How Classical Music Came From Television

John Vincent Lawless Hogan’s dream of television turned into a dream of something else.

By April, 1929, two companies had licenses to operate “visual broadcasting stations” in New York City. One was RCA. The other was Mr. Hogan, whose W2XR was licensed at 2000 to 2150 kcs. at 500 watts (see list below). The license had been issued the previous month for a variety of frequencies¹ then assigned from Hogan to his company, Radio Pictures (Inc.), in May². The station changed frequencies several times, then changed locations, moving its transmitter from 140 Nassau Avenue to 3104 Northern Boulevard on Long Island in January 1930 “with understanding that should interference result with other stations, applicant may be required to move to a less congested area”³.

What Hogan did with the station prior to the move is unclear. The Long Island Daily Star picks up developments in its edition of April 4, 1930, referring to another of Hogan’s companies.

A laboratory, where electrical engineers are experimenting with television, has been established on the second floor of the building occupied by the Ford Agency, on Northern boulevard, near Thirty-first street, not far from the Bridge Plaza, Long Island City.
For several weeks television tests have been quietly conducted in this laboratory in connection with the radio.
The laboratory has been established by the Radio Inventions Corporation, at 41 Park Row, Manhattan, of which M. E. Tucker is the head.
Speaking of the Astoria laboratory, Mr. Tucker said that the company was not ready as yet to give out any information.
In the Astoria workshop are numerous radios used for experimental work. So are there motion picture machines and slides and the men making the experiments are working on an invention by which motion pictures may be broadcast over the radio, it was declared.
While Mr. Tucker would give out no statements, one of the workmen said the device was already successful as far as operations were concerned.

Three days later, the Star was reporting Radio Pictures, Inc., had applied for a construction permit for a new station in Long Island City. It was granted by month’s end. The reason for the new station is this one would broadcast sight and sound simultaneously.⁴

The station’s call letters were changed in May W2XAR⁵; apparently this applied to an audio transmitter only.⁶

The New York Sun had an excellent Saturday radio section during the era of Nipkow-disc, mechanical television. In the May 10, 1930 issue, C.H.W. Nason, in an article on television, tells readers a bit about W2XR and what else was available. It also points out a problem which viewers mentioned in QSL reports to the Sun—that if a scanning disc operated at 48 lines, it couldn’t pick up signals from stations operating at 60 lines. And the lack of national standards for electrical current affected reception, too. This one reason the New Jersey station packed up and moved to New York City. The same situation was the reason Canadians could not pick up American television as late as 1947.

At present here in the metropolitan area we have two stations transmitting programs on regular schedule. W2XCR in Jersey City, the Jenkins station, is on the air daily from 3 to 5 and from 8 to 10 P. M. with radio movies in silhouette and half-tone and with "direct pick-up." In the evenings these programs have an audible outlet through W2XCD in Passaic. The latter station is on a wave length of 187 meters and is within the tuning range of most of the modern broadcast receivers.
In Long Island City another station, W2XR, is broadcasting from film on regular schedule. W2XBS of the Radio Corporation is broadcasting experimental material with sixty line scanning. All these stations lie in the band between 100 and 150 meters. [. . .]
When one says a certain system employs a 48-line scanning mechanism this mechanism may be an actual disk such is will be shown later or some mechanical or optical equivalent may be employed for various reasons. The changeover would not necessitate a revision of any of the receiving equipment already in the field. Hogan, for example, recently changed over from a 24 to a 48-line system by merely changing the speed of a driving motor. In this instance those who had been receiving the signals merely changed their 24-hole scanning disk and carried on. The two New York stations are employing 48-line scanning, while the General Electric station at Schenectady employs 60 lines. Should the stations in this neighborhood decide at a later date to change over to the latter figure the only change necessary will be in the scanning disk and in a few mechanical parts as we will bear this eventuality in mind throughout our period of development. [. . .]

The method of scanning shown in Figure 1 is known as "direct pick-up" where the actual scene to be transmitted appears before the camera and is broken up, transmitted electrically and synthesized at the receiving point. At the receiving end the electric impulses are treated in a manner exactly reversed from that described. A scanning disk or its equivalent similar in all respects to that at the transmitter is rotated in synchronism with that at the transmitting point. This means that at every instant the receiving spiral must be in a position identical with that of the transmitter. Where the transmitter and receiver are both operated by synchronous motors fed from the same supply lines this is simple of accomplishment. This situation obtains here in New York for those of us who have A. C. In so far as the Long Island City transmissions are concerned. Those of us residing in Jersey are in the same position as regards the Jenkins signal. Some of us, however, reside in D. C. areas and have not this advantage with regard to either signal. In any case it is necessary to resort to some means of manual or automatic synchronization if both signals are to be received.

