, United States (USA) (American Colonies)
1927 - April 7 – Bell Telephone Co. transmits an image of Herbert Hoover (then the Secretary of Commerce), which becomes the first successful long distance demonstration of television

TELEVISION SEEING OVER PHONES, SUCCEEDS
Hoover Observed in Gotham As He Talks in Capital
That's Not all - Radio Program is Also Heard While the Performers Are Seen
Years of Research Culminate Thursday
Images of Speakers and Actors Are Thrown on Both Large and Small Screens

NEW YORK, April 7. - (AP) - Television, a scientists' dream ever since the telephone was invented half a century ago, became an actuality today when Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover spoke over the telephone in Washington and was seen as well as heard in the Bell Telephone laboratories here.

Not only were Secretary Hoover and a score of others in Washington seen in New York by telephone wire, but a radio program was broadcast over the laboratories' experiment station 3XN at Whippany, N.J., and moving likenesses of the performers as well as the sound of their voices were put on air and transferred to a screen in this city.

Years of Research
Officials of the American Telephone and Telegraph company announced that today's demonstration marked the results of years of research and experimentation and that study would be continued with the purpose of improving television to a higher state of efficiency.

They acknowledge that at present the seeming miracle of seeing by wire and wave length was not at a stage where it could be put to such general use as the telephone. The necessary equipment precludes that possibility for some time to come, they said, but this feat of television itself has been accomplished and indications are that "it is likely to have a real place in the world's work of distant communication."

Pictures Are Clear
The images of today's speakers in Washington and Whippany were thrown onto both small and large screens. On the screen designed for the telephone's use solely the pictures were exceedingly clear, easily recognizable as likenesses of the person at the other end of communication.

On the large screen, about one and one-half by three feet, the results were not so clear. Especially was this noticeable when Secretary Hoover's image was transferred from the small screen, on which it showed clearly while he talked with President Walter S. Gifford of the telephone company, to the large screen for the benefit of the half a hundred newspaper men and scientists present at the demonstration.

The Waco News-Tribune
Waco, Texas
April 8, 1927

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