The Short Life of New York's First TV Station

It’s 1928. Is the time ripe for daily television shows?

Hugo Gernsback thought so.

Gernsback was the publisher of a number of magazines dealing with radio. His company also had a radio license; WRNY’s opening on June 12, 1925 featured Bugs Baer as emcee and Elsie Janis smashing a bottle of champagne to christen the operation. Several of his publications became fascinated with television and Gernsback decided to act on it. He would broadcast television on his radio station.

It became the first station in New York City to broadcast on a regular basis.

Gernsback’s article in his own Radio News issue of August 1928 states he was sending out television signals on WRNY in June. But even at the time, there were conflicting reports as to when regular broadcasts began.

Here is the New York Times of Monday, August 13, 1928. It announced regular programming would start the next day, but gave specifics about a TV transmission the previous day, ignoring whatever Gernsback had done before.

WRNY to Start Daily Television Broadcasts; Radio Audience Will See Studio Artists
The first regular broadcasting of images by television over the radio from New York will begin tomorrow, it was learned last night from Station WRNY in the Hotel Roosevelt. WRNY, which is owned by The Radio News Magazine, has recently completed the installation of equipment for broadcasting images, and yesterday it conducted its first experimental broadcast.
The broadcasting was done from the station’s transmitting plant at Villa Richard, Coytesville, N. J. The images sent consisted of the faces of John Geloso, engineer of the Pilot Electrical Company, and John Maresca, chief engineer of WRNY. The first broadcast began at 5:43 P. M. and continued until 6:30. The second began at 11 P. M.
There is no telling how many persons saw the images, according to Hugo Gernsback, President of WRNY. He estimated that there are about 2000 sets in the metropolitan area equipped for television reception. Owners of sets unequipped for television heard the television transmission as an intermittent high-pitched whirr, varying with the action before the transmitter.
Officers of WRNY saw the images at a set installed in a private home a few hundred yards from the transmitting station.
The television broadcasting scheduled to begin today will be made a part of WRNY’S usual programs, Mr. Gernsback said. After a singer or other entertainer has finished, his or her face will be sent out over the air by television. Thus the schedule for the television will be the same as for the regular broadcasting of this station.
Considerable experimenting already has been made with television broadcasting by other stations. For some weeks C. Francis Jenkins has been transmitting silhouettes by radio, and other stations which have been developing the television field are WGY, at Schenectady; WLEX, near Boston, and WCFL, the labor station at Chicago.
Mr. Gernsback said that WRNY has received thousands of letters asking for television broadcasting.

The New York Herald Tribune published a special story in its Sunday radio section on the 19th, which ignored the August 12 broadcast and began with programming of the 13th.

Local Amateurs Pick Up WRNY In Television Broadcast Tests
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Begin Indefinitive Transmission Schedule To-morrow; Hugo Gernsback, Sponsor of Experiments, Declares Programs Are Intended for Experimenters
Equipped with the special apparatus needed to translate into images the complicated picture waves emanating from the WRNY television transmitter in Coytesville, N. J., amateurs in New York, Long Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania successfully saw moving images during the first week of the station’s tests.
Beginning with an indefinite transmission schedule on Monday, the station broadcast television images during five minute intervals on Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a. m. until 9:30 p. m. To-morrow the schedule has been announced as beginning at 11:30 a. m. for five minutes, and the same interval of time after 12:30 p. m., 2:30, 3:30 and 5:30 p. m. Persons at the station will be chosen as the subjects to be televised.
Following initial tests during the fore part of the week, on Tuesday evening the receiving apparatus was installed in the home of Hugo Gernsback, president of the station, at 180 Riverside Drive, where it is reported to have worked successfully despite the lack of synchronizing apparatus. The transmitting apparatus was located in the station’s broadcasting plant at Coytesville, N. J. The images were not perfect, but they were readily recognizable. Mrs. John Geloso, wife of the chief engineer of the Pilot Electric Company, who designed the apparatus, was the subject.
The tests were conducted over station WRNY and its associated short wave station, 2XAL, which operates on a wave length of 30.91 meters. Despite expert opinion that television signals broadcast in regular program channels would be apt to cause interference with those operating on adjacent bands, no “overlapping” was reported, due to the confining of the signals to a 5,000 cycle band.
“A number of other things should be straightened out,” said Hugo Gernsback, of the station. “First, the Pilot televisor is located at Coytesville, N. J., alongside of the actual WRNY transmitter, and is not in the WRNY studio in the Hotel Roosevelt, New York. Therefore, the images of artists performing before the microphone in the latter place cannot and will not be put on the air at this time. Neither will their photographs be broadcast, as has been mistakenly stated.
“At first we will have one of the WRNY operators act as the subject; other people present at the station on the occasion of a television broadcast will also be asked to sit before the televisor.
“This television broadcasting is entirely for the experimenter—the man who makes or assembles his own apparatus. It is not for the public at large, because there are no commercially-made television receivers, and there probably will be none for some time. We are assured of a large and appreciative audience—or rather observers—because the necessary receiving apparatus is really very simple and can readily be assembled at home.
“Please distinguish the true television work we are doing from the ‘radio movies,’ demonstrated last week by the Westinghouse company. That was no television, but animated radio tele photography. The pictures on a roll of cinema film were transmitted, not the image of a live person.
“The first public demonstration of the system will be held in one of the halls of New York University in the Bronx. At that time we will announce our plans for a definite schedule of television transmissions and we will also release technical data on the apparatus itself. We had planned to hold this demonstration Friday, August 17, but Mr. Geleso has asked for the extra time to perfect his synchronizing system.”

