# What's The Earliest Surviving American Television Broadcast? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 16, 2004, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841 "2004-01-16T21:15:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/1 "2004-01-16T21:15:30Z")
I am aware of the fact that the earliest surviving TV images are from Baird’s experiments in the late 1920’s, and that the earliest surviving TV broadcasts are a few done in Britain in the early-to-mid 1930’s. My question to you is this: What are the earliest surviving TV images from the US? ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/2 "2004-01-16T21:35:17Z")
Note: If this question has been asked earlier, I’m sorry to repeat it, but I didn’t find any thread of this nature throught the search mechanism. ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/3 "2004-01-16T21:45:20Z")
This link might provide that which you seek. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/4 "2004-01-16T22:37:00Z")
While your link was interesting, it dealt with hardware, for the most part, and not with programing. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/5 "2004-01-17T02:11:00Z")
Are you looking for still photographs, film footage, or entire programs? Some of the earliest [still photographs](http://members.tripod.com/~FrameMaster/) of television imgeas. Some of those were technically not over the air “broadcasts”, but in-house experiments and demonstrations. You can find brief glimpses of television broadcasts in newsreels of the 1930s and 1940s. Kinescope films (films made off television monitors, called kinescopes) began in earnest in 1948. Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications has kinescope films of NBC News’ coverage of the 1948 Republican National Convention. The earliest complete American television program recordings that I know of are also from 1948. A little background to help in understanding: Mechanically scanned television: 1926-1938. Electronically scanned television: 1933-present. First regularly scheduled electronically scanned television broadcasts in the U.S.: April 1939. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/6 "2004-01-17T02:33:35Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Are you looking for still photographs, film footage, or entire programs? Film footage. The completeness doesn’t matter, but I’d like to see it as it looked over-the-air. (No newsreel footage, of which I have seen some). If at all possible, I hope that there’s some left from before WWII. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/7 "2004-01-17T02:35:46Z")
Oh, and it can be mechanical or electronic. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/8 "2004-01-17T03:31:59Z")
To add to **Walloon’s** suggestion of the [Museum of Broadcast Communication in Chicago](http://www.museum.tv/archives/index.shtml), you can search their archive and I believe they have tv “recordings” from 1939. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/9 "2004-01-17T06:18:32Z")
Well, I did search the catalog of the Museum of Broadcast Communication. And the earliest on-air recordings they have appear to be from 1948. They do have television documentaries _about_ World War II and earlier, but the documentaries themselves were made years later. The earliest program recordings in the NBC Television Collection at the Library of Congress are from 1948. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/10 "2004-01-17T06:27:47Z")
Once again I searched too fast. Walloon is correct, as usual. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/11 "2004-01-17T08:53:56Z")
**Governor Quinn** , those newsreels about television that you don’t want? They’re [here](http://www.earlytelevision.org/links.htm), about 3/5 down the page, under “On Line Films and Videos”. The 1937 newsreel is even in color! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/12 "2004-01-17T18:05:26Z")
[Here’s](http://www.midcoast.com/~lizmcl/links.html) a page of useful broadcasting history links. For those interested, [this page](http://www.tvdawn.com/recordng.htm) has the earliest restored television broadcasts of all, the 1927 Baird disks. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/13 "2004-01-17T18:27:37Z")
1934: [The first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system.](http://broadcastpioneers.50g.com/farnsworth.html) [Text](http://broadcastpioneers.50megs.com/farnsworth.html). ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2004, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/14 "2004-04-04T01:57:00Z")
I’m resurrecting this thread to report that New York’s [Museum of Television and Radio](http://www.mtr.org/) has a five-minute, silent kinescope film of a live broadcast of the play _The Streets of New York_, by Dion Boucicault, as produced by NBC in 1939 and shown on their New York City television station, [W2XBS](http://www.wnbc.com/wnbc/1169359/detail.html). Directed by [Anthony Mann](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0542649/), the lead actors include [George Coulouris](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0183459/), best remembered as Mr. Thatcher in _Citizen Kane_. It is the earliest filmed record of an American television drama. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2004, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-surviving-american-television-broadcast/224841/15 "2004-04-04T15:13:55Z")
Thanks, **Walloon**.