00:01 - Bob Tarlton, one of the cable industry's pioneers.

00:04 - How'd you get involved in cable television?

00:08 - Well, my background

00:13 - has been in electronics.

00:15 - Uh, and I had

00:20 - a radio television store.

00:25 - So a sense.

00:27 - But couldn't sell anything in our valley.

00:30 - We lived in the valley.

00:32 - And that was the, uh.

00:35 - That was the

00:37 - prompter of getting television down in our valley.

00:42 - And how did the valley relate to not selling television sets?

00:45 - Well, um, because of the, uh,

00:48 - the topography of the area, uh,

00:51 - the valley was devoid of any television reception.

00:55 - There's dates back to 1947, 48, 49.

01:00 - The television stations

01:03 - receivable were in or really they were start out

01:05 - with one in Philadelphia, then two,

01:08 - and eventually had three stations in Philadelphia.

01:11 - But the television signals

01:14 - just went over the over the mountain area and didn't

01:17 - get down into the into the valleys.

01:20 - Uh, so much experiment

01:23 - was done trying to get signals down in that valley.

01:28 - And that was the beginning

01:30 - of, of the attempt to get television in the valley.

01:35 - Where was this located at?

01:37 - What was the.

01:37 - Well, it town was Lansford, L.A.

01:40 - and as I have already, uh, it was a in a cork community

01:44 - of what is known as the Panther Valley area,

01:48 - Lansford Summit Hill,

01:51 - Coalville and Haskell Horning.

01:54 - There are other perimeter communities

01:58 - near Tamaqua and Jim Thorpe.

02:01 - The Summit Hill I mentioned happened to be

02:03 - the only area that you could get television.

02:05 - It was on the mountain area.

02:07 - Only a thousand feet are only

02:09 - a few hundred feet above Lyons forward.

02:12 - But we could get television up there and we

02:16 - I sold sets up there and

02:21 - desperately people in the valley wanted to see television.

02:25 - And that's that's

02:26 - it was the beginning of making attempts

02:29 - to get television down into the valley.

02:31 - How important was television at that time?

02:35 - Uh uh,

02:37 - it was a newfound thing.

02:40 - Television

02:42 - was the most exciting thing at that time.

02:47 - Uh, radio was

02:51 - just the only thing for entertainment in the.

02:54 - In the in the area.

02:57 - And television was,

03:00 - uh, of course, in television at that time.

03:04 - Back in the, in the late forties,

03:07 - I was only,

03:10 - uh, a nighttime reception.

03:13 - Only that's when they were broadcasting.

03:16 - They only had a few programs starting out with,

03:19 - uh, just a prime time for a couple of hours at night

03:22 - and gradually working in the, into other time.

03:26 - But that, that was, uh, both entertainment fights were

03:32 - a, were a big draw

03:37 - and the businesses, the bar rooms

03:42 - made every attempt to have the best possible television.

03:45 - Well, it was really

03:46 - the barrooms in our area that were crying for television

03:51 - because their patrons were all in Summit Hill, which

03:55 - and matter of fact, only a few miles less than a mile away.

04:00 - You'd mentioned that there was a lot of experimenting going

04:03 - on, trying to get the signals

04:05 - down to the valley in a little bit about.

04:07 - Yeah.

04:09 - Or, uh, this wasn't.

04:12 - This wasn't unique with.

04:14 - With our area.

04:17 - Uh, it was

04:20 - possibly the all over the United States

04:23 - where, where television signals couldn't be received.

04:28 - Experiments were made or not in experiments,

04:31 - but the actual installation remained

04:33 - where by the old twin lead was

04:38 - used to get the signals down into the valley.

04:41 - What's Twin Lead?

04:42 - Well, the. The Twin Lead.

04:44 - That's what I when they explained Twin Lead was,

04:47 - uh, back in the late forties

04:53 - on installations in residence

04:56 - as residence installations where a, a

05:01 - home would have an antenna on it

05:03 - and then a two, two wires

05:07 - equally spaced from that antenna down into the home.

05:12 - Uh, that was actually

05:16 - an open wire type of installation. And,

05:21 - uh, Kovacs Cable

05:24 - was, at that time was nonexistent,

05:28 - or at least not, not in popular use.

05:32 - Uh, and as a result, the,

05:36 - uh, dealers,

05:39 - service men such as myself,

05:42 - uh, would put an antenna on top of the mountain

05:48 - and then string twin lead the television

05:52 - cable down the mountain to the homes, to the home.

05:57 - And eventually the other homes wanted to get hooked up.

06:00 - So some of them would have

06:02 - individual antennas and attempts were made to connect

06:05 - one home to another.

06:06 - And there was all types of of installations

06:13 - and I credit my father

06:17 - with, uh, kind of inspiring me

06:21 - to get something different because he was very conservative

06:26 - and he, uh,

06:32 - residents would want to buy a television set

06:35 - and then put an antenna up the mountain and bring it down

06:38 - and stick it on some poles and get into their home.

06:42 - And he wouldn't sell them.

06:45 - Uh, he, he, he, he agreed to this side

06:50 - of the mountain where you didn't have to cross streets. And,

06:55 - uh, uh, as a result, I

07:00 - had done a little bit of work with a, or

07:03 - a, an amplifier system

07:06 - using coaxial cable

07:08 - was practically unheard of at the time.

07:13 - Jerrold Electronics had this

07:15 - master antenna system that they were using in Philadelphia,

07:19 - and I started experimenting with that.

