TV Image Received In Hopedale
HOPEDALE, June 1 [1948] Atmospheric conditions are credited with the clear and distinct television reception on a recent evening when four stations, three from New York and one from Philadelphia, were brought into the home of Clarence E. Chilson, Freedom Street.
Mr. Chilson, well-known radio technician explained the unusual situation as due to temperature inversion, which to the average person means cool ground and warm air overhead.
If the inclement wet and humid weather was good for something it is news to everyone and should help to raise the morale.
Mr. Chilson has been studying television in his spare time for several years. He was the first person in this area to receive a TV image. His home-constructed set brought in a station in 1941.
The present set is another that he constructed himself. On Friday night he and several friends were able to witness a boxing match from Madison Square Garden for nearly two hours, without interruption. In addition, Mr. Chilson receives the test patterns daily, now being sent out from the Boston station. The Milford Daily News
The newspaper article didn’t mention one little problem the viewers had while watching the boxing match. The yoke, a part that went around the picture tube, had been put onwrong and the picture was upside down.
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In 1948 tv started coming in. The Joe Louis vs Jersey Joe Walcott fight was the first one televised. My father set up a TV in the window of his Main Street store and I hooked up a speaker on a long wire and brought it out the door so the people on the street could hear it. Main Street was packed with people overflowing onto the roadway all excited watching the fight on a little 12″ tv. After this everyone had to have a tv and my father became theTV King of Milford. He had two trucks running all week delivering tv sets to his customers. Along with the delivery, antennas had to be mounted on the chimneys which for a time became a local status symbol, more-so than the car you drove. Carl Glatky, August 2014
When I sent an early version of this page to Carl, he replied with this: “My father’s store was Empire Jewelers located in the Ring Block next to what was the Quality Lunch…the Coniaris’s restaurant. Interesting that you found Trask and Pironti whose names I of course recognize but cannot remember their shops.” See ads by Empire, Trask and Pironti further down this page.
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One of the dramatic changes in life in the early fifties was the introduction of television. It wasn’t a case of everyone rushing out to buy one when WBZ-TV first started broadcasting. It was some years before they could be found in most homes. The first one in our area was at the Spencers’ house on Oak Street. They were very generous about letting kids go in to watch. It wasn’t unusual at all for the number of kids in their living room to be more than a dozen. We’d end our kickball game across the street to go in to see the late afternoon cartoons, western serials, Howdy Doody, Don Winslow of the Navy or Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Then we’d go home for supper (as it was called then) and often return for more tv in the evening. After a year or two the Halls at the corner of Oak and Northrop got a set and that took some of the burden off of the Spencers. Halfway down Freedom Street, the Chilsons, who had the first tv in the area, were also hosting crowds of kids, and I’m sure other neighborhoods had something similar going on. I’d hint to my parents that getting a tv would be a good idea, but it seemed like a long time before we got one. It was probably about 1952 or 1953 when we did. It was a typical tv of those days, with a twelve-inch screen, and, of course, black and white; color still being a bit in the future. So radio was our most common form of home entertainment for some years. Radio was a lot different then, with comedies, westerns, detective shows, soap operas, etc., and I still enjoyed listening to Jack Benny, Edgar Bergan and Charlie McCarthy and several others, for years after we got the tv. Dan Malloy, December 2007
Below – Early tv scenes, including some from Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and Don Winslow of the Navy.
