FDR's TV Debut That Nobody Watched: How 200 People Paid $13K for a Paperweight Before WWII Ruined Everything

On April 30, 1908, a man who would become one of history's most notorious failures was born in a modest apartment in Braunau am Inn, Austria—but we're not talking about *that* particular birth today. Instead, let's discuss what happened on April 30, 1939, when the New York World's Fair opened and television made its grand American debut to a public that had absolutely no idea what to do with it.NBC broadcast Franklin D. Roosevelt's opening ceremony speech, making him the first sitting U.S. President to appear on television. The problem? Fewer than 200 television sets existed in New York City at the time. RCA was hawking their sets at the fair for anywhere between $200 and $600—roughly $4,400 to $13,000 in today's money—for the privilege of watching fuzzy black-and-white images on a screen smaller than most modern tablets.The entire spectacle was deliciously absurd. NBC set up a camera to capture FDR dedicating the fair's theme of "Building the World of Tomorrow," beaming it out to virtually nobody. Those fortunate few hundred viewers who could afford the receivers watched grainy footage of the President on screens that measured perhaps five to twelve inches diagonally, with picture quality charitably described as "experimental."The fair's television exhibit became a sensation anyway, with crowds gathering around demonstration sets to gawk at live images transmitted through the air like witchcraft. David Sarnoff of RCA, ever the showman, proclaimed the birth of a new industry while conveniently declining to mention that World War II would halt American television production for the next six years, leaving those early adopters with very expensive paperweights that broadcast approximately nothing.This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AIThis episode includes AI-generated content.