Companies struggled to introduce TV in the late 1920s.
From time-to-time someone would describe its potential or demonstrate a new format, but to most people, it was still just a toy.
However, on January 13, 1928, the folks at General Electric tried to show that TV could be used at home. TV could be taken out of the laboratory and brought into our daily lives.
On that date they demonstrated the new technology in three homes in Schenectady, New York.
Here is newspaper story excerpt:
“The possibility of one sitting in his own home and hearing and seeing an opera, a baseball game, a prize fight or things of equal interest moved definitely closer today.
….Soon there was action. There were pictures of people moving. They talked. You could see their lips moving and hear the words they said. One man was smoking a cigarette. The smoke curling up from the cigarette could be seen. His comments were easily heard.
The test was made in three different homes and in each home the result was the same. The sight was pictured and sounds were heard.
The tests brought enthusiastic praise from the witnesses. David Sarnoff of the Radio Corporation was among the enthusiastic crowd.
‘Broadcasting of television now seems clear,’ he said. ‘We will develop it so that eventually not only sound but sight through radio broadcasting will be available in every home.'”
— “Talking, Moving Pictures Successfully Broadcast By General Electric Company”
The Warren Tribune, article based on United Press report, January 14, 1928
The Warren Tribune, January 14, 1928
“Magazine articles began to appear with fanciful descriptions of what the new technology would bring. Yes, the science fiction had become science. Television was here and we would never be the same again. Newspapers like the New York Times heralded the event. It was front page news in the Boston Post with headlines reading, ‘Radio with pictures for the first time!’
An eyewitness to the event, Willard Purcell, who retired from WRGB in 1960, recalled the 1928 picture. He said, ‘…the face of a man, smoking a cigarette, on the little screen looks like it had been made with x’s on the typewriter. It was very crude and wavered from side to side…’”
The Reading Times, January 14, 1928
Photo caption: “The first successful home television set is pictured here….”
Television wouldn’t become popular until after World War Two. In 1949 RCA put together the following film to explain how TV worked.
It ends with the line, “Science has made a reality of the age-old dream of pictures from the sky.”
