Television in Los Angeles, 1928

Television came to Los Angeles on December 23, 1931 when Don Lee/KHJ’s W6XAO (now KCBS-TV) signed on.

Or did it?

Don Lee didn’t receive the first television license in Los Angeles. On July 20, 1928, the Federal Radio Commission granted two licenses and seven construction permits for television stations. One of the latter was given to Robert B. Parrish, Los Angeles, who was assigned call letters 6XC, to operate at approximately 66.67 to 65.22 kilocycles, at 15,000 watts. The Los Angeles Times gave the station’s address as 5155 South Grammercy Place, which was Parrish’s home.

There’s not much to say about Parrish. Sources conflict about when and where he was born but we do know, thanks to the November 1928 edition of QST magazine that he was president of the Amateur Radio Research Club of Los Angeles and manager of Pacific Engineering Laboratory. The blurry photo (Parrish is the one wearing a tie) is from an air meeting where he was master of ceremonies and members were part of the judging team.

Did W6XC get on the air? Below you find a list of stations in the February 1929 edition of Radio Broadcast magazine. Certainly the specifics (including the unusual number of holes in the transmission scanning disc) would indicate he had the equipment, if nothing else. The issue of Science News-Letter for the same month has this entry: “W6XC, Pacific Engineering Laboratory Co., 500 watts, 4500-4600 kc. or 66 m. Will start on definite schedule within next six weeks.” Bob Parrish was quoted in the June 1929 edition of QST that W6XC was transmitting on 4550. He didn’t say what he was transmitting.

An entry in the October 25, 1929 issue of the United States Daily lists Parrish’s experimental W6XC under “Application denied (the applicants having failed to indicate a desire to be heard).” That is if we’re presuming the publication is talking about a television license. Parrish was also interested in a nationwide point-to-point and plane-to-ground system and made an application dealing with that.

W6XC is listed under “visual stations” in the U.S. Commerce Departments Radio Division annual publication of June 30, 1929 but no television is in the index for Los Angeles in the next update, printed exactly one year later.

However, our story doesn’t end with Parrish and gets much more interesting. Another Los Angeles television station pops up in the June 30, 1929 book and disappears a year later.

W6XAM had a little more legitimacy. Owner Ben McGlashan was no ham. He was a USC grad who had been employed as the Los Angeles Times radio writer and employed at KHJ radio. Then at age 23 in February 1927, he founded KGFJ radio, which broadcast from the roof of the Oddfellows Hall at Washington and Oak Streets. TV station W6XAM is listed as an addition in the Radio Service Bulletin from the Commerce Department dated June 30, 1928 as a “special land station.”

There’s evidence W6XAM was on the air. Or some station connected with KGFJ.

At the sixth annual national radio show in Los Angeles, people could watch McGlashen’s station. The Times reported on September 2, 1928, the day of the expo preview:

Television, long a seeming miracle, has been given the place of prominence. Reception outfits, under supervision of Kenneth G. Ormiston, Los Angeles radio engineer, will be tuned in on the images of the air, both those broadcast by East Coast studios and those from the new television equipment of Station KGFJ, Los Angeles.
EXPLANATION PLANNED
Images thus captured will be depicted on apparatus within view of the show-goers, it is promised, and every effort will be made to explain how these silhouettes have been ensnared and duplicated on the receiving apparatus.
Another feature will be the sending by television of images of the show-goers, so that their friends, who accompany them to the show, may note the indisputable features of a personal acquaintance coming through the air. To accomplish this, Ormiston plans to maintain a broadcasting station at the exposition, with a receiving set some distance away.

The Times’ Dr. Ralph L. Power wasn’t impressed in his review the following day:

Swing around the annex to the right [of RCA’s radio exhibit] and you will find the television space where Kenneth G. Ormiston dispenses information on television principles. Don’t expect too much of this exhibit. It is, I am safe in saying, something for those technically minded and not for those who merely want to push a button on the receiver and hear some music.

The next day, the Times helpfully published a schedule of every TV station operating in the U.S. The paper reported on September 9 that the “$5000 receiving set belonging to Gilbert Lee, prominent Los Angeles television receptionist, will be utilized in one of the booths devoted to television,” and goes on to say “With KGFJ in operation it is forecast that numerous images will be ensnared by the television enthusiasts and presented to the radio-show crowds.”

Lee owned a soap company and since he could afford a home-made $5,000 set in 1928 dollars he must have, chuckle, cleaned up. (A little vintage 1928 humour there, folks). Lee must have been “prominent” because G.E. asked him to turn on the set on September 11 to see if he could pick up the historic dramatic broadcast of “The Queen’s Messenger” on WGY Schenectady. He did and he could. Both Sight and sound.

