The First All Electronic Television Broadcast by RCA & NBC, July 7, 1936 

The Television History Part 

The video here was shot by a Pathe film camera on July 7, 1936…the day that RCA’s all electronic experimental television system was first demonstrated to an audience of people other than RCA and NBC engineers. Although the 225 invited guests this day were licencees of RCA and radio station owners that were NBC affiliates, they were still people that had only heard about this new thing called television. A news report described it this way: At David Sarnoff’s request for an experiment of RCA’s electronic television technology, NBC’s first attempt at actual programming is a 30-minute variety show featuring speeches, dance ensembles, monologues, vocal numbers, and film clips.

Just one week earlier, on June 29, 1936, television broadcast station W2XF began operation in the Empire State Building on an experimental basis for public reception. Although the signal was broadcast to the public, they had no way to receive the pictures since only RCA engineers had all of the 80 plus receivers in their homes and offices. 

Further down, I’ll go into detail of who we are seeing and hearing in the film of that first day of broadcasting from Studio 3H, but first a little on what they actually saw when they looked at the screens of the 80 or so receivers in the 67th floor viewing room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. 

NBC chief engineer O.B, Hansen and his men were having serious noise problems in the amplifiers until just a few hours before the big July 7 broadcast, when they managed to solve the problem. Since white phosphorus was not yet available to use in picture tubes, these guests were seeing green phosphorus images on 9 inch round tubes with 5 by 7 inch masks…too small for most, but that’s what they had. The images were 343 line resolution “high definition” pictures on sets with 33 tubes and 14 controls. 

Notice the announcer identifies the station as W2XF and not W2XBS. RCA’s earliest experimental TV transmitter was located at the Van Cortlandt Park research facility and in 1928 was designated W2XBS. The transmitter and the W2XBS designation moved to the New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street in 1930. The first tests on that transmitter from both locations featured the famous Felix The Cat image broadcast via the Nipkow Disc mechanical system. 

The W2XF license belonged to Western Electric and Bell Labs, which early on became part of RCA. When the Empire State Building transmission facility came online 1935, that set of call letters was used, but within a couple of years, the calls went back to W2XBS and eventually became WNBT and is now WNBC.  Many thanks to Frank Decker for his research into this area which you can see more of at http://w2xf.com/

What We See Here 

As we get our first ever recorded look inside television’s very first all electronic studio, we see a single RCA Iconoscope camera most likely manned by NBC’s first cameraman, Albert W. Protzman. His utility man (kneeling) may be the great Heino Ripp. 

On the set, on the right of course is RCA president David Sarnoff and on the left is General James Harbord who was then chairman of the board of RCA and remained so until 1947. 

The next man to sit with Mr. Sarnoff is NBC president Lennox Lohr and the conversation turns to the new coaxial cable from 30 Rockefeller Plaza to the new transmitter atop the Empire State Building and to the viewing party about to start on the 67th floor. 

Here we cut to film shot atop 30 Rock that same day with the new antenna in the background on the Empire State Building. As these men are introduced, remember that Mr. Sarnoff has invited the radio station owners, who are all NBC affiliates, because he wants them to immediately begin their applications for television licences for their city…to get ahead of the crowd. 

(FYI, aside from the portion mentioned above, I have edited most of the other Pathe film inserts out of this to concentrate on the historic live performance in the studio. Television’s First!)

When the fashion show starts, you will hear the voice of television’s first ever female announcer…Betty Goodwin. Betty had been a newspaper reporter in Seattle, but moved to NYC in the depths of the depression to take a job in radio with NBC. After working as a production assistant at the 1936 political conventions, she was reassigned to kind of the same position in the new Television Department, which at the time was very hush-hush.

When RCA set up the experimental Studio 3H in 1935, they had kept it under wraps as competition for tech secrets was fierce. By July of ’36, RCA had decided to go public with their project, and on July 7, their first public broadcast was made from this studio for a group of radio station owners, which were NBC affiliates, watching on the 62nd floor of 30 Rock. 

Next, we see the first people of color ever to appear on television. Eddie Green, a popular stage, radio and screen comedian and George Wiltshire, a well known straight man to many entertainers. 

Next up, a trio of the Radio City Music Hall dancers, The Rockettes, perform a specially choreographed tap dance number. 

They are followed by Broadway star Henry Hull recreating a scene from “Tobacco Road”. Hull’s greatest success as an actor was on Broadway in his portrayal of Erskine Caldwell’s Jeeter in “Tobacco Road,” which still ranks among the longest-running dramas in the Great White Way’s history, opening on December 4, 1933, and closing on May 31, 1941, after 3,182 total performances.

The singing girls that follow Hull were southern belles from Georgia, taught to harmonize by their mother. Their father, a wealthy cotton broker, loved to accompany them on piano. In the early 1930s, they moved to New York’s Park Avenue and became involved in New York, Long Island and Newport Society. A search was on at the time to find female trios to compete with the popular Boswell Sisters. The Pickenses were spotted at a party and quickly landed both a radio deal and a recording contract.

Their radio shows ran from 1932 through 1936 and they appeared in several films and in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936.

Finishing off the broadcast is Ed Wynn, who seems slightly befuddled with the whole thing as there is no audience to play to. He is accompanied by the famous NBC radio announcer Graham McNamee. 

Winn was an accomplished vaudeville comedian before he became a fixture on NBC radio when he hosted the popular radio show The Fire Chief, heard in North America on Tuesday nights, sponsored by Texaco gasoline. Like many former vaudeville performers who turned to radio in the same decade, the stage-trained Wynn insisted on playing for a live studio audience, doing each program as an actual stage show, using visual bits to augment his written material, and in his case, wearing a colorful costume with a red fireman’s helmet. He usually bounced his gags off announcer/straight man Graham McNamee; Wynn’s customary opening, “Tonight, Graham, the show’s gonna be different,” became one of the most familiar tag-lines of its time; a sample joke: “Graham, my uncle just bought a new second-handed car… he calls it Baby! I don’t know, it won’t go anyplace without a rattle!”