold and I remember it still being dark. We were put into this tiny little studio into these little stadium-type stands. The show went on and all you saw were the backs of cameras and wires and cords and people with head sets on. You hardly got a glimpse of the characters that you knew so well, and you couldn't even see the cartoons when they were on this tiny little screen. So I took a nap, I put my head down on my arms, and I fell asleep cause I had been up early that morning. I remember a man coming over and shaking me and saying "Little girl little girl, you have to wake up and look real excited" and I looked at him and said, "Why would I be excited? I'm bored. I can't see anything. I'm tired and I want to go home. I can see more of this show on TV when I'm at home." So that was my one experience with show biz.
With all these new shows on TV, Americans no longer wanted to take the time to sit down to eat a large dinner and risk missing one of their favorites. So, in 1954, some ingenious individual found a solution for this dilemma and marketed the first TV dinners.36
1 Williams, Science 57.
2 Keith and Hilliard 53.
3 Keith and Hilliard 54.
4 Williams, Science 65.
5 Keith and Hilliard 56. Harpur 87.
6 Keith and Hilliard 65.
7 Keith and Hilliard 68.
8 Williams, Science 90.
9 Williams, Science 66.
10 Keith and Hilliard 86.
11 Williams, Science 83.
12 Keith and Hilliard 88.
13 Keith and Hilliard 92.
14 Harpur 121.
15 Keith and Hilliard 94.
16 MacDonald 84.
17 Keith and Hilliard 113.
18 Keith and Hilliard 113.
19 MacDonald 146.
20 Keith and Hilliard 117.
21 Keith and Hilliard 118.
22 Keith and Hilliard 131.
23 Williams, Science 131.
24 Keith and Hilliard 133.
25 Harpur 138.
26 Williams, Science 131.
27 Keith and Hilliard 145.
28 Harpur 142.
29 Keith and Hilliard 136.
30 Keith and Hilliard 142.
31 Keith and Hilliard 141.
32 Keith and Hilliard 148.
33 Keith and Hilliard 154.
34 Keith and Hilliard 154.
35 Keith and Hilliard 154.
36 Keith and Hilliard 149.
©1995: Kathleen Guinee, A Journey through the History of Information Technology