07:22 - And as a result,

07:24 - uh, uh, from the experimentation on that,

07:28 - knowing that the Kovacs cable

07:31 - would be impervious to any

07:35 - interference and leakage, uh,

07:39 - although what was available then

07:44 - was not the perfection, but notwithstanding

07:47 - the Kovacs cable that we use then, incidentally,

07:50 - was Kovacs Cable, it was mostly Army surplus. And

07:55 - uh, that,

07:58 - and I say that that's why

08:01 - I give my father credit, because it gave me an inspiration.

08:06 - Well, I guess Dad's right, because, uh, if we sell a set

08:11 - and it didn't, the signals weren't

08:16 - too good or the, the problems with an open wire were that

08:21 - it were they get cut then they'd, they'd be

08:26 - affected by

08:28 - moisture get wet

08:30 - signal and I and some people would

08:33 - and then that's what happened some people would oh

08:36 - I don't want this installation.

08:38 - I, it's not satisfactory.

08:41 - So as a result

08:43 - that led me to getting

08:45 - and doing experimentation with them with the Kovacs Cable

08:49 - and incidentally, the Kovacs Cable at the time,

08:54 - uh, yeah, the experiments

08:57 - where we're using this amplifier because Kovacs

09:01 - cable has a greater loss than a twin lead had

09:05 - what we call the old twin lead.

09:07 - Uh, you could run that longer lines and without,

09:11 - with, with it, without as much loss as you would with coaxial

09:16 - Kovacs needed more amplification and we had to re amplify that.

09:21 - And the problem was that the equipment

09:24 - that we were attempting to use, Jerrold Electronics,

09:28 - was only designed for one amplifier.

09:32 - And conversely to what we were using it,

09:35 - it was an amplifier at the at the antenna

09:40 - site on top of the building.

09:42 - And then all the cable was dropped down

09:44 - through the various rooms.

09:46 - Well, I was attempting to use it as to be re amplified

09:51 - and we could only

09:52 - re amplify it over one or two lengths of cable.

09:56 - And as a result, um, it was not adequate.

10:01 - The amplifier wasn't only because

10:05 - the, the engineering on that originally

10:09 - was for picture quality only sound was not too good.

10:16 - And after two or three

10:17 - amplification, there was no more sound.

10:20 - So I did some modifications, did nothing more than just

10:26 - flattened out the response on it a bit and got decent sound.

10:30 - After going through quite a few many amplifiers

10:34 - demonstrated that this could work.

10:36 - And uh,

10:38 - I got, well,

10:41 - I got other dealers in the, in the community together

10:45 - and I guess this is one of the first efforts

10:47 - of where and your competitors all cooperated together.

10:51 - I said, look at let's, let's put this together

10:55 - instead of everybody fighting each other

10:57 - and we formed a corporation

11:01 - and helped to finance it.

11:04 - What was that corporation called?

11:06 - That was Panther Valley Television Company. And

11:12 - it was, um, it was a,

11:15 - uh, corporation that we

11:21 - made up of primarily,

11:24 - uh, their, some of the television dealers,

11:27 - uh, said that they would cooperate,

11:31 - but they couldn't invest in it as an example, uh, the Sears

11:36 - Roebuck people were in town at that time and at a store

11:40 - and they were enthusiastic.

11:42 - But their headquarters is, no, you can't get involved,

11:45 - but any cooperation from them, and we'd get all the cooperation

11:49 - we could.

11:50 - And there was our legal counsel,

11:54 - who was a senior state assemblyman,

11:56 - a very close friend of mine,

11:58 - and he was my legal counsel and guidance

12:02 - through the whole thing and getting it organized.

12:07 - Was that the first cable system, the group that you had

12:11 - together with the other dealers, the Panther Valley Group,

12:15 - would you say it was the first cable system or. Yes,

12:20 - that was the first

12:22 - organized corporate

12:25 - entity in the Panther Valley.

12:29 - And where how far did you have to run

12:32 - the cables from the intended to the homes?

12:34 - What kind of distances recovering.

12:36 - Well,

12:38 - uh, to get a better picture of it,

12:40 - the antenna site was in Summit Hill,

12:44 - which was a matter of possibly only a couple of thousand feet.

12:49 - Now, about 5000 feet tall.

12:51 - The entrance of lands for it,

12:54 - and the antenna side,

12:57 - uh, all the equipment was on the edge of Salmon Hill.

13:02 - It later was changed from.

13:06 - From that location, uh, for a few reasons.

13:10 - And down to land's forward.

13:14 - And then I guess we had, uh,

13:18 - I don't know at the present time how many,

13:23 - uh, how many miles of cable were installed.

13:27 - But we had installed cable, incidentally,

13:31 - I had made arrangements with fortunately we were at a local

13:36 - and by local I mean locally owned phone company

13:40 - and most of their facilities were on their own poles.

13:46 - The power company was on one side of the street and the

13:49 - and the phone company was on the other side of the street.

13:52 - They weren't using, uh, generally

13:55 - weren't using joint poles.

13:57 - So I went to the phone company and uh,

14:01 - some of the phone company, principals, owners lived in town

14:04 - and they were delighted to be able to get television.

14:08 - So I had no problem getting an agreement with them.

14:11 - Very simple agreement to attach to their poles.

14:15 - And without

14:16 - being too technical about them, the first

14:19 - and the first bit of the system installed was,

14:24 - uh, lower than their facilities, which created some problems.

14:29 - Uh, normally today the telephone,

14:34 - uh, the cable is above the telephone lines

14:38 - and uh, it's

14:41 - one of the reasons why it was, it was installed

14:45 - that way or rather and let me correct that.

