Scanning the Past: A History of Electrical Engineers from the Past

The following is taken from the IEEE publication, "Scanning the Past" which covers a reprint of an article appearing in the Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 79, No. 7, July 1991

Walter R. G. Baker and the Advent of Commercial Television in 1941

It was fifty years ago this month that commercial monochrome television broadcasting was introduced in the United States. On I July 1941, station WNBT, with facilities in the Empire State Building in New York City, transmitted the first officially sanctioned commercial. It took the form of an image of a Bulova clock that remained on the screen for sixty seconds and cost the sponsor four dollars.

Walter R. G. Baker, who worked for the General Electric Company and served as chairman of the National Television System Committee (NTSC), played a major role in the resolution of conflicting views that enabled the television industry to reach this important stage of development. The NTSC standards that have lasted to the present day included a 525 line picture with interlaced scanning at 30 frames per second and a channel bandwidth of 6 MHz. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had approved the recommended standards and issued specific rules for operation in April 1941. Baker presided over the NTSC from July 1940 to March 1941 and also served as chairman of a second NTSC that formulated standards for color television in the early 1950's.

Baker was born in Lockport, New York, in 1892 and graduated in electrical engineering from Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1916. He received a Master's degree in EE, also from Union College, in 1919. He took a job with General Electric (GE) in 1916 and worked on radio apparatus for military applications during the first World War. As a member of the radio engineering department at GE during the early 1920's, he contributed to the design of radio broadcast transmitters including station WGY in Schenectady. From 1924‑1929, he had administrative responsibility for radio products manufactured by GE. In 1929, he was selected to be production manager for a Radio Corporation of America manufacturing plant in Camden, New Jersey, but he returned to GE in 1935 as the manager of its radio‑television facility in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was named a GE vice president in 1941.

Baker also served as director of the engineering department of the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA) in the 1930's. The RMA established two television committees to prepare reports on standards and frequency allocation for FCC hearings held in June 1936. Donald G. Fink has described the work of these two committees as being "the first major step in television standardization in the United States." Several of their recommendations-­including those for channel width, aspect ratio, and frame rate‑survived as part of the NTSC standards adopted in 1941. The 441 line picture recommended by the RMA committee in 1936, however, was changed upward to 525 lines by the NTSC.

In the face of disagreement among RCA and its competitors, including Zenith, Philco, and Dumont, over proposed standards, the FCC in May 1940 announced that it would be prepared to authorize full commercialization of television "as soon as the engineering opinion of the industry is prepared to approve any one of the competing systems of broadcasting as the standard system." After a meeting with the FCC Chairman, James L. Fly, Baker agreed to organize and chair the NTSC in an effort to reach a consensus. Over the next several months, 168 members devoted approximately 4000 person hours to meetings and compiled approximately 600 000 words of reports and minutes. At its final meeting on March 8, 1941, the NTSC changed its recommendation on the number of lines from 441 to 525. This was a compromise, suggested to Baker by Donald G. Fink, between the 441 lines favored by RCA and 800 lines preferred by Philco. The NTSC standards became the basis for an explosive growth in the industry after WW II, and there were approximately 31 million monochrome television receivers and 416 transmitting stations in the United States by November 1954.

Baker served as president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1947 and then chaired the second NTSC from January 1950 until its final meeting in July 1953. The FCC adopted this committee's recommended standards for compatible color television and authorized commercial broadcasting under these standards beginning in January 1954. Baker became interested in the educational potential of television and published a paper on the subject in 1954. fie contended that the pace of technological change had tended to overwhelm the educational system and that television might be used to facilitate learning because of its visual impact. He retired from GE in 1957 and died in 1960. Fink wrote that "too much credit for the enduring quality of television broadcasting cannot be given" to Baker.

 A process is currently underway to formulate standards for a proposed high definition television (HDTV) service that is quite reminiscent of the process followed by Baker and the NTSC committees. Recent reports indicate that a digital HDTV system is a strong contender for a proposed simulcast HDTV standard mandated by the FCC. In this system one channel would continue to carry the existing NTSC signal while a second would carry a digital signal that could only be received on HDTV receivers. FCC testing of several HDTV systems in now underway, ‑ although a decision on an HDTV standard is not anticipated before 1993.  Perhaps someone with Baker's skills at conflict resolution will emerge to provide leadership in reaching a new consensus.

James E. Brittain
School of History, Technology, and Society
Georgia Institute of Technology