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Helen Keller will not work in Schenectady
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A curious item from almost exactly 101 years ago, in the Detroit Free Press: BLIND GIRL WILL NOT WORK IN SCHENECTADY John Macy, With Whose Family She Lives, Resigns His Position With Mayor. “Schenectady, N.Y., Sept. 21 – John Macy, executive secretary to Mayor George R. Lunn, has tendered his resignation, to take effect…
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$10 down and $2 a week
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As we mentioned yesterday, in 1927 the suburbs of Albany were starting to boom. Veeder Realty was pushing two new developments, Birchwood Park and Hampton Manor. Birchwood Park was between stops 18 and 19 on the Schenectady Railway Company trolley line to Albany, somewhere in Colonie. As far as we can tell, Birchwood Park…
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Elmer Weatherwax, distributor of novelties
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So in 1958, my grandfather’s short-lived drive-in restaurant in Aqueduct apparently featured a jukebox, as just about any respectable diner of the day would have have done. He apparently rented a Seeburg from Elmer H. Weatherwax, wholesale distributor of novelties, coin operated amusement equipment, Thorens audio equipment, and plush toys (indicated on the back…
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Audio transmitted by light
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Light Beam Casts Chat 24 Miles in Adirondacks Broun, at Schenectady, Interviews Distant Scientist Schenectady, Nov. 22, 1932 — A group of scientists at Schenectady tonight talked with another group at Lake Desolation, twenty-four miles away, over a light beam projected across the lower Adirondack Mountains. It was the longest narrow-casting experiment on record.…
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The Electric Eye
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The little problems of perfecting radio and creating trans-continental television signals weren’t the only things that General Electric’s Schenectady scientists were working on in the late 1920s. In 1929, they announced a breakthrough called the “electric eye,” which was intended to ensure classrooms were properly lit. “The teacher will no longer be required to…
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The first trans-continental face
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A suprisingly short time after the first televised play was broadcast from one end of Schenectady to not quite the other, General Electric was able to report success in transcontinental television transmission. On February 5, 1929, the Associated Press reported that: “On the basis of reports received from Los Angeles, radio experts of the…
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The First Television Play
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Buried in the details of the first longish-distance transmission of television into a home (albeit the home of its creator, Dr. E.F.W. Alexanderson) is the little matter of how the sound was transmitted. The earliest experiments in transmitting motion pictures were focused on the pictures; since we already knew how to send sound over…
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The Pallophotophone
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Yesterday, Hoxsie shared a link about the re-creation of the pallophotophone, also known as the RCA photophone, which was developed in Schenectady (you may have heard of it – it’s the Electric City!) in 1927 to provide a soundtrack on moving picture film. But you didn’t click on that link, did you? Well, now…
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Talking Film!
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It always seems odd to think that when scientists were working on sending talking pictures by radio, having talking pictures in the theater was still a brand new thing. But in 1927, the problem of sound on film was still being worked out, and General Electric in Schenectady was on it. An article in…
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Talking Pictures Sent by Radio!
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Since we were just speaking of Ernest Alexanderson’s contributions to radio and television, here’s the story of that first three-mile transmission, as published in the Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 14, 1928: “Radio transmission of both sight and sound is near realization. Radio waves have carried both audition [sic] and vision into homes here to…