W2XR was apparently popular in Rhode Island. QST magazine for September 1930 has this cute note from ham C.N. Kraus (W1BCR): “Television pictures are received at the Radio Club of R.I. clubhouse nightly from W2XCR, W2XCD, W3XX, W2XR, W2XCW, W1XAV, W2XBS and W3XBV. Hams driving through Rhode Island are invited to drop in.

The Sun’s first listing for W2XR wasn’t until the issue of September 26, 1930. This was repeated in subsequent weeks:

M139—W2XR—2160K
Radio Pictures, Inc., an experimental television station located in Long Island City, broadcasts motion pictures and half-tone films daily except Sundays and holidays from 4:30 to 6:30 P. M. and from 7:30 to 10 P. M. The transmitter is synchronized with public lighting service in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Westchester (as far north as Peekskill, Queens and Nassau counties. The usual 48 lines 15 frames per second at 900 r. p. m. are employed.

The Federal Radio Commission reassigned frequencies on December 15, 1930 for the 19 TV stations in existence to prevent interference. W2XR was given between 2850 and 2950 kcs. at 500 watts but was also permitted to operate between 2100 and 2200 between 5 and 7 p.m., subject to shared operations after 10 p.m. and before 2 p.m. by agreement with other stations within 150 miles of W2XR⁷. This included NBC’s W2XBS and GE’s W2XCW in Schenectady.

Editor Hugo Gernsback wrote in the March-April 1931 edition of Television News that W2XR was broadcasting silhouettes. The station didn’t appear in the Herald Tribune’s television listings until March 18, 1931. It was broadcasting 2950 kcs. from 5 to 10 p.m. The listings say “Film subjects” but that’s all. The station expanded its programming; the Herald Tribune of April 3rd reads “4:00-10:00 p. m.—Experimental Hour [on 2920k]. 5:00-7:00—Experimental program of animated cartoons (on 2150k).

We know something about the cartoons the station was showing. Film Daily reported in its May 5, 1931 issue:

A series of 12 animated cartoons exclusively for television broadcast is being made by the John R. McCrory studios. The drawings, which are in silhouette, will be broadcast daily and nightly by station W2XR operated by Radio Inventions of Long Island City. The first six subjects have been completed.

The problem of W2XR not being picked up on sets that could pull in NBC and Jenkins’ W2XCR was partly solved in early April when the station began broadcasting at 48- and 60-line pictures alternating at different hours during the day.⁸ It went completely to 60-line transmissions on May 18.⁹

The station made a technological advance, reported in the Sun, January 2, 1932.

What is probably the first television transmitter to scan 16-millimeter "home movie" film has been placed in commission by engineers of W2XR in Long Island City. This new machine is said to scan either half-tone or black and white views, and to give results entirely comparable with the larger and more complicated film scanners that work with standard 35-millimeter theatre size film. One novel feature of the small machine is that it projects the pictures from the home films up to the same enlarged size that is used for scanning the 35-millineter views. It involves the same optical and electrical principles as the larger scanner end has been developed by engineers of Radio Pictures, Inc., from the basic inventions of Harold P. Donle.
Donle, the inventor of the alkali-metal detector tube, has been concentrating on television for the last three or four years. His inventions have been coordinated with those of John V. L. Hogan as the basis of the letter's television system.
Both of these men claim that the amount of detail transmitted to home televisors from 16-millimeter film is as great as can be transmitted from 35-millimeter film, or even from direct pickups. This, they say, is because the standard 60-line scanning recognizes only about 4,500 theoretical elementary areas in any picture and the small film carries as many as 100 times this number. That means, as Mr. Hogan points out, that it will be necessary to make television detail more than 100 times as good as it is now before everything that is shown on a home movie film can be sent over the air. The standard theater film carries about four or five times as many recognizable picture points and so is more than 100 times ahead of even 120-line scanning which recognizes about 1,600 theoretical picture scanning.
Engineers of W2XR state that the 16-millimeter film is likely to become prominent in the preparation of television programs. They say it is cheaper and easier to handle than the 32-millimeter.

