AT&T Archives: Stepping Along with Television

here's a young lady who lives in a world of Enchantment all her own a world as it happens is in Waukesha Wisconsin but even if she lived in Atlanta Georgia Muskogee Oklahoma or Reseda California she could still be following this program as it is being telecast from coast-to-coast how does the program travel from New York to her home in Waukesha Wisconsin let's find out for one last moment we're in Waukesha then by an easy flight of fancy were in a New York television studio here are the lights the cameras the sound equipment all typical of what you would see at any of the television broadcasting companies and now our story begins the story of how a television program is carried underground or through the air not only to Waukesha Wisconsin but to millions of American families across the nation the cameras catch the action in terms of light waves they then translated into electrical waves which pass through these small cables on the floor these cables lead to the control room overlooking the studio here we see technical men adjusting the television image the program is now channeled into the lines of your telephone company but before we follow it to Waukesha suppose we let Bill Carter tell you something about the pathways over which the program travels hello there I'm a telephone engineer we have lots of technicians stationed along the route and it's part of their job to check the various television programs as they're transmitted across the country sometimes they travel by coaxial cable a perhaps you'd like to see what this type of cable looks like our coaxials our copper tubes about the size of a lead pencil the exact center of each tube is also the exact center of the copper wire that runs through it hence the term coaxial our cable like this can carry 5400 telephone conversations and still leave two tubes available for transmitting television programs our television program can travel either by coaxial or by microwave radio relay but I'll be telling you more about radio relay a little later and now let's go back to the studio and/or the very place where the telephone company takes over riding on local telephone company lines the program speeds underground to the transmitter of a local TV station and out to the thousands of television sets throughout the metropolitan area of New York but meanwhile at all at the same time the program is speeding underground to the telephone communications building many blocks away ah here are the dancers again we'll be seeing them quite often in other bel system control rooms as we follow the program on its way to Waukesha a careful check for your telephone people all of them skilled in the transmission of image and sound and we're on our way our choice for this portion of our journey is coaxial cable underground the program speeds and all in the twinkling of an eye it drops off in Philadelphia here in the telephone building we hurry along to another control room where we again check in on the dancers here to align takes the program to the top of a television tower where it is telecast locally but in the meantime and far quicker than it takes to tell it speeds on its way to Pittsburgh here again sharp eyes and attentive ears are keeping constant check on the program to maintain perfection of image and sound now we resume our journey westward on to Cleveland and Toledo and Chicago here in Chicago our coaxial cable highway takes us once more to the control room of a telephone building and sure enough the dancers are right here with us now let's pause a moment just to watch the program and listen to the music up to now the program has traveled on a coaxial cable New York to Chicago all in a flash now in Chicago we make an instant shift to another Bell System means of communication the one I mentioned a little earlier microwave radio relay let's stop here for a moment on top of the telephone building in Chicago while we see what it's all about this square face giant horn is an antenna for sending a special kind of radio wave this antenna concentrates the radio waves into a very narrow beam aimed straight as a rifle shot to a receiving tower on top of this tower a similar horn captures the signals and channels them through a hollow metal pipe to a series of amplifiers which build up their power restore to normal strength the signals are now passed on through a sending antenna to a second radio relay tower here then in essence is what is known as radio relay incidentally our program from New York could have come by radio relay instead of coaxial cable but let's return now to our television program as it's being beamed from the top of a telephone building in Chicago it can go west or north or south to many other cities but our journey takes us north over to Milwaukee and to a receiving antenna on top of the local telephone building now down through the building to the control room and what do you know the dancers again with their images on the screen as bright and clear as when they started and now they simply hop on a local telephone cable zip over to a television station and jump out in all directions among the many places they land and guess where Waukesha of course now it's easy they're picked up on a television antenna on a certain house and the trip from the New York studio is finished the time just about the 200th part of a second yes and here just where we left her is our little friend still enthralled by the music and quite unaware of the hundreds of telephone people who have channeled and checked the program all the way to Waukesha once upon a time and within the memory of people still alive the telephone was generally regarded as a strange and wonderful device in those days it was a great event to talk on a telephone at all let alone converse with people in a neighboring state the sky was full of wires and people could hardly escape the fact that conversations needed pathways later on the wires began to disappear into cables not much bigger than a man's wrist until finally the long-distance telephone network of today came into being and was taken for granted today with a rapidly expanding Bell System networked bringing television into your home and yours and yours all across the country we not only hear but see across the intervening space and when extensions and modifications now underway are completed nationwide black and white and color network service will be available to virtually all the major cities in the United States and so in stepping along with television the bell system will keep on bringing to more and more millions of people new worlds of entertainment and enchantment you

Channel: AT&T Tech Channel

Views: 17,808

Rating: 4.9285712 out of 5

Keywords: AT&T Tech Channel, AT&T Archives, History, Television, Technology, Phones, Bell System, 1940s, Transmission, Microwave

Id: 6jYm2SVZIPk

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/NouberNou]

As someone who works in telcom and radio comms this shit is not really "mansplaining", it's actually just good educational film making. I still learn random little things from films like these