14:49 - One of the reasons why it was changed, whereas after

14:52 - about six or eight months of operation, um, AT&T came in

14:59 - from New York,

15:02 - uh, I often was interested in, uh,

15:07 - I wish I would have retained a lot of the information,

15:10 - but I'm a vice president of engineering,

15:15 - came in to see what was going on

15:17 - because they were using some of the poles.

15:21 - They had common poles, and

15:24 - the local company said, we better get this cleared

15:26 - with them.

15:28 - And eventually they all agreed that all of the

15:34 - foreign attachments, other than ours, other

15:36 - than the phone companies, had to be above them.

15:40 - And that's the reason that some of the system,

15:43 - the Panther Valley system, originally, uh, was installed

15:47 - lower and then service from that point on in the home

15:52 - was only a matter of a service drop,

15:54 - just as the telephone was and is today.

15:58 - You know, the equipment that you designed,

16:00 - did you have to get a patent for that? No.

16:04 - No. There was

16:06 - really nothing patentable because all that was doing was

16:12 - using an existing

16:15 - basic system.

16:17 - Um, the general electronics

16:21 - equipment

16:25 - was being manufactured

16:27 - under whatever patents applied.

16:30 - And it was, uh, we were using it,

16:35 - uh, in accordance with whatever

16:38 - their, their permits were.

16:42 - What was the reaction of the people in the town?

16:44 - Oh, uh, uh,

16:47 - I have, um, one

16:49 - photograph of the first demonstration.

16:53 - Uh, we were in a store room.

16:55 - I had leased a store room down in the main part of town. And,

17:01 - uh, I have a photograph showing

17:05 - the crowds that stood outside that window,

17:08 - uh, with the television set on in the window

17:12 - and just really hooked me up.

17:14 - Hooked me up.

17:15 - And that was that was a cry error.

17:18 - So you had an agreement then with all the other dealers

17:21 - that you would all start selling these systems to say no,

17:25 - the the dealers.

17:28 - Where, where,

17:30 - uh, uh,

17:32 - you know, I, me, the dealers

17:37 - were invested in the corporation

17:39 - and they sold television sets

17:43 - independent of the corporation, as did my father.

17:47 - I broke away from my father to carry this thing on,

17:51 - and he sold television sets.

17:54 - The dealers, all these other dealers sold television sets.

17:58 - Uh, in a normal manner.

18:01 - And all they do is apply

18:04 - for service to the Panther reality television company.

18:07 - The cable company.

18:10 - So what happened to television sales

18:12 - after people saw the demonstration?

18:14 - Oh, that the television sales just went through the roof. And,

18:21 - uh, even my father sold an awful lot of television

18:24 - sets and that, uh, as a result of it,

18:30 - where did you get the money

18:31 - to buy all the equipment the cable needed

18:35 - and the antennas, the, uh, that's.

18:41 - That's why I wanted,

18:43 - hopefully, these dealers to put money in,

18:46 - and they, they put in a pool of money.

18:50 - Not much.

18:52 - Uh, there was enough to, uh,

18:54 - to get going, but,

18:57 - uh, we then from that

19:01 - nucleus of funds, we were able to go to a local bank

19:08 - and the local bank, everybody was interested.

19:11 - And this is, this is great.

19:12 - Even the banker, then the president of the board,

19:16 - he wanted television.

19:18 - So and

19:20 - they were we're in tough on credit at that time

19:23 - with with particularly, you know, in our case.

19:27 - And um, we had borrowed, I guess we had borrowed

19:31 - at one time a simple amount of $10,000.

19:34 - And then, uh,

19:35 - I wanted to do some more expansion

19:37 - because what we wanted to do

19:38 - is after a short period of time, uh,

19:44 - we were only servicing lands for them

19:46 - in the coaldale, which is a contiguous

19:49 - community of lanes for if you run

19:54 - out of one community into the other,

19:57 - it's in school.

19:58 - The county lands was in Carbon County.

20:00 - That was a dividing line.

20:02 - Uh, but uh, the cold air

20:05 - was crying for television and

20:09 - uh, I needed a little bit of political assistance also.

20:15 - So a man who was then chairman of the

20:19 - Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, uh, Thomas

20:22 - John Evans, uh, and he was also

20:26 - in the bank where we had got the money.

20:29 - He said, You have got to get me television down here, ma'am.

20:32 - Well, he said, I said, We're going to

20:34 - we need a little bit more money there to expand it.

20:36 - And and because what happened was I was using, uh,

20:42 - a local construction group, uh, put together

20:48 - by volunteers of

20:50 - the coal company, had a, a line.

20:52 - Paul Lane Company, Paul Lang group.

20:55 - And so

20:56 - although some of those fellows employees were friends of mine

20:59 - and they formed a company and did arm pole line

21:03 - construction work, but I said,

21:07 - I can't, I can't build this

21:09 - as fast as as the demand is.

21:13 - So as a consequence,

21:16 - we needed

21:17 - I went out and and got a construction company.

21:21 - Matter of fact, the company's still in business.

21:23 - They henkel's in McCloy Company in the Philadelphia area.

21:28 - Uh, very large construction company.

21:31 - And they, uh, we retain them

21:34 - to help me finish the construction.

21:37 - And most of that going into Coaldale.

21:40 - And uh, we had a total of $20,000,

21:45 - which in 1947, 48 wasn't

21:49 - a whole lot of money at that time, but we had a bank

21:54 - loan, a

21:55 - total $20,000 that we had to amortize and,

22:00 - uh, didn't take too long for to get that thing cleaned up.

