Saturday 6 August 2022

A Second Station for the Second City

There was a time when it was a big deal to see someone’s feet on television.

Long before networks, in the days of mechanical television (roughly 1928-1933), about all a camera could do was sit there while a square of hot lights beamed at someone’s head and shoulders.

A television station in Chicago aimed to change all that.

In 1929, W9XAO (operated by radio’s WIBO) began telecasting. Add another year and add another Chicago TV station.

Both the New York Times and Herald Tribune radio sections ran feature stories on July 13 about the coming station. We’ll skip the Times story; the Herald Tribune’s has about the same content. (The photo below, right, is from the Times; the two pictures after the article have been cleaned up from the Trib.)

Sight Transmitter Installed In Station WMAQ Studio
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Transmit Images on Low Wave Band and Sound on Regular Channel; Two Receivers Needed, Undergoing Tests Prior to the Opening.
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CHICAGO, July 12.—By the end of the week Chicago will have television programs through the new station of “The Chicago Daily News,” it was learned today. The station, which will operate jointly with WMAQ as the sound channel, has virtually been completed, and is now undergoing a series before regular programs are inaugurated.
Televised images will be transmitted through the experimental station, W9XAP, on a frequency of 2,800 kilocycles, and with a power of 1,000 watts.
Simultaneous sound accompaniment will be sent through station WMAQ and listeners equipped with both television and radio receivers will be able to both see as well as hear entertainment as it is broadcast from the special television studio of station WMAQ.
Two Receivers Necessary
It was pointed out, however, that in order to receive both the sight and sound broadcasts, it is necessary to have two radio receiving sets, the customary broadcast receiver for sound and a short-wave receiver for television, and in addition, the television equipment which connects to the short wave receiver in much the same manner as the loud speaker joins to the broadcast receiver.
The television station involves the latest developments in sight transmission, it is said. Heretofore the transmission of images of persons has been confined largely to the head and upper shoulders. The apparatus at W9XAP, it is said, will transmit a full-length picture of several artists at once.
Through the use of a double scanning arrangement, developed by the designers of the apparatus, the Western Television Corporation, it is possible for the operator to adjust the lenses of the television camera into focus for any number of entertainers, the studio was designed and built to provide for the presentation of television-radio plays, for dramatic skits, and for acts in which action and symmetry of motion might interest the listener.
Unlike the usual broadcasting studio, the television room will be practically dark, in order to permit the light beam which scans the objects to react on the sensitive “eye” of the television camera. Variations in lightness and darkness are obtained through a narrow beam of light which literally paints the television subject and which records their intensity on the sensitive element of a photo-electric cell. This cell converts the light impulses into electrical impulses, which are transmitted as modulated tones over the television transmitter.
An unusual feature of the television apparatus is the use of mirrors attached to the television camera, which enables the control operator to follow the artists broadcasting to any part of the studio. This arrangement is employed because of the bulkiness of the television apparatus and eliminates the necessity for the subjects to remain directly within the limited focus area of the television lens.
Four projection lenses mounted on a turret on each of the two scanners make it possible to record a group of full length, and an instant later to show close-ups of each artist. This gives extreme flexibility.
Technical Details
The scanning disk revolves at 900 revolutions a minute synchronous with the sixty-cyc1e lighting circuit, it was explained. It has forty-five tiny holes arranged in three 120 degree spirals, so that scanning is accomplished by three offset scans down the field a revolution. The three spiral method of scanning is used to eliminate flickering, and la said to register action better than a single spiral.
Two huge photo-electric cells sixteen inches in diameter are suspended from the ceiling of the studio, on a track arrangement, and provide the artist pick-up. The track arrangement permits proper location for pick-up in any part of the studio. The announcer’s pick-up is entirely separate and distinct from that of the artists. Mounted on his table is a ring-bank of eight 6-inch photo cells. Each of the three pick-up units in the studio, the ring-bank of eight cells, and the two large cell units, has a three-tube amplifier as an integral part which builds up the feeble television impulse for transmission to the “mixer” and thence to the main amplifier in the operating room, where it is modulated for transmission over the station.

Even though Chicago already had television, the start of W9XAP was a big deal in the Midwest. The Associated Press sent out a preview story.

TELEVISION ON THE AIR
Dual Program, First of its Kind will be Put on in Chicago Tonight
CHICAGO.—(AP)—The first regularly scheduled television program from the newspaper-owned television station, W9XAP will be on the air tonight. Both W9XAP and its parent station, WMAQ, are owned by the Daily News.
The televised program will go on the air at 8 o'clock, central daylight time and will continue for 30 minutes. At the same time the images are on the air the sound portion of the act will be broadcast by WMAQ.
Bill Hay will announce the dual program. His image as well as those of Tuffy Griffith, heavyweight boxer, and a sparring partner, Stanley Harris; Ken Murray, the vaudeville artist; the Whitney Trio: Betty MacLean, a character actress; a saxophonist and Ed. G. McDougal, president of Libby, McNeil and Libby, sponsors of the event, will be televised.
WMAQ, licensed by the federal commission, as a television experimenter, expects soon to present three television programs daily. As a check on tonight’s test, 200 television sets have been placed in Chicago suburbs.
Although special equipment is required to pick up the images of performers, the station’s regular broadcasting studios will be used. Instead, however, of the single microphone to catch sound there are two huge photostatic cells, 16 inches in diameter, to pick up the image. Engineers of the Western Television Company, installers of the station, claim they are the largest ever made.
Viewers of the WMAQ program may see full length images of several artists. An innovation in television equipment enables the station operator to shift from long shots to close-ups exactly as is done in moving pictures.

