RCA television at the World's Fair

The World of Tomorrow

The 1939 fair filled 1,202 acres of Flushing Meadows in Queens under the motto "The World of Tomorrow" and the slogan "Dawn of a New Day". Some 62 countries, 35 US states and territories, and more than 1,400 organizations and companies took part, and slightly over 45 million people attended across two seasons. Expo planners promised a look at the future, and the electronics displays delivered on that promise. Products on show included RCA televisions alongside novelties such as nylon, cellophane and Lucite.

Television arrived dressed as the ultimate consumer future. RCA and NBC had agreed to host television demonstrations at the fair, and the company set up a "television laboratory" among its exhibits. The fairground was not just a showcase for the gear itself. It was also the launchpad for a broadcasting service that would reach the surrounding city.

A television laboratory in Queens

Inside the RCA exhibit, visitors watched live pictures on receiver screens. The sets on display carried a rotating schedule of programming: the first televised Major League Baseball game, a program relayed from WRGB-TV in Schenectady, New York, and performances of the play "When We Are Married". For fairgoers who had never seen moving images travel over the air, the effect was immediate and theatrical. Television stopped being a laboratory curiosity the moment a crowd could line up and watch a screen.

These were all-electronic receivers, a point RCA was keen to make. The company had spent years and millions of dollars pushing an all-electronic black-and-white system, moving past the spinning mechanical disks that earlier experimenters used. Demonstrating that system publicly, in front of a paying crowd, was a deliberate act of confidence.

Broadcasting on day one

The fair opened on April 30, 1939, and that same day NBC began regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York. The first scheduled program was a broadcast of the opening of the fair itself, transmitted over station W2XBS on channel 1 from a new transmitter at the top of the Empire State Building. W2XBS would grow into NBC's flagship station, WNBC.

RCA had been pushing its technical standard for years. In 1937 it raised the picture definition to 441 lines and executives petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to approve that as the broadcast standard. By June 1939, regularly scheduled 441-line electronic broadcasts were reaching both New York and Los Angeles. Yet the FCC had not yet authorized the start of commercial television, because the technical standards were still unsettled. Concerned that RCA's broadcasts were an attempt to flood the market with sets and lock in its own technology, the commission stepped in to limit the service.

Sets to sell

Even without formal commercial authorization, RCA began selling its first television set models, including the TRK-5 and TRK-9, in various New York stores. The receiver cabinets were designed by John Vassos, who shaped the look of RCA radio and television for decades. For the fair he created a novel TV cabinet in transparent Lucite, alongside the company's first mass-produced television sets: the TRK-12, TRK-9 and TRK-5, sold at major department stores in the New York metropolitan area.

The TRK-12, the flagship floor model of the trio, has since been called one of the most significant mass-produced designs of the 20th century and now sits in major museum collections including the Smithsonian. In the frenzy of 1939, though, these were expensive curiosities. Real commercial television would have to wait until the FCC fixed a national standard and, shortly after, a world war interrupted the industry's momentum.

The road that opened

The fair's gift to television was not the sets that sold but the habit of watching them. A broadcast service with a recognizable technical standard, receivers in stores, and millions of visitors who had seen a screen live: all of that existed after 1939 where almost none of it had before. The FCC adopted NTSC-recommended standards and authorized commercial television broadcasts on July 1, 1941. American entry into World War II a few months later stalled deployment, but RCA resumed selling receivers almost as soon as the war ended in 1945.

The demo in Queens was the hinge. Before April 30, 1939, television was engineering. After it, television was a product, a service and an expected part of every American home. The World of Tomorrow had shown the machine that would define the second half of the century.