22:04 - When you started this system,

22:06 - how far did you expect it to go?

22:10 - Well,

22:12 - I had I had did a bit of projection

22:16 - and figured we'd get about 200

22:19 - ready subscribers.

22:22 - And those 200 subscribers

22:26 - were put on within the first year.

22:30 - And from then on in, it just escalated.

22:35 - And where did you go with your with your business?

22:37 - How far did it expand?

22:39 - Uh, I, I,

22:42 - I only, uh, I only

22:47 - serviced the Panther Valley area.

22:50 - That is Lansford Salmon Hill Coaldale, and that's Mahoning

22:55 - and some of the perimeters over the next mountain,

22:59 - uh, place called Hutton Uto.

23:04 - Uh, that was, um, that's a,

23:08 - uh, another rural area.

23:12 - And eventually we built that also.

23:15 - But, uh,

23:19 - I would have, I had many a request

23:24 - to build

23:26 - adjoining communities

23:28 - and as a result I was looking for perfection

23:32 - and I was doing a lot of experimentation

23:35 - and I wanted to get this thing perfected.

23:37 - Even I even after we were,

23:38 - we were working where there after it was in operation.

23:42 - And um tamaqua

23:44 - I only a matter of five miles away said we knew on television,

23:49 - so I had a couple of financially capable people from there

23:53 - I said, work out.

23:53 - We'll put together a company.

23:56 - Uh, you come in with us and we supply the money.

23:59 - I said I.

24:00 - I can't devote any time.

24:03 - I'm very busy here, but I help you.

24:07 - So I assisted them to get in business.

24:09 - And then the same thing happened in the Jim

24:13 - Thorpe area and then Lehighton area,

24:17 - and I assisted in those

24:19 - two areas to get them going.

24:23 - Uh, the same thing happened in the Palmerton area,

24:26 - and that's kind of ironic because in the Palmerton area,

24:29 - man by the name of Reinhard, who worked for a,

24:36 - a large industrial company in town, he was an accountant.

24:40 - He wanted to get television

24:42 - and he left the job and he wanted to build.

24:44 - And he came to see me and he said, Come on in with me.

24:47 - You know, I said, I I'm too busy in last word.

24:51 - So the first two years I was really,

24:53 - uh, jammed up trying to perfect things

24:57 - and get things

24:58 - that there was lots of basic problems, really problems

25:01 - and that's the Panther Valley Television

25:06 - only serviced that core community

25:11 - with that area.

25:13 - And there were some other people in Pennsylvania

25:16 - that were developing cable at the time of

25:20 - Pennsylvania cable and telecommunications

25:22 - Association has a list of cable pioneer areas.

25:25 - I want to give you a couple

25:27 - of the names

25:27 - and if you could tell me

25:29 - your relationship with them

25:30 - and what they were doing at the time.

25:31 - First one is Milton Sharpe.

25:34 - Well, Milton Sharpe was the president,

25:38 - the originator and president of Jerrold Electronics,

25:42 - and he was the one it was his company

25:47 - that made those apartment house amplifiers

25:51 - and whenever

25:53 - I proved that those amplifiers

25:57 - were a nucleus of a cable system

26:00 - with modifications, uh,

26:04 - I started, I was buying them from

26:07 - a distributor in Allentown,

26:10 - and I was going to have to buy so many.

26:12 - I went down to their

26:15 - Philadelphia office,

26:16 - talked to their sales manager, and said, I will sell you.

26:20 - I'm sure.

26:21 - So I started buying them from them and

26:27 - it kind of an interesting story.

26:29 - The sales manager's name

26:31 - was I remember Bud Green and

26:36 - Green said one day, What do you usually use amplifiers for?

26:39 - He said, You

26:40 - put systems up there, but in the apartment are systems.

26:43 - No, no.

26:44 - And I explained what I was doing.

26:46 - He said they were never made for that purpose.

26:48 - I said, I know, but I'm modifying them a bit.

26:51 - I said that to the extent that I can.

26:54 - Well, he said, look, I we'll have to get a release.

26:57 - He said,

26:58 - you've bought

26:59 - but so many and if you buy many more,

27:01 - he said, We're not going to give you your money back.

27:03 - I said, No one any money back.

27:05 - I'll sign a release.

27:06 - No problem. Well, that came to the attention of Milt,

27:10 - who was president of the company.

27:12 - And incidentally, I had known Milt just casually,

27:17 - because Milt was before he even went into business.

27:20 - He was a manufacturer's representative

27:24 - and he would stop in once in a while with salesmen

27:29 - pushing his own products.

27:32 - And he had been in my mind, my father's shop

27:36 - a couple of times, so I had at least a knowledge of them.

27:40 - So he called me one day and asked me

27:45 - this was in 1950 before

27:50 - the fall of 1950.

27:52 - He said, Bob, uh, I'd like to come up, visit

27:56 - with you, see what what

27:59 - you're doing with my equipment.

28:02 - I said, delighted, because at that time

28:05 - that was one other reason why I didn't.

28:08 - I was terribly busy, but also busy showing people

28:12 - from all over the country

28:13 - that were hearing about it and coming on in. And,

28:18 - uh, Milt and Mrs.

28:21 - Sharp

28:22 - came up to see me the day before Thanksgiving, 1950,

28:25 - and I can remember so vividly

28:28 - I had never met Mrs.

28:30 - Have before, and then he had two children with them.

