Television was starting to go somewhere by the middle of 1928.
WGY in Schenectady was showing pictures on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 12:30 p.m., WCFL in Chicago had put on an experimental broadcast and WTMJ was about to do the same1. The New York press, meanwhile, reported on WRNY’s movement toward TV shows2.
Inventor C. Francis Jenkins was ready. He had sent pictures of President Warren G. Harding and Secretary of the Navy Edgar Denby via radio on December 13, 1922 with naval officials present3 and his first public demonstration took place in Washington on June 13, 19254. He decided to put his newly-licensed W3XK on the air weekly. The Washington Post of June 23, 1928 explained:
BROADCAST OF MOVIES BY RADIO HERE JULY 2
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Prof. Jenkins Announces the Bginning [sic] of Regular Program in Capital.
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TESTS PROVE A SUCCESS
A program of motion pictures will be broadcast from the Jenkins’ Laboratory, 1519 Connecticut avenue northwest, July 2 at 8 o’clock, it was announced yesterday. The program will last an hour and will be sent through television on a wave length of 46.7 meters, which will enable amateurs in the United States and Canada to pick it up. The pictures will be broadcast at the rate of 15 a second and will contain 48 lines to the picture.
The performance will be repeated each Monday night with a different set of pictures. As the demand grows the number of performances a week will be increased to three. For a while the moving pictures will depict only simple action. Later those with plots will be used.
During the past three weeks the moving pictures to be shown July 2 have been broadcast a number of times between the laboratory and the home of Prof. C. Francis Jenkins, 5502 Sixteenth street northwest, where they were witnessed by private audiences. The reception was stated to have been entirely satisfactory.
Gena Marie Belote, 6-year-old daughter of Theodore Belote, 1613 Longfellow street, and Catherine and Constance Rounds, daughters of Lieut. Edward Rounds, engineer in the Navy Department, acted for the pictures to be shown July 2. They will be from 5 to 15 minutes long.The amateur radio operator can equip his set with a picture receiver for 10 or 15, Dr. Jenkins stated. The Jenkins’ laboratory, however he stated, does not manufacture or sell them. It is broadcasting the pictures only in the interest of television. Yesterday Dr. Jenkins gave an account of his work with television before the Washington Round Table Luncheon held at the University Club.
One amateur in Cold Springs, Iowa wrote Jenkins and said he watched that first show and missed few of them afterward. Jenkins initially broadcast photographic silhouettes and black-and-white cartoons, but abandoned cartoons because he felt artists couldn’t adapt to television. Instead, he designed silhouette studio equipment5.
Jenkins wasn’t satisfied with the little laboratory station. The Federal Radio Commission granted his request for a new W3XK, beaming up to 5,000 watts from two 128-foot towers build on the Brookville pike in Maryland6. Here’s the Washington Evening Star of November 3, 1928.
FORECASTS EARLY USE OF TELEVISION
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Jenkins Says He Will Soon Be Able to Broadcast Movies for Home Reception.
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Whatever else may be said about television, C. Francis Jenkins insists that it is coming sooner than the experts and ‘The Dunkers’ think. The Washington inventor definitely promises that he will soon be able to transmit moving figures and motion pictures taken front strip films for reception via the ether on specially built receiving sets.
These sets will be relatively simple in construction, and will probably be known as “Radiovisors,” said Mr. Jenkins. The inventor, who has been taking out scores of patents on visual radio apparatus of his own development, declares that visual radio today is comparable to the early crystal set reception or audible radio, and stoutly maintains that developments from now on will be rapid.
The “Radiomovies” which Mr. Jenkins has been broadcasting from his own experimental station here in Washington are likened to early motion pictures. They are in silhouettes, he says, because the width of the broadcast band legally permissible is not great enough to transmit them with proper light values.Mr. Jenkins has obtained a license from the Government to employ a 100-kilocycle band, which represents a path in the ether ten times wider than the one he is now usinq in the experiments he is conducting daily with the cooperation of a host of amateurs scattered throughout the country. He is now engaged in constructing the new transmitter and expects to have it in operation within a few months.
“My answer to the oft-repeated statement that radiomovies and radiovision may not in reason he expected be home entertainment in this generation,” said Mr. Jenkins, “is to refer my adviser to the hundreds of amateurs east of the Mississippi who fascinatingly watch our present pantomime picture in their receiver sets.
“I am now,” he added, “building a transmitter, designed on an entirely new principle, with which, in common belief with other skilled engineers who have seen it, we confidently expect to broadcast not only movies, but actual inaugural ceremonies and like national events, base ball and other outdoor sports, theatrical performances and even grand opera for home entertainment—and we will begin some of it this very next Summer.”
An effort by other visual radio experimenters to obtain permission from the Federal Radio Commission to utilize the normal broadcasting band for picture and television broadcasting has been partially successful. The commission has issued an order permitting picture and television broadcasting from now until January 1, 1929, within the broadcast band between 550 and 1,500 kilocycles.
