Early Birds

Last week television took one step forward and two back. In New York City, Manhattan's Bloomingdale Bros. Inc. and Brooklyn's Abraham & Straus, Inc. advertised American Television Corp. receiving sets. Davega City Radio Inc., retail specialists in radios and sporting goods, jumped on the band wagon, making a deal with Allen B. DuMont Laborato^ ries, Inc. for exhibition and sale of DuMont sets. Demonstrations were planned to pick up the NBC experimental evening telecast from the Empire State tower. What often happens to best-laid plans began to happen fast.

Unhappiest experience occurred to Abraham & Straus, where preliminary tests brought a belated discovery that NBC is broadcasting its pictures only northward of the Empire State Building. So Brooklynites were given admission cards to an A. T. C. demonstration in Manhattan. There 500 guests crowded into a small room to try to watch an hour show of film and live talent on a bright green screen, five inches square. Many strained their eyes so badly that they left the show seeing pink spots.

At Bloomingdale's a crowd of more than 500 people herded into line caught brief glimpses of television. Bored and restless, they departed after viewing just one set. The sets may be ordered with delivery expected in August or later.

At week's end television-minded New Yorkers were more than ever convinced that in the U. S., television is not yet ready to come out of the egg. Most responsible radio men feared that premature cracking might spoil the bird.

American Television Corp. (formerly Communicating Systems, Inc.) manufactures two receiving sets (sin. screen for $150, 5-in. for $250). Both sets receive only pictures. Sound must be received on the shortest wave band of a five-band radio set, or sound reception can be added to an A. T. C. set for $15 to $17 additional cost. A. T. C.'s president, founder and owner is former Theatre-Electrician Samuel (''Money") Saltzman.

DuMont receivers show a larger picture, are more expensive ($650 for a 10 by 8-in. screen, $395 for 8 1/4 by 6 1/2 in.). They receive both pictures and sound.

Neither set manufacturer has sets available except to order, neither can guarantee purchasers any regular schedule of telecasts for their receivers, since the only telecasting being done in the New York area is the strictly experimental work of RCA-NBC.

Holders of commercial broadcasting licenses are required by the FCC to stay on the air at least two-thirds of their broadcasting day. Television wave lengths allotted on experimental licenses may be idle during long periods. On May 10, before an invited audience, A. T. C. sets had their first public workout. NBC, whose parent company will presumably be making and selling receiving sets as soon as it feels it is commercially practicable, has since added to its telecast this screened announcement: These television transmissions are experimental and should not be regarded as establishing a Television Service. Any revision of the tentative standards of transmission or changes to apparatus will necessitate discontinuance of schedules. Last week NBC piled on an additional spoken announcement to emphasize the point, adding the information that the series formerly announced to run through the summer would be dropped the second week in June with no definite date set for resumption. CBS, with delivery not yet taken on its transmitter, is even less definite about its television testing plans.

Even should the public find A. T. C. and DuMont reception to their liking, three engineering obstacles stand in the way of regular U. S. television service, 1) Present television standards are tentative. Improvements might bring standards that would make current equipment obsolete. 2) The entire basic mechanism of television might be changed. 3) Either the effective range of television's video wave must be lengthened beyond the present so-mile radius or the band of wave lengths needed for a television station must be reduced radically to solve the problem of wavelength congestion.

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