The AP’s follow-up story described the photoelectric cells as “not unlike the bulging eyes of a deep-sea fish.”

The fight mentioned above lasted one minute. That didn’t bother a columnist for one paper, dispatched to Chicago to watch and opine.

Movies Transmitted by Radio To 200 Points in Chicago in Public Test, Viewed by Thousands
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Pictures Flicker and Blur as in the Early Cinema, Nevertheless Commercial Television Seems to Be Just Around the Corner.
By H. H. NIEMETER.
Motion Picture Critic of the Post-Dispatch.
CHICAGO. Aug. 28.—A good many thousand Chicago radio enthusiasts are ready to testify today that television—the broadcasting of motion pictures through the air by radio—is an accomplished fact and a commercially profitable form of amusement of the future. For last night, for half an hour, the new television radio station W9XAP of the Chicago Daily News sent out action pictures which were, more or less successfully, picked up by 200 picture receiving sets in various parts of the city. To be sure the pictures flickered, as did the old-time movies, and there were times when the receiving sets failed altogether but some of the 200 stations caught the entire program and all of them caught parts of it.
Without question the complete broadcasting of news events and the showing of motion picture plays is just around the corner.
These first television receiving sets, the product of an independent Chicago corporation, are not equipped to transmit sound. They are operated from a station using much shorter wave lengths than are usually employed in broadcasting spoken words. In the demonstration last night, however, the Daily News broadcast the sound, accompanying the pictures, over its regular station WMAQ, synchronizing perfectly with the views being shown. To both see and hear the broadcasting it was necessary for the receiving stations to use two sets—a television receiver and an ordinary radio. This was done in many instances.
Transmitted 100 Miles.
The Chicago station has been experimenting with the sending of movies for many months and a few weeks ago succeeded in transmitting a motion picture which was picked up by a set in Milwaukee, nearly 100 miles away. Last night's demonstration was the first public city-wide broadcasting and daily and nightly station W9XAP will carry on regular television programs. The present receiving sets, which are now on general sale in Chicago, are not so far perfected that they could be used in St. Louis to catch programs broadcast from Chicago. Sending moving pictures that distance is still a matter for the electrical engineers to battle with.
That pictures will be sent across the country before long is most likely, however, and within the next year, perhaps, entire plays, such as are now seen in the cinema theaters, may be seen, and heard, in homes throughout the land. Television experts are confident that the new form of broadcasting will revolutionize the entertainment field and many of them predict that the use of films, except for making pictures as a matter of record for future use, will be tremendously reduced.
Be that as it may, television is here now and the varied program of conversation, singing, instrumental music and even a lightning fast boxing match which I saw sent out last night proves that the possibilities are almost boundless.
Boxing Match Shown.
Singers, speakers and musicians were seen on receiving sets throughout Chicago last night. The boxing bout, lasting just one minute, was the least attractively transmitted event of the evening because the boxers failed to keep within the limited range of the present broadcasting equipment. But the action, when caught at all, was transmitted faithfully and showed that there was probably no action which could not be sent through the air successfully.
None of the present receiving sets is equipped to show the pictures on a large motion picture screen although the makers say that such form of transmission is exceedingly simple and can be arranged at any time. Last night's large and scattered audience saw the pictures through a 5 inch glass lens in the front of the receiving outfit—a box about two feet square and six inches deep. It was not necessary to stand close to the box and peer into the covered hole. Eight or 10 persons, seated in a semi-circle 10 feet away could view the picture although a better idea of what was going on could be had at close range. In many of the Chicago stores showing the program last night—none of the machines was installed in a private home so far as was known—five or six of the receiving sets were used so that it was possible to display the pictures to a greater number of people.
The picture, as it was seen in the box was about five inches square and appeared to be tinted a pale red. As said before, it flickered considerably and one got the impression of watching a movie through a screen door, for the surface of the image was covered with a succession of fine lines, but, nevertheless, the pictures were transmitted in a way to show that television is actually here.

A special story to the Pittsburgh Gazette by Chicago Daily News writer Kenneth Hathaway pointed out before the regular programme, Bill Hay, a silent half hour of pictures was aired, while a cartoonist drew.

The manager of W9XAP was radio actor Vinton Hayworth, who appeared on television in New York after the end of World War Two and may be known as General Schaeffer on I Dream of Jeannie. The photos below come from Radio Digest of April 1931, which published a feature on the station. The play with Ireene Wicker, later radio's The Singing Lady, was broadcast January 7 and required special make-up.



To the right is Variety's story on the debut along with a schedule. A small-town paper in Indiana was providing schedules for both Chicago television stations by the end of August 1930.

This was the age of mechanical television, which would soon be drawing to a close. NBC purchased WMAQ and W9XAP in 1931. The network shut off the cameras for good on March 31, 1933 but held onto the station’s license. On November 21, 1936 it was approved as an experimental fax station, operating on 2106 kc. with 2,500 watts. Along the way, the power was cut to 60 watts, for the FCC approved an application in June 1938 to increase power to 100 watts and move the transmitter. WMAQ and NBC Chicago would get another television station—but not until 1948.
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