the life of Philo T Farnsworth - Early Television Foundation

TELEVISION SHOW AT FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 143
camera at the laboratory from time to time, and there had been
one or two demonstrations to the press, but aside from that
their experience
was nil.
They
therefore had to make up the
program as they went along.
An improvised studio was set up with the television camera
unit on the roof of the Institute. Wire leads were brought into
a small lecture-room auditorium with banked seats. The room
accommodated about two hundred people. Because of the
seating arrangements, all had a good
screen.
The receiving set built by
view of the television
Farnsworth for demonstration
purposes was an astonishingly large unit. The received image
was approximately 12x13
inches. To produce this image a
cathode-ray tube fully as large as a ten-gallon water jug had to
be used.
The opening of the show was heralded with considerable
newspaper publicity. The mayor of the city and representatives
of the Institute gave short televised talks. The demonstration
was a success from the start. The programs, of fifteen minutes'
duration, were carried on from ten o'clock in the morning until
closing
time in the afternoon. The entertainment consisted
largely of such vaudeville talent as could be found. A ventriloquist
was one of the most successful acts. Stoeffen and Shields,
the tennis stars, gave interesting demonstrations of tennis technique.
Had there been a tennis court on the Institute roof, a
televised tennis game would have been well handled by the
camera. When there was nothing else to show, the camera was
pointed at the traffic in the street below and the statue of William
Penn on top of the City Hall several blocks distant.
It was during the testing out of the equipment for the Franklin
Institute demonstration that, quite by chance, the moon
was televised. The engineers had worked late on a midsummer