28:33 - Richard and

28:35 - I, forgetting her.

28:36 - Her name, there were just one was just a baby. And,

28:41 - uh, he wanted to know what I was doing.

28:45 - I showed him around and he said, This is just marvelous.

28:49 - He said, You have to modify bit.

28:52 - Betty said, Uh, on Monday morning

28:56 - I'm going to have my engineering group.

28:58 - And his engineering group was one technician that I later

29:03 - found out who is a very brilliant individual,

29:06 - uh, my engineering group,

29:09 - design equipment just for this application.

29:12 - Milt was greatly impressed.

29:14 - Uh, Bill Chap was, was a born salesman.

29:18 - He was a electrical engineer,

29:21 - a graduate engineer, but he was a gifted salesman.

29:25 - He he could he could really sell things if he had the product.

29:29 - And as a result, he said

29:34 - at that time

29:35 - when he was leaving, he said, I'd like you,

29:38 - would you like to join our group?

29:40 - I said, What?

29:40 - You mean? He said, I'd like to employ you.

29:43 - I said to Milt, Yeah, I got too much sun in here.

29:47 - I said, I've got to get this thing on the road.

29:51 - Well, would you if.

29:53 - If I would you, uh.

29:57 - Field tests things for us.

30:00 - Critique it said we'll we'll check it out

30:02 - and send it up and I said I'd be delighted to.

30:08 - And my relationship with Gerald

30:10 - at that time was just for my own benefit.

30:15 - And that was in 1950.

30:18 - In 1952, Milt called me, ask me what?

30:23 - I came down to Philadelphia and talked to Milt and

30:29 - sold Williamsport.

30:32 - The idea of putting a system in Williamsport,

30:34 - one of the first, uh, systems of that type,

30:40 - and he had gone out and got capital and capital groups.

30:44 - The, uh, I guess it was Maxwell's and J.H.

30:48 - Whitney, the Jock Whitney Group and put money together.

30:52 - And he said, Uh, I've got the money

30:56 - to put this, this I put a system in Williamsport,

30:59 - I've got the franchise

31:00 - to put it in the community and we as board.

31:04 - But he said, I need someone who knows

31:06 - how to put a cable system. And he said,

31:08 - We can make equipment to put a cable system in.

31:12 - He said, Would you give consideration now?

31:14 - He said, Yeah, two years ago you refused to come.

31:17 - Would you give consideration?

31:20 - I said, Well, yeah, I would.

31:22 - And I had a selfish reason at the time because it struck me

31:27 - my son was just graduating from high school

31:30 - and in 1952 and

31:34 - he was going to go to college in Philadelphia.

31:37 - And that that sounds good.

31:39 - I can move to Philadelphia and he'll have a place

31:42 - to have housing and, um, and that's what happened.

31:46 - I then joined Jerrold and Williamsport

31:50 - was the first system that I put in for Jerrold.

31:53 - And as a result, we had Jerrold was selling

31:58 - the idea of their equipment,

31:59 - but he'd sell the franchise, he'd sell the whole package.

32:03 - So I went as chief engineer with Jerrold

32:06 - and the community operations division later on

32:11 - and manager land and then the in various

32:14 - capacities, uh, franchises and we had a franchise department,

32:20 - it just expanded and

32:23 - I put in dozens and dozens of systems,

32:27 - uh, for the next three or four years.

32:30 - First system I put in of course was Williamsport.

32:32 - The last system was

32:34 - in Dubuque, Iowa.

32:38 - That was and that was a

32:40 - quite a quite a system in Dubuque, Iowa,

32:44 - because we had to run about 12 or 14 miles

32:47 - into town and

32:51 - different approach that had to be developed.

32:53 - And all the time,

32:56 - Jerrold, engineers

32:58 - were given the problems of electronic problems.

33:01 - And, uh, Kovacs Cable

33:06 - was a lot of problems with the Kovacs Cable

33:09 - and a lot of problems that people today,

33:13 - even they, people in, in the business,

33:16 - don't realize how the problems were overcome.

33:20 - Then in Kovacs Cable and

33:24 - uh, plastering in New York was one of the first,

33:28 - first companies that was making cable, but

33:32 - that's quite a story in itself.

33:34 - Uh, your question about General

33:38 - Electronics and Millichap chap, the, uh, that, that,

33:42 - that was the essence of my association went with him

33:46 - until about 1940, 1958 or 59.

33:51 - Yeah.

33:51 - Another name for you is John Walston.

33:54 - John Wilson had been

33:58 - putting

34:00 - putting and selling television sets and doing

34:04 - like all of us were doing, running 20 down.

34:08 - And that's whenever, uh,

34:11 - and I, as I said, I give credit to my father.

34:15 - Look, you're going to, you're going to get us in trouble. Uh,

34:21 - this isn't a perfect way of getting television.

34:25 - John Walsh and

34:27 - I had been, uh,

34:30 - selling sets and then selling sets

34:34 - next door neighbors and extending it,

34:37 - and he'd in the beginning, he had did what we did.

34:41 - He'd run an antenna down to each individual home,

34:44 - but then he started hooking them up.

34:47 - And as a matter fact, I,

34:49 - I can vividly remember

34:52 - John showing me what he was doing.

34:55 - He was running Twin Lead and two tap off.

34:59 - He would use twin lead it, run a piece of twin lead

35:03 - in that town and then he'd tap off and solder a resistor or

35:09 - a tap off device, a

35:11 - resistor in to get to that home wherever it was.

