AT&T Archives: Stepping Along with Television

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In 1949, this film was part of the very first hour of broadcasting following the linkup of the East Coast television networks to the Midwestern states. It was aired following speeches from the FCC Chairman and mayors of NYC and Chicago. And it was followed by previews from the four existing networks, of highlights of their upcoming television season.

With the broadcast of a New York City ballet program traveling to a young ballet fan in Wisconsin as its structural framework, the film follows the signal on its via-coaxial-cable journey from New York to Chicago, when it jumps to the earliest wireless microwave relay system, jumping from tower to tower to Waukesha, WI. The film shows the earliest type of square microwave relay horns developed by the Bell System, who had been working on that technology since the 1930s.

All television broadcasts at this point in history traveled via the Bell System, along the exact same channels as telephone calls. And the network went nationwide two years later, in 1951, with a broadcast of a speech by Truman from a San Francisco peace conference. Until that point, TV stations on the West Coast had to receive kinescopes of their broadcast programming via the mail.

The Bell System's microwave relay network carried the bulk of the country's long-distance telephone calls for over three decades. This particular wireless network was only superseded by the invention of fiber optic broadband communications cables, which could carry exponentially more information than the nationwide microwave relay network.

Television programs today mostly reach into homes either via cable television (fiber optics technology, again) or broadcast via satellite relay.

Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

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