Cable television

Cable television emerged because Pennsylvania's mountains blocked TV signals from Philadelphia—creating a niche where entrepreneurs could profit by solving geography's problem with wires. In 1948, John Walson, an appliance store owner in Mahanoy City, built an antenna atop a mountain and ran 300-ohm twin-lead Army surplus cable to his warehouse. He wanted to demonstrate television sets to customers, but the valley's poor reception made sales impossible.

The adjacent possible aligned through an unlikely convergence: television broadcasting had begun (though only 108 stations existed), mountains blocked signals in exactly the regions where coal mining had concentrated population, and the 1948 FCC license freeze prevented new stations from filling these gaps. For four years, no new television stations were authorized. CATV—Community Antenna Television—filled the void.

Walson's solution was simple in principle. Mount an antenna where signals were strong. Run cable down to where people lived. Charge for the service. Mahanoy City was ideally suited: Philadelphia's stations could be received via mountaintop antennas and retransmitted by cable to the valley community below. The United States Congress and National Cable Television Association have recognized Walson as inventing cable television in spring 1948, though the claim has been questioned and the starting date cannot be verified.

Parallel inventions appeared immediately. In Astoria, Oregon, Ed Parsons built the first system using coaxial cable and amplifiers in 1948. In 1950, Robert Tarlton organized television retailers in Lansford, Pennsylvania—another mountain-shadowed town—to offer Philadelphia stations to homes for $125 installation and $3 per month. When the FCC lifted its license freeze in 1952, 70 CATV systems already served close to 14,000 subscribers.

The technology that began as a workaround for geography became infrastructure for an industry. Cable's bandwidth could carry more channels than broadcast spectrum allowed. Premium channels, pay-per-view, and eventually broadband internet would all flow through the wires that first carried Philadelphia signals over Pennsylvania mountains.

What the appliance store owner built to sell TVs would eventually challenge broadcast networks, reshape entertainment, and create companies worth billions. Path dependence at its most dramatic: a temporary solution to a 1948 reception problem became the permanent architecture of American television distribution.