New Television and Radio Services 135 



tribution of the television transmitters doubtless will follow 

 the general pattern of population distribution in the United 

 States. This population may be considered as centered prin- 

 cipally in 96 metropolitan areas set up by the Bureau of the 

 Census having 100,000 inhabitants or more. . . . 



"These 96 metropolitan districts are usually taken as the 

 basis of marketing plans. Although they comprise only 1.2 

 per cent of the land area of the United States, they contain 

 45 per cent of its population. Assuming the maximum service 

 area of a television transmitter to be 25 miles in radius, how- 

 ever, we find that 96 such transmitters (one in each metro- 

 politan district of the United States) would lay down an ade- 

 quate signal over 6 per cent of the land area and more than 

 50 per cent of the population. . . . 



"To choose an obvious example, New York is the first city 

 of the United States to have regular television service intended 

 for the public. The metropolitan district surrounding New 

 York comprises 8.9 per cent of the nation's inhabitants, 63 per 

 cent of the population of New York state, 72 per cent of 

 New Jersey's inhabitants, and 9 per cent of Connecticut's. 

 Chicago's metropolitan area includes 3.6 per cent of the popu- 

 lation of the United States and 57 per cent of the population 

 of the state of Illinois. 



"In the 1927 television days, one experimenter said, 'If we 

 can tell a face from a fish, we think we're doing pretty well!' 



"Modern television, which is now being broadcast and re- 

 ceived by a small number of sets from a handful of transmit- 

 ters in a few cities, is a vast improvement, and is approxi- 

 mately equal in quality to good home movies. In 1941 the 

 U. S. Government finally authorized commercial operation 

 of television stations, but the advent of the war, and the cessa- 

 tion of the building of civilian radio receivers, halted the 

 development which otherwise would then have come. How- 

 ever, experimentation did not entirely cease; some continued 



