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12.30.2015

How TV Came to Panther Valley

Did you hear that television has come to Lansford?

No, I don’t mean that you just ran to Walmart and picked one up; I’m referring to the time that the Panther Valley area—not counting Summit Hill, but we’ll get to that in a moment—was finally able to receive boob-tube transmissions from the city of brotherly love.

It was, essentially, the birth of cable television as we know it, and it came about because the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania were prohibiting television transmissions from reaching the local valley areas, namely the towns of Mauch Chunk, Nesquehoning, Lansford, Coaldale, and Tamaqua. Summit Hill lucked out because of their location atop a mountain, so they were able to watch their favorite channels—all three of them.

For a full explanation of what had happened and how it was fixed, there exists a story from a now-defunct magazine entitled Radio & Television News. In their March 1951 issue, author E.D. Lucas, Jr., gives a “detailed report on America’s first community aerial system” and “how five men of initiative brought television to what was once an isolated TV area.”

Found below are scanned images of the magazine, which were graciously posted online by AmericanRadioHistory.com. I’m hoping that it’s permissible to republish these images, as it states that the publication in question is no longer under copyright protection and I’m making it fully aware that the original scans were not done by me. In addition, neither this blog nor AmericanRadioHistory.com are commercial endeavors. AmericanRadioHistory.com posts information on radio and television history to keep the history alive, and I attempt to do something similar here with regard to some of the small towns in Pennsylvania’s anthracite region. If you’re interested in broadcasting history, or simply history in general, this Website is worth bookmarking.

I’m including a few paragraphs from the magazine’s story verbatim so that they are picked up in Google searches that might be done.

This is the story of how communities beyond the fringe of television reception now receive clear, strong television signals from transmitters 75 to 125 airline miles away. It is the exciting story of the first “community aerial”—telling how a single master TV antenna system can serve an entire city, just as one master aerial brings television reception to all the tenants of a large apartment building.

[…]

This case history of how good television reception has come to Panther Valley tells of the initiative of a group of small-town businessmen, four radio dealers and a lawyer, and how they have solved the variety of problems, technical, legal, political, financial, which confronted them in building a community aerial system. Such information has already proved useful to other towns planning their own community aerials and will, we hope, be helpful to many other communities now TV-blind. For here is the story of how television can reach new audiences by the million, just as television has come to Panther Valley.

[…]

For instance, at Summit Hill, a village less than a mile up the mountain from the much larger town of Lansford, the people on the hill could enjoy television. Their much more numerous neighbors down in Panther Valley felt as if nature—and television—had discriminated against them. As Mayor Evan H. Whildin of Lansford expressed it, “The signals used to go right over our heads.”
The radio dealers of Lansford were doubly irked about this situation. They couldn’t watch television and, even worse, they couldn’t sell TV sets in the valley. So they decided to do something about it.

Panther Valley Television Company founders: (from left) Rudolph Dubosky, George Bright, William Z. Scott, Robert J. Tarlton, and William McDonald.

One of these dealers, Robert J. Tarlton, remembered reading about master antenna systems for apartments, hotels and other multiple-set installations. Tarlton went into a huddle with the other three radio and appliance dealers in Lansford, William McDonald, Rudolph Dubosky, and George Bright, vice-president of Bright’s Stores, Inc., [a] leading department store in Panther Valley. The group agreed to do some experimenting. They got a truck with an antenna that could be extended to a height of about 40 feet. They also bought some equipment, including master control and amplifier units, distribution outlets, and several hundred feet of cable.

The rest of the story explains the specifics of the set-up, which is worth a read whether you’re into the technical aspects of the situation or not. Below you will find full magazine screenshots.

12.29.2015

Historic Mauch Chunk Photos

Given that I grew up there, one thing that I’ve been asked a few times is, “Why don’t you have more material on Mauch Chunk and Jim Thorpe?” The thing is, other than material that is found in private collections, the selection of photography for Mauch Chunk, East Mauch Chunk, and Jim Thorpe from the 1950s to 1970s is rather limited, as far as images for public publication.

When doing a Google image search of “historic Mauch Chunk,” one quickly discovers that the majority of the photos are either from the 1800s or recent photos of the downtown area.

Enter the Library of Congress, Jack Delano, and the Farm Security Administration. From 1937 to 1942, the FSA had photographers, most notably Jack Delano, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Gordon Parks, traveling around the country and documenting Americana through photographs.

Fortunately the Library of Congress makes available FSA images without rights restrictions so that those of us who seek such things can find photos from this era. With respect to Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, Jack Delano’s photographs help bridge the gap of the 1800s and the twenty-first century by offering mid-century images of both boroughs. These would have been taken as the Depression was ending and World War II was beginning, and it’s evident in many of the photographs that Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk had hit hard times as the Great Depression came to a close.

From what I’ve read in multiple places, when these photos were taken, Mauch Chunk was dealing with several issues: the lingering poverty of the Depression, the decline of anthracite coal sales as oil became the fuel of choice, and the drop in passenger train service as automobiles became more ubiquitous.

Below is a collection of Jack Delano’s 1940 photographs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk. All are readily available from the Library of Congress but take some finding and might even be difficult to locate if you’re not accustomed to using the Library of Congress for such things. (Which you should be; it’s a wonderful resource.)

The American Hotel along Broadway. The Carbon County Courthouse can be seen at the far right.

Looking up Broadway towards High Street.

The Mahlon S. Kemmerer mansion. Note the Mauch Chunk Beer sign in the foreground.

Route 209 looking towards Nesquehoning. The area known locally as The Liberties is in the bottom left of the image. Notice how few trees existed along the hillside at the time.

The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Building, at the corner of Susquehanna Street and Race Street.

Upper Broadway looking towards the direction of the jail.

The Lehigh River.

The Lehigh River and the old steel truss bridge. Notice the train station in the bottom left corner. Today the area serves as the parking lot for the Jim Thorpe Market.