History of AT&T and Television

See Film of First Broadcast Demo (Windows Media, 856kB).

View Simulation of 50 Line Picture Quality (Windows Media, 1.2M).

Read About the First U.S. Woman to Appear on TV.

Read excerpts from the 1927 Souvenir Program.

First U.S. demonstration of TV

On April 7, 1927, a group of newspaper reporters and dignitaries gathered at the AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories auditorium in New York City to see the first American demonstration of something new: television. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover provided the “entertainment,” as his live picture and voice were transmitted over telephone lines from Washington, D.C., to New York.

“Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history,” Hoover said. “Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.”

A second telecast followed that day, via radio transmission from Whippany, N.J. The telecasts demonstrated television’s potential as an adjunct to telephone service and as a medium for entertainment.

Photo of television equipment. Photo of Herbert Hoover using television. Photo of men watching television demonstration.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

Newspapers trumpeted AT&T’s achievement as the latest wonder in an age of wonders. Herbert Ives, the AT&T researcher who led the television project, followed that triumph with color television in 1929 and two-way interactive television in 1930, using video telephone booths connecting the AT&T and Bell Labs headquarters buildings in New York.

Television transmission networks

While commercial television evolved through other technologies, AT&T devised, built and operated the system that made network transmission possible. Beginning in 1948 with a network connecting stations from Boston to St. Louis, AT&T constructed cable and microwave-relay facilities that spanned North America.

President Harry Truman inaugurated transcontinental television service on Sept. 4, 1951, when AT&T carried his address to the United Nations in San Francisco to viewers as far away as New England.

Satellite communications

AT&T pioneered satellite communications as well. On July 10, 1962, NASA launched AT&T’s Telstar, the world’s first active communications satellite. A wildly successful experiment, Telstar transmitted the first satellite television broadcasts, which were the first live television signals sent across the Atlantic. Viewers in France and England saw President Kennedy conduct a press conference, and audiences in the United States watched French singer Yves Montand and the changing of the guard at England’s Buckingham Palace.