FIRST PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION OF INTER-CITY TELEVISION BROADCASTING

E&MP 97.004

Picturephone

1927

Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, shown as he took part in the first public demonstration of inter-city television broadcasting.

Mr. Hoover, speaking in Washington, was seen on television screens at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York.

Others in the picture, now deceased, are Gen. J. J. Carty, Vice President of AT&T, A. E. Berry, President of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Companies, and Judge Stephen Davis, Solicitor for the Department of Commerce.

Original Caption by Science Service
^© Bell Telephone Laboratories

Additional Information:

Pictures of Herbert Hoover, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, are transmitted 200 miles from Washington D.C. to New York, in the world's first televised speech and first long-distance television transmission.

also...

The Bell System employs Baird's television system to send the first long distance television transmission in the US. The demonstration takes place in the New York laboratories of Bell Telephone. The president of AT&T, Walter S. Gifford, gathers together a large group of people to view the televised image of Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce and a presidential hopeful, in his Washington, DC office. Hoover's voice is simultaneously transmitted over telephone wires. A serious problem delaying major development in television at this time is that of frequency resolution. A clear image will require a frequency band of four million cycles, compared to the 400 cycles required for a clear audio transmission in radio.

The United Independent Broadcasters (UIB), a 16-station radio network, is formed by promoter George Coats and former RCA executive Maj. Andrew J. White to rival David Sarnoff's NBC. Unable to handle the financial problems that almost immediately threaten their company's existence, Coats and White sell out to the Columbia Phonograph Company.

The network, now renamed Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System, debuts on September 18 with a key station, WOR, in New York. It will continue as a financially embattled concern until in 1928 Jerome Louchheim sells his controlling interest to William S. Paley, the man who will usher the company into its prime as CBS.