Despite all this, the station simply wasn’t all that entertaining. Philip De John of Flushing told the Sun’s radio column “W2XR comes in good, but this station only shows film.”¹⁰ And M. Miller of Long Island City griped “W2XR comes in good but his pictures are more or less the same every week. Of course they alternate the pictures but it becomes tiresome when on[e] sees the same pictures over and over week in and week out.”¹¹ The schedule for the week beginning Monday, November 21, 1932 read, as it did every week around this time.

5:00—Experimental programs.
7:00—Cartoons.
8:00—Films with sound.
9:00—Cartoons.
(Sight on 179 meters, sound on W2XAR 193 meters).

Viewer K. L. Carlton of New Brighton on Staten Island revealed “On W2XR one sees the swinging pendulum and other moving objects together with the words ‘Radio Pictures, 41 Park Row,’ which are run through occasionally.”¹²

Hogan seems to have preferred film to studio programming; his engineers worked on cutting the shadows from the “flying spot” lights then in use (and soon to become obsolete), but he was quoted as saying the backbone of syndicated television programmes would likely be movies.¹³

The audience annoyance of repetitious programming was taken care of easily, though unsatisfactorily. A couple of viewers wrote the Sun on February 4, 1933, wondering why W2XR had disappeared from their screens. The radio editor replied “W2XR has cut down its time schedule and now is on the air daily except Sundays from 5 to 6 P. M. According to information from its engineers, the station may go on the air outside of its regular schedule period, but no set of fixed hours could be obtained.”

The end was drawing nigh for television in New York. CBS unexpectedly pulled W2XAB off the air later that month, saying there was nothing more to learn from experimental TV. NBC did the same with W2XBS roughly about the beginning of 1934. When the Sun eliminated its TV listings on February 10, 1934, Hogan’s station was the only one outside of Chicago on the schedule. It was broadcasting on 1670 kcs. (179 metres), with pictures from 4 to 6 p.m. and sound from W2XBR on 1550 kcs. from 5 to 6 p.m. The station was off the air weekends and holidays.

Hogan believed there was a future for W2XR—but not at as a television station. The New York Times of April 22 reported on some experimental fax transmissions, but he hit on another, far more successful idea. He realised he had been attracting viewers, not through the repetitious moving pictures and cartoons, but the light classical music that accompanied the non-film shows.¹⁴ He received an experimental high-fidelity radio license and began broadcasting Beethoven, concerts from the Julliard School of Music, and the like, commercial-free, 5 to 7 p.m. weekdays (except holidays). The classical-music-and-opera version of W2XR received an incredible positive reaction.¹⁵ The station switched call letters to WQXR on December 4, 1936¹⁶ to end any confusion that it might not be a regular broadcast station.¹⁷ Radio Pictures still held a television license, W2XDR, and got approval in 1940 to use it for audio purposes¹⁸ but was, as far as viewers were concerned, out of the TV business.

Meanwhile, almost a month earlier on November 6, the Incomparable Hildegarde, the Ink Spots and announcer Betty Goodwin beamed out in a greenish hue from W2XBS, now using electronics instead of a spinning disc. NBC was getting prepared to give television another shot.

---

1 Radio Service Bulletin, U.S. Commerce Department, March 1929^↩
2 Radio Service Bulletin, May 1929^↩
3 United States Daily, Jan. 14, 1930^↩
4 United States Daily, Apr. 29, 1930^↩
5 Radio Service Bulletin, May 1930^↩
6 Heinl Report, June 11, 1931^↩
7 United States Daily, Dec. 9, 1930^↩
8 New York Sun, Apr. 4, 1931, pg. 24^↩
9 Sun, May 16, 1931, pg. 27.^↩
10 Sun, June 11, 1932, pg. 22^↩
11 Sun, Nov. 19, 1932, pg. 23^↩
12 ibid^↩
13 Sun, Dec. 19, 1931, pg. 23^↩
14 The First Television Boom, Joseph H. Udelson, University of Alabama Press, pg. 63^↩
15 Broadcasting, Oct. 1, 1934^↩
16 New York Daily News, Dec. 5, 1936, pg. 30^↩
17 Broadcasting, Dec. 1, 1936, pg. 73^↩
18 Radio Craft, March 1940, pg. 519^↩