Passaic is On the Air

When you think of the centres of television you think of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Passaic.

Passaic?

Well, yes. The city was a pioneer in television, thanks to the De Forest Radio Company, which happened to be headquartered there. As you might have gathered, it made radio sets. What better way to sell them than to have a radio station? De Forest controlled the Jenkins Television Corporation, which made TV sets. What better way to sell them than to have a TV station? Due to the technology of the day, the sound for television had to be sent by radio. You can do the techno-arithmetic here.

De Forest was awarded a license for W2XCD from the Federal Radio Commission on June 4, 1929. Just before Christmas, all was ready. Here’s the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of December 29th:

New Air ‘Talkie’ Station Now on Every Evening
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DeForest Experimental Station at Passaic Will Be Used With Television.
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Down at the very bottom of your dial, or below the 200-meter limit of the usual broadcast band, there is a new station to be tuned in. It is W2XCD, which turns out to be the experimental radio telephone station of the De Forest Radio Company at Passaic, N. J.
On Tuesday evening, Dec. 17, Station W2XCD first went on the air with a test program, using only 50 watts. Reception with good loudspeaker volume and excellent tone quality was reported as far as Philadelphia. The power is to be increased until the full 5,000-watt rating granted in the license is attained.
Station W2XCD broadcasts on a wave length of 187 meters, or 164[0] kilocycles, from 8 to 10 o’clock every evening. In the near future this station is to be used to transmit the sound accompaniment for the Jenkins radiomovies or radiovision pictures transmitted from W2[X]CR at Jersey City. The combined reception of sound and sight at the home end, by means of a standard broadcast receiver and the special radiovision equipment, will constitute synchronized sound pictures, or radio talkies. A demonstration of this complete radio entertainment is to be made in Newark, N. J. early in January. Both stations are now on the air every day, except Sunday, from 8 to 10 p.m.
It is interesting to note that 10 different makes of standard radio receivers have been capable of tuning in the signals of W2XCD on 187 meters.

Radio World of January 18, 1930 reported the power had been increased to 500 watts and a 100 kilowatt transmitted with new water-cooled tubes was being constructed. It added this trivia:

W2XCD is located on the second floor of the DeForest experimental laboratory building adjoining the radio tube plant at Passaic. The installation is entirely experimental and is intended mainly to test tubes under actual operating conditions, as well as to conduct certain studies in radio transmission. Many reports are being received from all parts of the United States and Canada regarding successful reception of the signals.

By then, it was simulcasting the audio with Jenkins’ W2XCR in Jersey City. Radio World describes the broadcasts.

The Jenkins radio talkies consist of half-tone pictures, scanned in 48 lines at a speed of 15 pictures per second. The radiovision pick-up is by means of special film in the Jenkins studio at Jersey City, while the synchronized sound pick-up is by means of disk recordings mechanically coupled with the film pick-up. The sound signals are amplified and transmitted over direct wire to the DeForest transmitter at Passaic.

The Jenkins/De Forest braintrust decided on a change and that the Passaic station should send out pictures, too. The Passaic Daily News had this front-page story on November 3, 1930.

DeForest Building 5-KW. Television Station Here
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Will Broadcast Pictures From Passaic Laboratories, Using Same Call Letters, W2XCD—Given U. S. Permit
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In addition to the regular broadcasting station, W3XCD, of the De Forest Radio Corporation, Passaic will soon have a five-kilowatt radio television transmitting station to be run by the same concern, it was announced today. The Federal Radio Commission has granted the necessary construction permit.
The call letters will be W2XCD, the same as those of the present transmitter.
To Broadcast Soon
The television station is now being erected and will be in operation within a few weeks, the officials of the concern said today. It will operate separately from the Jenkins television transmitter, W2XCR, at Jersey City, which is indirectly controlled by the De Forest Company.
For a while, until television receiving sets become more popular and perfected, only television enthusiasts will receive images from the new station. The company, however, expects to create much interest in the new broadcasting during the next year. Recently, it broadcast jointly with the Jenkins Company, music and moving pictures and both the image and voice of a man making an address. At first, the standard forty-eight-line pictures will be transmitted by W2XCD, but of the highest possible quality, due to numerous refinements in the pickup, amplifier and transmitting equipment. As the instance of the refinement attained in forty-eight-line work, the DeForest engineers are using an amplifier with a gain of 3,000,000, from 15,000 to 60,000 cycles, with practically no drop.
Have Remarkable Detail
In fact, the gain rises slightly at the higher frequencies, followed by a short drop at 70,000 cycles. This amplifier, It was said, accounts for remarkable detail in the forty-eight-line pictures demonstrated by the DeForest engineers. However, when the practical limits of forty-eight-line picture have been attained, the engineers plan to go on the air with more lines, probably seventy-two-line pictures, in furthering the radiovision art.

There was more good news for W2XCD on the paper’s front page on December 8.