Incidentally, Parrish was at the radio show as well, right next to the TV booth, sending radio grams through his telegraph station 6PS as part of the Amateur Radio Research club.

The only other local post-fair television stories in the Times in September 1928 were in Dr. Power’s column of the 17th. One was about a talk to radio engineers being given by Parrish and Elden Smith, a technician at KGFJ. The other mentioned Mr. Ormiston had been hired as chief technician by KFJK, a new radio station in Beverly Hills, but would continue as engineer of KGFJ and technical editor for Radio Doings magazine.

That’s where we go for our next clue.

In the September 29, 1928 issue of the magazine is this squib:

KGFJ TELEVISION
KGFJ has been putting out television signals on their regular broadcast wave-length after midnight, and their pictures have been received in good shape by several television experimenters. A mishap to the short-wave transmitter temporarily put the 62 meter wave out of commission, but it is expected that the necessary repairs to the equipment will have been made by the time this issue is in the hands of readers.

But in that same issue, the listings for KGFJ state “Daily Except Sunday 12:00 midnight to 7:00 a.m.—Nite Owl Program.” The station had already begun Los Angeles’ first radio all-night. The TV station had to make a change. Sound Waves magazine from Hollywood dated October 1 explains what happened next:

TELEVISION HISTORY IN MAKING HERE
KGFJ to Broadcast Nightly
A STATEMENT OF HISTORICAL AS WELL AS OF PRIME INTEREST TO THE PICTURE INDUSTRY AND THE PUBLIC, HAS BEEN GIVEN A REPRESENTATIVE OF SOUND WAVES BY BEN S. McGLASHAN, OWNER OF RADIO KGFJ, TO THE EFFECT THAT BEGINNING SUNDAY EVENING, HIS STATION WILL BROADCAST REGULAR TELEVISION EACH EVENING.
The call of this special transmitter is 6XF and the wave-length is 62 meters. A 48 hole disc will be used and the approximate speed of the motor will be 900 R.P.M. Transmitting hours will be between eight and twelve P. M.
A cordial invitation has been extended to the industry and scientists by McGlashan and Elden Smith, his television technician, to visit KGFJ and inspect the apparatus. Smith, who last week gave a talk to the Los Angeles Section of the Institute of Radio Engineers on television, will be on hand each evening to explain the apparatus. “We are very much interested in talking motion pictures,” Smith declares, “and will probably put in a different style disc in order to broadcast motion pictures in the very near future. We invite those interested, through Sound Waves, to visit our station. To those who are experimenting and building receiving sets, we would like to confer on results obtained and observation.”

You’ll notice the call letters W6XAM are not used. 6XF was a “special land station” operated by Calvin J. Smith, who was the General Manager of KGFJ.
The Times of November 10, 1928 mentions another broadcast: “Wampas members will be given a demonstration of television at their bimonthly dinner Tuesday right at the Roosevelt Hotel. Hollywood. KGFJ, the only television station west of Chicago, will be hooked up with the quarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Two executives from each film studio will be guests of the Wampas. Clarke and McCullough, the Los Angeles Fire Department orchestra and others will entertain.”

The January-February 1929 edition of Television magazine has a fine list of “Who Is Broadcasting Television and When,” including those with irregular experimental telecasts. No stations west of Chicago are on the list. It also includes a list of “stations licensed for Television Broadcasting” from the Commerce Department, and we can only presume they were not on the air. 6XAM is there. So is Parrish’s W6XC and Smith’s W6XF. And another station we’ll get to.

A cumbersomely-named tome called “Intercity Radio Telegraph Co. v. Federal Radio Commission records that McGlashan’s application to renew the license of W6XAM was denied May 10, 1929 as McGlashan didn’t show he wanted the application to go ahead. As for W6XF, the Commerce Department’s Radio Service Bulletin for September 30, 1929 reads “Strike out all particulars.”

McGlashan, incidentally, was a pioneer in FM radio, being granted licenses for W6XKG and W6XRE, both of which were ordered off the air by the FCC on September 24, 1940 because of incomplete data and feelings the stations weren’t in the public interest. McGlashan sold KGFJ in 1963, continued operating a ham station and died in 1976.

As for that other station.

In the July 6, 1928 Times story where Dr. Powers reports on Parrish being granted a permit, it also reveals a license (not a construction permit) for “television transmission” had been granted to “P. S. Lucas, Los Angeles, under the call 6XBW”. The 1928 Los Angeles City Directory lists Percy S. Lucas as a radio operator. The Radio Service Bulletin for June 30, 1927 shows it was licensed between 2,880 and 2,140 kilocycles (131.6 and 140.2 meters) at 250 watts. It was a short-lived venture, if it was a venture at all. The Bulletin for January 31, 1929 has next to W6XBW “Strike out all particulars.”

Real television in southern California, it would seem, had to wait for Don Lee.