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1 The Evolution of a Revolution (Origins–1930s) It appears to me, Miss Leete, “I said,” that if we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and cease to strive for further improvements. —Edward Bellamy, LOOKING BACKWARD, 18881 G eorge Gardner was young, ambitious, and willing to take a chance. He was also cold, tired, and perhaps a little frustrated. The night sky above sparkled with stars and, to him, possibilities . Still, it had been a long, sweaty, dusty day, and he had not yet found that for which he had come searching in the night sky. Gardner and three friends had begun early at the base of Jacks Mountain just north of Lewistown, Pennsylvania. They carried the heavy equipment on their backs, trekking up the rocky slopes of the mountain, through the low brush, sometimes following old trails, sometimes cutting new ones. They walked the ridges and hiked the small summits, stopping occasionally, setting up the mast and antenna, listening carefully, breaking down the equipment, and moving on to try another spot, a little higher up or a little to the west. It was 1951 and George Gardner and his associates were on a treasure hunt of sorts. If they could capture their quarry, George thought he might be able to quit his job in the Sylvania picture tube plant at Seneca Falls, New York, and start his own business down there, in Lewistown. Their Grail that spring night was elusive, but across the country, it was in growing demand and in Lewistown, short supply. It was, in fact, television, or in this particular case, a TV signal. To find it, Gardner had packed an electrical generator, a TV set, and a homemade antenna. The equipment was large and heavy and included a TV set with nine-inch screen housed in a sturdy wooden box. The set was needed because 2 / Chapter 1 there were no readily available testing meters to indicate when a signal had been captured. You simply had to carry the set up the mountain, erect the antenna, fire up the generator, and hope for a picture. You had to look for the signal at night because the picture displayed on the TV screen was too faint to see in the daylight. It took several weekends of driving down from Seneca Falls to find that signal. Gardner eventually came across the right spot on the mountain, just above Yeagertown, and the evening that he did, he and his friends watched Channel 13, WJAC-TV, out of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles to the west. Gardner then began to plan his next step. He would build a small stone shack to house the equipment, run an antenna wire down the mountain, boosting the signal along the way with specially made amplifiers, and hook up a demonstration TV set in town. Then, with a lot of hard work and a little luck, people would begin buying TV sets and signing up for his new service, the community antenna TV service. He would call it Lewistown Antenna Television. George Gardner went on to successfully establish and run community antenna television (CATV) systems in towns throughout Pennsylvania. But that night on the mountain, he was one of a growing handful of entrepreneurs around the country who were simply trying to take advantage of what they saw as an expanding public need that they could turn into a modest business . In similar settings around Pennsylvania—in the coal-rich mountains of the East and the oil-soaked hills of the Northwest—and in the river valleys of Oregon and Washington; the hollows of Arkansas, Missouri, and West Virginia; in small towns literally from Maine to California, men and women were reaching out for television, setting up receiving sites often before there was even a signal to receive. George Koval in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, wanted to bring in a signal for his bedridden father. Abe Harter in Franklin, Pennsylvania, was tired of climbing cold, slippery roofs to install TV antennas . Ed Parsons in Astoria, Oregon, wanted to make his wife happy, and she wanted television. Jim Davidson in Tuckerman, Arkansas, already had an antenna up and lines strung when WMCT in Memphis, Tennessee, officially went on the air, just because he wanted television. Davidson and many like...

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