L.A. Scene
The City Then and Now
By Cecilia Rasmussen
Deadly Blast a Proving Ground for Live TV
Since the film industry moved west shortly after the turn of the century, Los Angeles has been on the cutting edge of what has come to be called the information age. And, though it is seldom recalled, the first convergence of live television and disaster -- a staple of today's TV news -- occurred in response to the city's most deadly industrial accident.
Television made its American debut at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Within a year, Paramount had dispatched the brilliant Klaus Landsberg to build an experimental TV station -- W6XYZ -- in Los Angeles. Landsberg, who had invented a widely used FM radio receiver while in his teens, fled his native Germany shortly after the Third Reich classified his pioneering work on radar and sonar as a national secret. In 1936, however, Landsberg had participated in experimental television broadcasts of the Berlin Olympics.
He arrived in Los Angeles with an unequaled technical background and an abiding belief -- gleaned from his Berlin experiment -- that live television had the power to fundamentally alter people's understanding of the world around them.
There were 350 home television sets in Los Angeles on Feb. 20, 1947, when Landsberg's system was put to its first great test... (read more...)
Historical Reference:
- 1947 Project: A Terrible Blast
- 1947 Project: 926 Pico Then and Now
- Architecture Database News Archive
- GenDisasters: Events That Touched Our Ancestors Lives
- LAFire.com: The O'Connor Electro-Plating Explosion
- Time Magazine: The Amazing Brew
Submitted by Brian Humphrey, Spokesman
Los Angeles Fire Department
Article any source
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