MODERN MECHANIX 1954 (notice Gov. Milton J. Shapp connection) Driving through Montpelier, Vt. or Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and you’ll get the feeling that something is missing. Then suddenly you’ll realize that neither Montpelier nor Williamsport bristles with an array of television aerials as do most of our country’s cities and towns. But don’t extend sympathy to the residents of these two cities because you think they are missing Godfrey, Berle, Buttons and Lucy. They have their full share of television sets—with reception probably better than your own. In more than 250 other towns and cities, TV is being brought down the mountains and into living rooms by community antenna systems that pick up signals on a master antenna and relay them by cable to individual sets. Once blacked out from television pleasure by terrain or distance, these communities now are a part of modem living because of another dramatic example of American ingenuity. Most community systems offer three channels, if that many can get their signals to the antennas. Some systems get the same channel from two different stations—as in Williamsport where channel three comes in from Binghamton, N.Y. and Philadelphia. When both of these are transmitting the same network program, Williamsport - Jerrold switches from the Binghamton-trained antenna to one that picks up Reading, Pa., a CBS outlet. Much has happened to community TV since it got its start at Lansford, Pa. in the fall of 1950. There are now a good 200,000 sets hooked up to community systems. Industrial leader Milton J. Shapp, President of Jerrold Electronics, the Philadelphia concern which has supplied equipment to more than 80 per cent of the systems in operation, predicts that there will be 350,000 community TV subscribers by mid-’54, 1,000,000 in 1955 and from 10 to 15 million by 1960.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 08:26:22 +0000
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