Tag Archives: Birthday

There can be little doubt that most of us have taken television for granted. After all it has been around as long as we have, and it is as common in our homes as electricity and running water. None of us can imagine not being able to press a button on the remote control via cable or satellite and choose from among hundreds of televisions offerings at any given moment. Most of us have several of these receivers in our homes so our children can be appropriately entertained while we watch our important shows, like “As the World Turns”, “Desperate Housewives”, or “Survivor”. Couples can watch their own respective programs on different sets or activate Tivo to record any programs for later viewing.

The television story was much different in 1936 when on June 29th when the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) assembled every executive involved in RCA manufacturing and radio’s National Broadcast Corporation (NBC) to view live television entertainment for the very first time. Radio had flourished during the depths of the Depression and RCA/NBC were at the head of the class. These manufacturers and programmers of radio had successfully refined new dimension of sight to their broadcasting capabilities. The term “television” had been aptly coined for this since its literal meaning was “distant vision”.

Seventy years ago on this June day, it was the hope of David Sarnoff, Chairman of RCA, to get all of their radio retailers, manufacturers and broadcasters involved expanding this new frontier of television. The Empire State Building television transmitter was used to demonstrate high definition television (343 lines) to RCA’s Licensees. The program featured speeches by Major General James G. Harbord (Chairman of the Board, RCA), David Sarnoff (President of RCA) and Otto S. Schairer (Vice-President RCA, in charge of Patents and Trademarks). This live broadcast included dancing girls and a film about army maneuvers. A dinner celebrating this event was held after the demonstration at the Waldorf Astoria. Hence this was the world’s first true TV Dinner! Note this is my discovery, no claims were ever made by RCA or NBC. The only known surviving photograph of this private event known can be seen at: http://framemaster.tripod.com/index-3.html The caption for this photograph reads: ”RADIO CORPORATION OF AMERICA FOLLOWING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RCA SYSTEM OF HIGH DEFINITION TELEVISION IN FIELD TEST INAUGURATED JUNE 29, 1936″