“Television…promises that where the voice has led the way over the telephone wires, the eye will ultimately follow.”

From left to right: Dr. Frank Gray,  W.S. Bishop, E. Peterson

The “grid receiver” or screen in New York was made of horizontal neon tubes. Behind the grid a nest of wires carried the image that came from a large photosensitive transmitting disc. A loudspeaker sits just below the grid. Note the vacuum tube amplifiers in the control panel equipment behind the screen.

Image Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center.

Visual transmissions from New Jersey and Washington D.C. shown in New York were one-way, with a two-way audio dispatch. Whippany, NJ communicated to New York by radio wave, while Washington D.C. was connected to New York by wire to exhibit transmission over different mediums.

Image Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center.

This photo taken in the studio of the 3XN experimental radio station, shows the employees behind the scenes of the first television transmission. A.R. Olpin stands on the platform narrating the proceedings to the photosensitive recorder which captures moving images in the form of light variations and translates them into electrical currents. Then the process is reversed on the receiving end. Large synchronized transmitting and receiving discs on each terminal convert the signals.

Image Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center.

Staffed by O.A. Keefe, R.E. Poole, J.W. Smith, W.N. Mellor and J.C. Herber.

The Whippany demonstration required coordinating a radio channel for audio, and another channel for visual.  Within a week they were able to send both over the same wavelength.

Image Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center.

In order for the radio signals to cut through the busy New York airwaves for the television demonstration, engineers had to tune the transmission to three particular radio channels.

Image Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center.