Radio: Television Luck

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Under the hot glare of lights in the RCA-NBC television studios in Manhattan, Heavyweight Boxers Lou Nova and Patsy Perroni one afternoon in April stepped through an exhibition bout that was mostly light lefts and sweat. When it was over, Referee Arthur Donovan eyed the array of television gadgetry around him, then turned and faced the television camera. Said he, with a sweep of his arm: "I wish dis t'ing luck."

Last week RCA-NBC television station W2XBS, after a not-too-impressive month of scheduled telecasting of variety, short plays, films and sport to the 900-odd sets in its 50-mile radius, announced that Referee Donovan's kindly wash was coming true. Its engineers had proved, in telecasting the six-day bike race at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, that television could be transmitted over ordinary telephone wire. Engineers had considered coaxial cable, a copper wire threaded through separators inside a copper tube, the only practical ground conductor for the complex television signal. Since coaxial cable costs $5,000 a mile, prospects of a television network had seemed dim and distant.

The bike-race telecast was transmitted via a telephone exchange near the Garden, over a regular telephone connection to the studios in Radio City. Not quite as simple as telephoning the grocer, telephoning television requires an amplifier to boost the signal along, and a device called an equalizer to keep the multiple frequencies in step at the receiving point in the studio. Already being experimented with in England, telephone wire's aptitude for television led some optimistic engineers last week to envision the possibility for a U. S. television network within a year.