35:15 - And John came to see me,

35:18 - uh, I guess it must have been

35:23 - sometime in late,

35:26 - late 50.

35:29 - Uh, I also

35:31 - among my other businesses, I had,

35:34 - uh, rented public address

35:36 - systems and the local, local,

35:40 - uh, uh, coal company,

35:42 - uh, always had a safety meet once a year.

35:46 - And I had hooked up amplifiers in the ballpark and,

35:50 - uh, speakers all over the place and, uh, microphones.

35:54 - And this John came down to see me

35:58 - looking to me up that day, and he won. No.

36:01 - How about this twin lead that you are the Kovacs you're using?

36:04 - I knew how to use that there, John.

36:07 - I don't have time like that.

36:08 - I was I was a there the control board.

36:11 - There were there were the but uh, you'd had a no John.

36:15 - The very, very, uh,

36:19 - very persistent.

36:20 - And during the conversation, well, he said,

36:23 - how do you get how to cook this Kovacs cup.

36:26 - So I happen to have some stuff there and showed John and then

36:30 - John then overcame his problem.

36:34 - And his problem

36:35 - was that he had had this twin lead all over the place.

36:38 - But he then, uh, put in Kovacs Cable

36:43 - and started the Kovacs Cable,

36:46 - uh, system of his own.

36:48 - What the, and what were the benefits of the Kovacs cable

36:51 - over the twin lead?

36:53 - Well, the primary primary benefit was

36:57 - a twin led, if nothing more.

37:00 - Uh, it was,

37:02 - it was subject to

37:05 - the elements if it get wet. Uh,

37:10 - there was leakage across both,

37:14 - both wires and then the attenuation of it,

37:18 - uh, went away.

37:20 - As a result, the,

37:23 - uh, the signal

37:25 - was either very poor or with no signal at all.

37:29 - So the twin lead was not

37:32 - a was not the answer.

37:35 - It was all right for an individual, a home

37:39 - where there was no amplification involved.

37:41 - But with Kovacs Cable, go cable.

37:46 - And put it simply is nothing more than like a water pipe

37:50 - with um with a

37:54 - Kovacs means

37:57 - a one wire coaxial

37:59 - distant from the center

38:02 - to the the other outside, perfectly centered in it.

38:05 - And as a result,

38:10 - theoretically it had there was no problem.

38:13 - You could take and bury it.

38:14 - You could lay it in the ground, you could laid in water.

38:18 - And it was, uh, the signal was not affected

38:22 - in any way, uh,

38:25 - from a theoretical standpoint

38:28 - it was, it was the ideal collection was

38:32 - when did you

38:33 - realize that cable television could be more

38:36 - than just retransmission of broadcast signals?

38:42 - Well,

38:43 - that that

38:47 - that gradually grew.

38:50 - I didn't do any of it locally.

38:53 - Uh, but

38:55 - a number of the systems started to

39:00 - become their own broadcast stations.

39:04 - Very crudely, they all get a camera and

39:07 - throughout the entire country, uh, uh, a number of the systems

39:12 - would have an antenna or would have a,

39:15 - uh, a camera,

39:18 - uh, and give some

39:21 - local programing, you know, nothing more than the Lou Lowe's

39:25 - local news or some, some origination.

39:29 - And it gradually caught on.

39:32 - Although I had I had one

39:38 - one phrase that I used

39:41 - way back whenever I first started,

39:44 - the IRS came in

39:47 - and said that you all attacks

39:51 - and, uh, turned out that they were trying

39:54 - to apply the old telephone, uh, tax,

39:58 - a leased wire tax, 8% leased wire tax and

40:05 - uh, we fought it, but

40:10 - that was the beginning of the end

40:13 - of the organization,

40:16 - of the cable companies because

40:21 - the IRS locally

40:23 - out of Scranton, Scranton office, uh,

40:27 - attempted to attach Panther Valley

40:30 - and also Honesdale in the Pennsylvania area.

40:34 - The both of us.

40:35 - And they had a system in Honesdale and

40:39 - they were wanted to collect the 8% tax.

40:45 - Well that became a quite

40:49 - a project in itself because

40:53 - we, we abided, we eventually had to abide by it

40:57 - because they were going to really put us out of business.

41:01 - And uh, our legal advice was,

41:05 - well, you're going to have to pay this.

41:07 - Although that's a story in itself

41:09 - because that case was taken and taken through the courts.

41:13 - And in 19, I guess it was by 1956 or 58 with the

41:19 - the famous

41:20 - tax case and

41:24 - the Supreme Court

41:26 - decided that this was not subject to that particular case,

41:30 - that particular tax, although

41:34 - overtures had been made with movie people

41:37 - and with the entire entertainment industry,

41:41 - uh, and to concede to uh,

41:45 - some sort of a tax, that was the beginning

41:49 - of a lot of the broadcast, um,

41:55 - attempts by, by the

42:00 - cable companies for, to get into or,

42:03 - into local broadcasting, local origination.

42:07 - What were your early dealings with the government like?

42:10 - It seems like

42:11 - they couldn't make up their mind whether it's regulate you as a

42:14 - telephone company or broadcast station.

42:18 - Can can't tell us a little bit about what that was like.

42:21 - Well,

42:25 - it was a case of where one thing led to another.

42:28 - Uh, they, the,

42:33 - uh, tax case, the least wired tax case

42:39 - was handled

42:41 - by a law firm in Washington DC.

42:45 - Um, a man today headed the whole thing.

