April 20, 1939 –
During the 1939 World’s Fair, David Sarnoff, president of RCA, unveiled the first commercial publicly accessible television broadcast, on this date. In Flushing NY, Sarnoff proclaimed “Now we add sight to sound“. During the opening ceremonies of the fair on April 30th, FDR became the first president to ever be televised.
The speech is broadcast by RCA subsidiary NBC to two hundred televisions across the state of New York. It might have had a larger audience had more TV sets been available – at this time, there were only a few hundreds TV set in America. By the end of the year, a thousand receivers will be sold in the U.S. Screens were initially only about five inches across.
The Haus of Dcaligari 