Television technology of the 1950s

I took this picture in March 1989, using Fujicolor 160 NLP film in my

Bessa 6x9 folding camera. I just scanned it today, nearly thirty

years later.



Four or five years before I took the picture, I interviewed the man,

Oscar Hierllihy, whose idea it was to build this big metal screen,

about twelve metres high. In the early 1950s, he had been the engineer

at a new television station in downtown St. John's. There, he oversaw

the building of a television transmitting tower about ten km to the

west of the studio. But, when they tested sending the signal from the

studio to the tower they discovered they could not get it there -- a

hill was in the way! So he bought an acre of land on this hill, built

this reflector, and aimed the studio signal at it. As he suspected,

it bounced the signal to the tower and everything worked perfectly.



In the early 1990s, somone attached a cable to this metal reflector,

and hauled it down. It had not been used for several years at that

point.