April 7, 1927…Two Firsts In Long Distance TV Transmission

On this day in 1927, then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover’s image was transmitted via AT&T from Washington to New York using a mechanical system developed by Herbert E. Ives. This is the first time television was sent on long distance wires.

In the photo above, Dr. Ives is on the far right, watching AT&T president Walter Gifford, in New York, speak with Secretary Hoover in Washington. The conversation, in which both men could see and hear each other, was a two way television/telephone hookup, which is also a first.

1930: Television Gives Radio Eyes and Ears

At the link above, is a story and pictures, from an August 1930 issue of “Modern Mechanics” that discusses this, and some other interesting developments from 1929 television tests, like color.

Although this is the first time a television signal was sent over long distance lines, it was not the first time pictures were sent on a telephone line. That occurred Oct. 3, 1922, as Charles Francis Jenkins, transmitted “shadowgraph” images from his studio in a Washington DC suburb to the main post office there, via telephone wires, some five miles away. -Bobby Ellerbee

Source