Samuel Kaufman’s column elsewhere in the section reported that anyone who tuned in WRNY at the time it was broadcasting television signals “may have been rewarded with nothing more than rapid sputterings and hisses” as the audio portion of the TV transmission was on a different frequency. Such was the technology of the day.

As for the special public broadcast, the Times had this to say on August 22:

TELEVISION ON WRNY WAVE.
Image Is Carried From New Jersey to New Your University Hall
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Reception of television images transmitted over the regular broadcast wave length of WRNY was demonstrated last night in Philosophy Hall, New York University, before a group of radio engineers, scientists and newspaper men. It was estimated that about 500 persons passed before the televisor receiver and saw the received image of a face as it moved before the televisor transmitter of the station at Coytesville, N. J., atop the Palisades across from 181st Street.
The broadcast image was that of Mrs. John Geloso, wife of the engineer who perfected the apparatus. Mrs. Geloso closed her eyes, opened and closed her mouth and moved from aide to side. The images were about one and one-half inches square, but were magnified by a lens to twice that size.
The demonstration was characterized by Hugo Gernsback, owner of WRNY, as the first successful accomplishment of its kind over broadcast waves from s transmitter in New York. Only 5,000 cycles, half the available 326-meter channel of the station, were utilized. The images were also sent out simultaneously on the 30.91-meter wave of 2-XAI [sic], the short wave broadcasting apparatus at the station.
In an address Mr. Gernsback said television was still in a crude state, fit only for the amateur who wished to experiment.
“In six months we may have television for the public,” he said, “but so far we have not got it.”
Mr. Geloso operated the apparatus for the guests, who included Dr. Lee DeForest, inventor of the three-element vacuum tube.

To the right you see the first television schedule for WRNY published in the News Tribune. It for Tuesday, August 21. At least we know there was a pianist and violinist.

The Washington Star printed the story below on its front page of August 14. Note the description of the TV set and Gernsback’s somewhat naïve attitude toward TV commercials. Still, it was extremely early.

DAILY RADIO MOVING PICTURES WILL GO ON THE AIR THURSDAY
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Station WRNY Will Begin First Regular Television Broadcasting Into the Homes Ever Attempted
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By Consolidated Press
NEW YORK, August 14.—Station WRNY of New York will begin Thursday [16] the first regular daily broadcasting of moving images by television ever attempted. Other broadcasts have been made intermittently for the last few months by stations throughout the country, experimentally, but not for the benefit of the fans, who are now expect to hook up their receiving outfits and get their pictures on the air just as they rigged up their hay-wire radio sets 15 or 20 years ago.
Hugo Gernsback, who first used the word “television” in 1909 and who is president of station WRNY says “television is here” but that it will assume a vastly different form and be greatly increased in effectiveness within the next few years. His office, on one of the upper floors of a New York skyscraper, is decorated with pictures suggesting an H. G. Wells conception of a scientific millennium, which reinforce the impression that almost anything may happen as Mr. Gernsback talks of the future.
“This is really television, which means instantaneous sight at a distance,” he said “and not telephotography which means the broadcasting of a photograph or other still picture. Our brief television broadcasting session will come in between our regular sound numbers, as with the present apparatus you cannot broadcast sight and sound simultaneously. Then we will make quite extended broadcasts after midnight.
“Any person wishing to receive can get the small equipment necessary to add to his radio receiver for about $50 and can install it in about three hours. The equipment consists of a disc, a neon lamp and a small motor—that’s all.
Attached to Regular Radio
In his adjoining laboratory, Mr. Gernsback displayed a typical receiving set. It was attached to a standard radio. A perpendicular black disc, with its face toward an observer seated before the radio, was revolved at an even speed by a small motor, behind this disc was a neon lamp. Toward the edge of the disc was a spiral of small holes. As the disc attained full speed, the pinpricks of light coming through the holes were gathered in a dull square of pink light, made by the neon light background. This square is, of course, stationary and this is the screen upon which the image of the subject at the transmitting station gradually takes form.
At the transmitting station, light falling upon the face of the subject is broken by a similar perforated whirling disk. Then this reflected light is caught by three huge photostatic cells, the largest ever made, and converted from light impulsions into electric impulsions. These latter are governed by the breaks in the light caused by the interposition of the whirling disk. Hence it is these same variations which the neon tube retranslates into light at the other end of the process.
Possibility for Advertising.
Mr. Gernsback was asked whether television would make possible advertising by which goods would be both displayed and described, and whether this might be expected to become the main source of revenue from the invention.
“Advertisers are already pressing in,” he said, “and we are getting new inquiries daily. Of course, it would be possible now to display any article in this way, but I do not think this is going to happen. Television later may be used on a large scale for good will advertising, but I do not think it will get down to a level of petty merchandising.
“There are big concerns now ready to manufacture and sell television outfits, but they are holding off for purposes of their own. We are going ahead with our systemic broadcasting, because we feel that we must go along with the public and develop a television audience.”
Mr. Gernsback is a member of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is editor of the Radio News.

There was a great flurry of television activity around this time we’ll talk about in future posts. To your right is a list of stations from the October 1928 edition of Radio Broadcast.

The end was near. On September 10th, the Federal Radio Commission ordered WRNY to share its time with two other stations by November 11th, retaining three-sevenths of the 1010 frequency by the end of the year. The Commission also ordered all television off the a.m. frequencies. Then Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt. Its assets were bought on April 3, 1929 and both WRNY and 2XAL were immediately sold for $100,000 to someone who, according to the Herald Tribune promised plenty of aviation news. But no television. That would be up to other pioneers.