Wednesday Open Line


Couch potatoes can trace their roots to this date in 1928 when three experimental television sets were installed in private homes in Schenectady, New York. Not that there was much to see, the test broadcast by General Electric and RCA being of a person smoking, followed by a man playing a ukulele. The first home receivers’ screens were only 1½ inches square; a far cry from today’s theater-sized flat screens. And in another departure from 1928’s lonely three, the number of U.S. households with TV sets now has grown to some 116 million. Of course, many households have multiple sets. Even with heavy foreign competition, U.S. manufacturers ship around $2.7 billion worth of TV and audio receivers annually. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.