94 years ago this week, Boston’s second television station aired the first commercial in American history, and they did it almost two decades before Boston’s first television station went on the air. In this episode, we use this blunder and a confusing technological landscape to examine Boston’s pivotal role in the early development of American television. This will be a story of innovation, some of the earliest experimental television broadcasters in the country, and the parallel development of mechanical and electronic television technologies.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/315/

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Boston Airs America’s First Television Commercial

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• New York Times obit for IJ Fox


• New Yorker IJ Fox replaces Lucky Strike as largest skywriting customer


• The Boston Globe, Sep 05, 1929: Boston getting its first TV station


• Greenfield Daily Recorder, Apr 05, 1929: W1XAY upgrading to 5000 watts


• The Boston Globe, Mar 14, 1929: Lexington getting TV


• The Berkshire Eagle, Dec 28, 1928: W1XAY goes on the air


• The Boston Globe, Oct 31, 1928: Experimental broadcast from W1XAY


• “Seeing by Electricity,” Scientific American, June 5, 1880


• Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing


• “70 Years Of WBZ: Race To Get First Broadcast On Air In 1948”


• “The Inventor Who Had Exactly the Wrong Name,” Suzanne Fischer, The Henry Ford


• Baird mechanical television viewer, Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments