Television didn't attract much public notice until Bell Telephone demonstrated its new system in New York in April 1927. Shown on a screen two inches high by three inches wide-roughly the dimensions of a modern credit card-the broadcast consisted of a brief speech of encouragement from Washington by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, followed by some entertainment from the AT&T studio in Whippany, New Jersey-a vaudeville comic who first told some Irish jokes and then changed into blackface and told some "darky" jokes.
( Bill Bryson )
[ Made in America ]
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