TV - YESTERDAY
There was some debate years ago as to the eventual shape of TV pictures? Many contended they should be round since the tubes generating those images was oval shaped at that time.
The first television pictures I saw were round and when the rectangular pictures came along the round-ites complained about the bottom, top and both sides of the picture were being chopped off. They felt cheated, but not for long because when more manufacturers changed to rectanglar types, they went along with the change. I sometimes felt like I was looking down an open manhole.
The smaller screens were called, logically enough, "sardine " can screens. Early TV studio construction had a number of them. The first one I recall seeing were installed in business locations, used just as radio had been used to attract customers into the store. TV set proved to be a real boon to one second-rate restaurant on a hill outside of our town. I remember how two of the men's civic clubs shifted their dinner meetings from downtown to the place where they could watch TV.
ZENITH was oval-minded and kept them longer than the others, as I remember, and RCA pushed the "square picture tube". I remember one little old lady calling our radio station to inquire if she could buy a round one or a square one. She would accept our word as final, adding that years before, we had helped her choose her first radio. One of our enginners had gone to her home to install it. "He tuned it to your station," she told us,"and it's been right there ever since. I never had it changed." She wanted to make sure we could do the same favor when she got her TV set.
Another incident which comes to mind when I rethink the early days of TV, had to do with the actual construction of "ours"when we got a license to build. The tower was six miles or so from the studios-to-be and had to be more or less self-contained and self-sustaining year round. A narrow road that was little better than a trail and it curved and twisted up totghe site on far side of the mountain. The crew hired to dig a water well had it pre-arranged that they would not work one week during hunting Season. They had to go the the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennesee to hunt bear. They came back bearing no bear and when they went up on the mountain Monday morning all their fine, new leather straps and belts on their drilling rig had been gnawed to nothingness by the local bear population.
Bear stories were plentiful when talking about that transmitter site. One night an engineer was sleepily seated at his conole hovering over the program in progress when a tremendous clatter jolted him awake and ready for sure disaster. The cooling system for the transmitter site consisted of a large fan mounted in the wall of the metal building. It was covered on both sides with heavy-duty ratwire screen material to keep out birds, leaves, and small critters. That night a curious bear had reared up on his hind feet to peer into the room to see what was going on in there. He rested his two front paws on the ratwire screen, which, in turn, was pressed against the whirring blades. That made a special noise, you might guess. The engineer was awakened from his half-sleep and was amazed as the bear simply stood there, as if wondering how in the world the two-legged things stand it in there with all that noise! After a time, he tired and withdrew his paws from the screen and went off into the woods, no doubt, to recount his views as to what those strange man-creatures were up to now up there on the mountain top.
A.L.M. November 7, 2003 [c465wds]