42:49 - He with his law firm E Stratford, Smith and

42:55 - Strat did a marvelous job in

43:01 - in developing a case

43:03 - that eventually determined the Supreme Court determined

43:08 - that the service that we were providing,

43:12 - uh, was not subject to this least wire tax.

43:18 - And as a matter of fact, uh, just a comment

43:21 - and Strat Smith today is, uh,

43:26 - as a chair of the cable chair at Penn State and he's retired.

43:31 - Uh, he was a brilliant attorney and uh,

43:35 - I became

43:36 - very good friends with him because he was the first person

43:40 - that possibly ever received a letter

43:42 - about the cable systems.

43:45 - Uh, I mentioned about

43:48 - my, uh, counsel.

43:50 - He was a state assemblyman at the time who later

43:53 - became a senator and who later was chairman of the board

43:58 - of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

44:01 - And soon after, he retired, he passed away a few years ago.

44:07 - Um, but he,

44:10 - he was very,

44:11 - he was a young attorney

44:14 - and he was very, very, uh, attorney wise.

44:20 - He was very legal wise,

44:22 - and I couldn't make a move without checking something.

44:25 - He said, Well, you're

44:27 - you've got to check with the FCC, and I don't know

44:30 - if they might be involved.

44:32 - So we wrote a letter to the FCC and it was intercepted.

44:37 - I should have mentioned that Strat Smith at that time

44:40 - was a young attorney in the law department

44:43 - at the FCC, and it was passed over to Strat.

44:46 - Strat had the original letter and kind of interesting.

44:50 - I always used to kids kid strat that

44:54 - he said, well, we have they're not doing anything that

44:59 - that interferes with any FCC laws at the present time.

45:03 - Uh, they're not a known FCC jurisdiction whatsoever.

45:07 - So, uh, I never did receive that.

45:12 - I never filed that letter.

45:14 - I was so busy

45:15 - at the time that I didn't get all these things filed, but

45:18 - I would like to rather always would kid his Strat about that.

45:23 - He was the first one who said that what is regs exactly?

45:27 - What the FCC or what the Supreme Court said?

45:30 - No jurisdiction.

45:32 - So how did the cable industry eventually

45:36 - come to be regulated?

45:39 - Cable industry

45:43 - came to be into regulated

45:47 - because it just grew

45:50 - and, uh, financial

45:53 - groups got into it and they had to have

45:57 - some, they, it just couldn't be a hodgepodge.

46:00 - And, and as I see it,

46:04 - uh, they had to, I fought a lot of these battles, but

46:11 - what happened was

46:14 - they had to make, they made deals

46:15 - that would go ahead.

46:17 - And with the entertainment industry,

46:21 - with the broadcasters, they were the two antagonists.

46:26 - And uh, even with the utilities, primarily the telephone

46:32 - companies, telephone company, where are, um,

46:35 - one of our biggest enemies at the time, but

46:39 - because they didn't want one us on their poles.

46:42 - Well we had the telephone,

46:46 - the telephone attachment rights that had to be fought.

46:50 - And that was concluded that they had to

46:54 - they had a right of way

46:56 - and they were in a right of way that, that

47:00 - we wanted to use.

47:01 - And, uh, we were able to the telephone industry,

47:06 - ah, the, the cable industry was able to make attachments

47:10 - with reasonable compensation

47:13 - and that, that was a battle that extended over

47:18 - a number of years while in the, the excise

47:22 - tax, tax case itself

47:26 - was kind of a ceding

47:29 - that where we had agreed to something

47:32 - and it took over a period of a number of years

47:35 - until that thing was all concluded.

47:38 - And the cable industry, although I,

47:42 - I was in Washington on a number of occasions

47:46 - fighting against what they wanted to do, but

47:51 - it did nothing more than just stalling for a time.

47:55 - Then what was your relationship

47:57 - like with broadcasters when you first started?

48:01 - When we first started, it's very interesting.

48:04 - Local broadcasters were very friendly,

48:10 - uh, because they

48:11 - could see that we were extending their coverage.

48:16 - And I can cite a few instances now

48:21 - in the local area and in the Scranton, Wilkes-Barre area

48:27 - there again,

48:28 - they had a problem getting their signal into the valleys

48:32 - and they wanted to get on our cable systems.

48:34 - So they gave they had employed people who were nothing

48:39 - more than public relations people

48:44 - with to visit

48:46 - the cable systems to get them onto the systems. And,

48:50 - uh, I made a suggestion

48:54 - one day

48:56 - we were in carrying one of the stations

48:59 - on, I forget what it was.

49:02 - You must keep in mind that in the very beginning

49:05 - we had a channel capacity only of three channels,

49:09 - and eventually with some work

49:13 - on the equipment, we could get five channels

49:16 - and then we had eventually 12 channels or 12 channels

49:21 - was a real prime

49:24 - beautiful system at one time. But

49:28 - uh, we were able

49:29 - to, our business in the beginning

49:33 - was receiving television signals and

49:39 - we would install,

49:41 - uh, very complex antennas,

49:45 - uh, to receive the signals of distant stations.

49:51 - Well, that's whenever the local television

49:54 - and television companies became

49:57 - kind of our enemy then, because they could see

50:00 - that we're expanding and putting on more stations

50:04 - as an example, in lands for it.

50:05 - Originally we only had two signals

50:08 - and then the third station came in operation and that was them.

50:13 - Then RCA You, the Channel ten,

50:16 - which was because of its higher frequency,

50:20 - it had more of a problem to, to receive.

