CHICAGO MECHANICAL TV.
Crowds of Chicagoans gathered outside a Sears store window. Behind the glass, a mechanical TV set displayed the first pictures from Chicago station W9XAP. The station inaugurated its television service on the evening of August 27, 1930. W9XAP's mechanical television equipment painted grayscale pictures with a mere 45 lines. On the tiny screens of 1930, this amount of detail could effectively portray closeups. In fact, viewers could easily recognize performers' faces. People compared the pictures to newspaper photos.PUBLISHED SCHEDULE. After about a year, W9XAP broadcast according to a regular schedule. Programming included news and entertainment fare, such as live music, drama and comedy shows. From the start, program listings appeared in the Chicago Daily News. AM radio station WMAQ provided coordinated television sound as well as performers.
W9XAP STUDIOS occupied the 25th floor of the landmark Chicago Daily News building. Today, we know this location as 2 North Riverside Plaza. The famous, Art Deco building still stands on Chicago’s northwest side, blocks from Chicago’s Loop. Chicagoans are most familiar with this edifice. A bridge over Canal Street connects it to the Metra train terminal. Commuters pass through the building and exit where Madison Street crosses the Chicago River.
SISTER STATION. W9XAP / WMAQ had a Chicago sister station in W9XAO / WIBO. WIBO provided W9XAO's sound. A building on Chicago's north side housed W9XAO’s studios. Unfortunately, W9XAO's 6312 North Broadway home is gone today. It once stood a few doors south of Devon Avenue, near the Loyola University campus.
SANABRIA. Both W9XAP and W9XAO owe their technology to Chicago television inventor Ulises A. Sanabria. Sanabria began public, experimental telecasts on June 19, 1928. Chicago AM radio station WCFL sent the pictures aloft. The WCFL television studio occupied a spot way out at the end of Navy Pier. Sanabria's historic program probably also rode high into the night sky and bounced off the ionosphere: WCFL's experimental shortwave outlet W9XAA may have simulcast the show. The signal may have landed hundreds of miles away, as shortwave telecasts often did. In those days, ham radio operators built their own television receivers. Some may have received the Navy Pier signal.
Testing a Sanabria picturephone at American
Television Institute, 1938.
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WHIZ KID. Sanabria, an Oak Park native, conceived of television as a high school freshman. Sanabria's television epiphany occurred about the same time as Philo Farnsworth's. Some four years later, Sanabria demonstrated his working television system. Bill Parker was the engineer who built much of W9XAO and W9XAP. Bill's reminiscences trace Sanabria's television invention back to October, 1925. WESTERN TELEVISION. Sanabria became the technology lead behind Clement Wade's Western Television Corporation. Western Television acquired Echophone, and manufactured mechanical television sets at Echophone's Waukegan, Illinois plant. Unfortunately, the Great Depression made these elegant sets a luxury purchase. Precious few could afford a Western set. Fortunately, many stores and bars bought sets, and entertained customers with the early TV programs. |
NBC BOUGHT W9XAP from the Chicago Daily News. The station established NBC television in Chicago. For this reason, we might think of W9XAP as the ancestor of WMAQ TV. Yet with NBC's commitment to electronic television, the mechanical W9XAP had no future. It faded forever to black in March, 1933. Two years earlier, NBC had purchased and shut down another Chicago mechanical station, W9XR. W9XR had been the first television outlet of WENR, a predecessor of today's WLS-TV. After W9XAP's shutdown, the W9XAO and WIBO venture briefly became Chicago's only television broadcaster. Yet in May 1933, the FCC withdrew WIBO's license. Struck dumb, W9XAO ceased operation.
WESTERN TELEVISION'S FATE. Some of W9XAP's other sister stations fared much better. W9XD, the Milwaukee Journal station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, remained on the air until 1938. After a conversion to electronic equipment, it became WTMJ. Kansas City, Missouri station W9XAL converted from shortwave to VHF operation in 1935. A few years later, the station installed electronic television equipment. Educational TV pioneer W9XK, operated by University of Iowa, continued telecasts until 1939. Still, with only a dwindling market for Western's receivers, Clem Wade sold Echophone to Hallicrafters. Lloyd Garner, Armando Conto and Bill Parker then formed Western Television Research. This outfit built displays for Chicago's Century of Progress exhibition. Separately, U.A. Sanabria and Mel Hayes displayed a theatrical projection system based on mechanical TV.
OTHER SANABRIA COMPANIES. Later, Sanabria founded American Television Institute (ATI) and DeForest-Sanabria Television. American Television opened in 1934. For some 40 years, the school educated television technicians. During World War II, American trained Signal Corps personnel. The school also manufactured radar CRTs for the government. Throughout the 1950s, DeForest-Sanabria manufactured electronic TV sets and sold them to consumers. In the 1970s, Coyne Institute purchased ATI. Afterward, the merged school became Coyne American Institute.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO TV STANDARDS. The clarity of W9XAP's telecasts proved the superiority of Sanabria's patented, interlaced scanning method. This method eliminated the flicker produced by competing systems from John Baird and Charles Jenkins. W9XAP's picture also provided twice the detail of Baird's pictures. Eventually, 24 stations adopted Sanabria's Western Television technology. Today, all major world television systems employ interlaced scanning. Sanabria's projection television and picturephone demonstrations toured this country and Canada. Later, Sanabria and his brother John served on the National Television System Committee (NTSC). This committee determined the present U.S. television standards. U.A. Sanabria died in 1969. He was 62.
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Ulises A. Sanabria
1938 logo for Sanabria's American Television Institute