The Struggle to Transmit.

The origins of television date back to 1884 with a patent given to Paul Nipkow of Germany for an image-sensitive disk. By 1931, following experimentation in radio laboratories, television was tried out in several "public" experiments. One group involved in attempting to develop the medium was the Jenkins Television Corporation in New York City, which installed a five-thousand-watt television transmitter in the same building as its studios. Collaborating with Jenkins, the General Broadcasting System used station WGBS on Long Island to schedule the synchronized sound equipment needed for the television studios. At the receiver end two units were required, one normal broadcast receiver and one short-wave television screen. Although the two units were separate, the idea was that since both signals were beamed at the same time, they should be received at the same time, albeit on different frequencies, and thus synchronize automatically...