50:24 - So, uh, what we had was,

50:28 - uh, three,

50:31 - three stations and then we were able to get,

50:35 - we were equidistant landward at the antenna site

50:39 - was equidistant from Philadelphia and New York City.

50:43 - And with reasonably good antenna work

50:47 - we could get the New York stations,

50:50 - well, we'd get the New York higher

50:53 - frequency stations, the channels nine and 11,

50:56 - which were sports stations, and that was really selling

51:01 - to the various businesses in the area.

51:04 - And then as a result,

51:07 - the the

51:10 - we had a channel switch.

51:12 - We got to the point of where,

51:14 - where we had to take a channel off to put on

51:17 - if there was a fight in New York or in a ballgame

51:20 - and put it on one of the channels that we used.

51:23 - Well, I made a suggestion to one of the stations

51:27 - in Scranton, uh, I think it was a CBS station

51:32 - one day when they were in, they said, Well,

51:35 - look at what you want to do is, uh, our subscribers,

51:40 - ah, ah, that's the one that pays their bill.

51:45 - You got to make it more attractive

51:48 - instead of competing with what you want to do is

51:52 - extend your broadcast time.

51:55 - And they said that's good idea.

51:58 - And that was the beginning of extending their broadcast time.

52:01 - That was some that first broadcast

52:04 - were extended from the Scranton station.

52:07 - Instead of going off the air at 11:00,

52:10 - they were until two or

52:11 - 3:00 in the morning, just extending their time

52:14 - for to give viewers a little bit more reception.

52:18 - And, uh, generally

52:22 - the local broadcasters

52:25 - were, there was always

52:27 - a good relationship, a reasonably good relationship.

52:30 - They didn't like to see and see these other

52:33 - distant stations because they were competitors.

52:36 - But whenever we were able to expand the systems

52:41 - to get more than more than they a year, more

52:45 - than the five channels and up to a 12 channel system,

52:49 - then uh, a lot of the,

52:53 - the, uh, uh, stations

52:56 - we didn't have to do this channel switching and fact,

53:00 - I had designed a little bit of equipment for the

53:05 - automatically switch so we wouldn't

53:06 - have to go up to the antennas cited.

53:08 - They'd pre-set it for 24 hours and switch over

53:13 - whenever there was some important channels

53:15 - or another one to take one off.

53:17 - Well, we didn't have to do as much of

53:18 - that after, um, after we got into 12 channels

53:22 - and then of course more 12 channels was,

53:26 - was some of the goals of,

53:28 - of the broadcast of the cable companies.

53:31 - You said that multichannel was a it was a great salesman.

53:36 - What were you were you an engineer or a salesman?

53:38 - Yeah, I know.

53:40 - I my background was electronics.

53:43 - Matter of fact, without attempting to be a well,

53:45 - I, I'm not boastful, but I built, I,

53:50 - I, I've often,

53:53 - I've often mentioned

53:55 - that I credit my age bracket

53:59 - that I'm it was in one of the greatest ages in history

54:05 - and short term because

54:08 - I saw I was only, uh,

54:13 - I'd say I was only about

54:15 - ten years old in 1924 and

54:21 - I built my first radio set

54:26 - and became very much interested,

54:29 - primarily because my father became interested in radio

54:32 - at that time, and he was working in a shop,

54:38 - a boy boiler shop in our area.

54:40 - And uh, he had studied some radio

54:44 - and I studied and started studying it back in

54:48 - 24 and built my first radio.

54:52 - And from then on in,

54:56 - uh, continued in the radio,

55:00 - primarily radio, that's all, or to a, to a degree

55:05 - some electronics, but basic the radio had a radio and shop

55:10 - and as many in fact, interesting enough,

55:13 - uh, I serviced all of the talent of the radio

55:17 - sets for all the dealers in the area.

55:21 - I was really,

55:22 - they had no servicemen, so I'd do their service work

55:25 - and that's what happened later on television,

55:28 - my father and I were doing their radio repair work,

55:33 - radio and television repair work.

55:35 - Uh, but my, my background, uh,

55:39 - from the time I was in grade school was in electronics.

55:45 - What was you said grew up in a very interesting period.

55:48 - Well, what was the most interesting time for you?

55:52 - Pretty hard to say, because, uh, I

55:56 - on one hand, I saw the first

56:01 - radio

56:04 - in the area

56:06 - and I installed

56:09 - whenever I, uh, a less active,

56:14 - I installed my satellite receivers.

56:18 - So I did have

56:20 - that wide span of,

56:23 - uh, of electronics

56:25 - over that, that period of time.

56:28 - And where do you see cable and communications going from here?

56:32 - Oh, dear.

56:33 - I'd hate to even think of it because,

56:37 - um, communications, radio,

56:42 - television, it's all

56:45 - every day there's something that's being developed.

56:50 - Of course,

56:50 - part of that is because there's more and more people,

56:54 - uh, who are knowledgeable now and are being trained,

56:59 - uh, and they're bound to come up with all these ideas. So

57:04 - when they're writing that the

57:06 - history of television, what, what do you hope

57:08 - to be remembered for doing your contribution?

57:12 - Well, my bio shows that I

57:17 - that I'm credited with

57:19 - with the first coaxial cable

57:24 - adaptation of a cable system.

57:28 - And uh,

57:29 - uh, at that time,

57:31 - I didn't know I was doing anything really wonderful.

57:33 - It was necessity.

57:35 - And then said that

57:38 - necessity is the mother of invention. So.

57:42 - Well, Bob Tarlton, appreciate you joining us.

57:44 - Thank you. Thank you.