Passaic Station Given Exclusive Radio Channels
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W2XCD And WZXCR Benefitted At Hearing Before Federal Radio Commission—Plan Modem Studio
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The Federal Radio Commission has granted Station W2XCD, of Passaic, and W2XCR, of Jersey City, exclusive channels for their experimental work for perfecting television. The two stations will use the frequency band for the first time exclusively tonight.
Previously, the channel from 3,000 to 3,100 kilocycles was shared with the experimental station of the National Broadcasting Company and also with Station W2XK, of Long Island City. The use of the band by the several stations caused distorted picture reception.
Both the Jersey City station and the Passaic station are owned by the DeForest Radio Corporation, although the former is operated by a subsidiary, the Jenkins Television Company. They will use the channel on split time, and it is planned to give continuous picture and sound programs from 8 o’clock until midnight, each night.

Radio World of December 27 gave the following Monday through Saturday schedule:
10:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m.—W2XCD. Film Features.
2:00- 3:30 p.m.—W2XCR. Direct Pick-up Features.
3:30- 5:00 p.m.—W2XCD. Film Features.
7:00- 9:00 p.m.—W2XCR. Direct Pick-up Features.
9:00- 11:00 p.m.—W2XCD. Film Features.

This brings us to the next advance for television in Passaic, and probably its zenith. The New York Herald Tribune told readers on February 24, 1931.

Daily Television Broadcast From W2XCD Begun
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On Air 3 Times a Day
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Direct Pickups Used in Addition to the Films
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Technical advances and a steadily increasing audience has led the De Forest Radio Company to put its television broadcasts on a definite daily schedule, which began yesterday from the DeForest station, W2XCD, at Passaic, N. J.
In a recent study of television progress the company found that its programs could be received on more than 10,000 television instruments in states from the Atlantic to the Rockies. Heretofore the De Forest programs have been seen and heard frequently, for long periods almost daily, but the schedule was haphazard, and not until now has the broadcasting been made a feature for each week day.
The programs are sent out three times daily, with the most interesting subjects reserved for a ninety-minute broadcast beginning each night at 9 o’clock. A third of the evening broadcast is reserved for direct pickup subjects and for the remaining hour motion picture films are used, the visual portion of the program, coming through on W2XCD, operating on 2,050 kilocycles, while the sound accompaniment is sent out through the regular De Forest radio station, W2XCR, on a wave length of 187 meters.
Last night’s program opened with a talk on George Washington by Charles Rachjen, whose departure from the scanning disk made way for a Biblical drama, “The Unwelcome Guest,” at which the Saviour was not accorded the same honors as other guests at a feast in Simon’s house. To keep the mood after the ancient story ended M. Forkus brought on his violin for another fifteen minutes.
The rest of the program was spirited. A view of mountain climbers in the Canadian Rockies was followed by a pictorial demonstration of “Progress In the “Navy” and, possibly to placate listeners with pacifist tendencies, the broadcast came to a close with a comedy, “Just for Fun,” which the De Forest program, writer described as concerning “a boy who plays war ‘just for fun’ and finds the consequences not at all funny. A television addition to the great mass of modern literature proving war not to be glorious.”
Other “direct pick-up subjects” for this week’s programs will include the De Forest Little Symphony Orchestra and a mandolin concert for tonight, a boxing match and a piano concert tomorrow night, tenor solos and a television lesson on Thursday, piano music, a song recital and a talk on vacuum tubes for Thursday, and a studio party on Saturday.
The motion picture presentations during the week will take television enthusiasts around the world in an armchair. Tonight a picture of life in a desert will yield to another Navy film, and the program will conclude with a camera record of hunting grizzly bears In Alaska. During the rest of the week hunting and adventure pictures will alternate with films concerning Theodore Roosevelt and Benjamin Franklin. Saturday’s program coming to a smash close when sight and sound combine to give listeners an exciting fifteen minutes in the cab of a Twentieth Century Limited locomotive on its way to Albany.

The note about “the De Forest program writer” is telling. The company wanted its schedule in the papers. The New York Sun’s column looking at the week ahead on television mostly consisted of W2XCD highlights and read much the same as the same kind of column in one of the Passaic papers.

De Forest relied on the Y.M.C.A. Motion Picture Bureau, which could supply a large number of short films for nothing or a small cost. “A Bit of High Life” (the Rockies film), “How Salmon Are Caught,” “Lumbering in British Columbia” and “Ride ‘Em Cowboy,” are all Canadian government films shipped gratis by the Y. They may sound dull, but they were all very well-made silent shorts (we can only hope the station aired another called “Nimrods in Duckland”). “Just For Fun” could be rented for $2 a day from the Y.

Alas, it was all down hill from here for W2XCD. The station was soon reduced to films only as De Forest/Jenkins concentrated on W2XCR, which it moved from Jersey City to New York. A fire in the Passaic studio on January 22, 1932 ended the station’s life. From the ashes, however, rose station engineer Allen B. DuMont. In March 1939, he had a license for a new television outlet in Passaic, W2XVT, to operate between midnight and 9 a.m. Electronics magazine of June 1939 reported on the incredible diathermy interference with its signal and even posted a screen shot. DuMont decided to imitate his former employer. He gave up on television in Passaic and opened a new station in Manhattan the following year. From this sprouted a network that bore his name.