Because the whirrs of the signals carrying visual radio are sources of interference, the evening hours from six to eleven may not be used for these transmissions. Neither may the television experimenters occupy a band of frequencies wider than ten kilocycles. The extent of such broadcasting after January 1 will depend upon eliminating interference, popularity of the visual transmissions with the general public, and the limitations which may be imposed under the International Radio-telegraph Convention.
The upgraded station went on the air July 22, 1929. By this time, Jenkins had become fascinated with the idea of sending television signals by air to a transmitter. The Evening Star reported on the debut the following day.
AERIAL EYE PUTS GROUND IN RELIEF
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Dr. C. F. Jenkins Explains Wonders of New Radio-Movie Device.
Federal radio officials were present at the formal opening last night of a new radio station, which its owner expects will play a pioneer role in a new field of television-broadcasting of the earth from airplanes in flight.
Representatives of the Army and Navy also attended the opening. The military branches of the Government have manifested Interest in Dr. Jenkins’ prediction that the new airplane “televisor,” also referred to as the “aerial eye,” will revolutionize warfare. With it, he believes, general headquarters of an army may watch developments at the front as they occur.
Watch Radio-Movie Broadcast.
The Radio Commission was represented by Capt. Guy Hill, U. S. A., chief engineer of the commission, and George S. Smith, head of the license division. Others present included Lieut. E. K. Jett, naval radio expert: Lieut. A. L. Becker, U. S. N., detailed on radio research work at Yale University; George A. Sutton, Franklin Y. Gates and George Y. Jarvis.
The spectators watched the inauguration of a regular nightly broadcast of radio-movies, in silhouette. They were told television programs would be put on the air later. The station will attempt to broadcast scenes radioed from the Jenkins “flying laboratory” as it soars over Washington. The inventor answered many questions regarding technical phases of his proposed air plane experiments and he expressed confidence they would succeed, barring unforeseen obstacles.
A Complicated Device.
The “aerial eye,” a complicated device which will scan the earth as the plane proceeds in flight and transmit what it “sees” by radio to the ground station, is under construction in the Jenkins laboratories. It will be installed in the near future in a special Stinson junior four-place cabin ship recently purchased by the inventor.
Dr. Jenkins expressed the opinion that his new station is the first high-powered transmitter for the broadcasting of radio movies and television on a regular schedule. Amateur television fans and their experimenters in all parts of the country compose the station’s “audience.”
The station has a frequency of 2,900 kilocycles and an authorized power of 5,000 watts. Heretofore the Jenkins movies have been broadcast three times a week from his 50-watt laboratory station at 1519 Connecticut avenue.
Despite the fanciful talk, Jenkins continued to broadcast shadowgraphs and silhouettes. That finally changed in June 1931, when he was out of the picture. The Jenkins Television Corporation had been taken over by the DeForest Radio Company, along with his patents and licenses, and it announced a deal with WMAL to broadcast “radio talkies” from its radio studios in Washington. Artists and speakers would be seen as well as heard, and some non-CBS programmes of the radio station would be televised7. For example, the station’s schedule for February 2, 1932 in the Star read:
9:00—Noonan’s Washingtonians. (Bill Noonan was the station’s announcer)
10:00—Songs by Marie Fowler.
10:30 to 11:00—Roberts’ Half Hour.
Jenkins had two television licenses for stations based in its head office in Passaic. A studio fire in January 22, 1932 ended broadcasting for the pair and one of the licenses, for W2XAP, was transferred to WMAL. The Star of January 31, 1932 reported the intention was to keep W3XK on the air:
W2XAP now possesses the only mobile television camera in existence. Operation of the television station, contrary to previous reports, will not supplant the present schedules of W3XK at Wheaton, Md.
After the opening night W3XK will alternate with WMAL-W2XAP when WMAL does not have programs originating in its studios available for television. W3XK will present sound accompaniment on its present short-wave channel.
On February 4, the paper reported W3XK had been “shut down for a week while changes are made in its sound transmitter for broadcasting on a new wave channel. This change in frequency, incidentally, will bring the sound transmissions within range of the average radio receiving set.”
The station’s license was renewed by the FRC on April 15, 1932. How long it remained on the air is unclear. A letter to the television section of the New York Sun on November 19 says “W3XK in Washington comes in quite well but recently have not heard him on the air.” A response to another reader on January 21, 1933 was “According to our records this station has been closed down, but is expected to reopen shortly with a new transmitter working on the ultra short waves below 10 meters.” It likely never happened. By June 1932, W3XK’s corporate parent, the DeForest Radio Corporation, went into receivership and in March 1933, its assets were bought by RCA for half a million dollars8.
As for Jenkins, he didn’t outlive the TV station he started for long. After a series of heart attacks, he died on June 6, 1934 at the age of 66.
1 Associated Press, June 16, 1928.↩
2 New York Herald Tribune, June 13, 1928, pg. 24; New York Times, June 22, 1928, pg. 20.↩
3 Washington Evening Star, Jan. 14, 1923.↩
4 The Great Television Race, Joseph Udelson, University of Alabama Press, 1982.↩
5 Washington Evening Star, June 4, 1929.↩
6 Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, March 1930.↩
7 Washington Evening Star, June 3, 1931)↩
8 The Great Television Race, Udelson.↩
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