Radio: Still a Toddler

From the time it was conceived, television was a long time aborning. Soon it learned to talk, but instead of standing up and walking like its big brother, radio, it has crawled along without getting very far. Last week, still rattling in its playpen, television took a few tentative steps.

For the first time, an event in Washington was televised over a brand-new 225-mile coaxial cable to New York.* In Manhattan’s RCA building, New Yorkers saw General Dwight Eisenhower place a wreath at the base of the Lincoln statue, heard others make brief speeches. But comparing the image with newsphotos of the same event, they found it as blurred as an early Chaplin movie. Proud as television was, it admitted that the Washington-New York hookup would not be in regular use for six months, that a coast-to-coast network was still years away.

Two days later, however, representatives of five radio manufacturers told the American Television Society in New York that they would have black-and-white television receivers on the market by summer, in a $150-$450 price range. Noticeably quiet was Zenith Radio, one of the world’s largest set manufacturers. At week’s end, Zenith’s President Eugene McDonald explained why. After seeing the remarkable CBS high-frequency color television demonstration (TIME, Feb.11), he said:

“I think that there is no question that the great future for television lies in . . . color. It is our intention to produce color television receivers . . . rather than black and white. I feel that it is unfair to sell any [black-and-white] receivers . . . without putting the public on notice that [they] . . . will be obsolete.”

* Previous record: last year’s Army-Navy game from Philadelphia to New York (90 miles).