It takes decades for innovations from the littoral vorderlands to seep into mainland America.
I think my folks didn't get cable till after I was in college.
Not sure; I stopped watching at 13.
We had channels 3?, 5, 7, 9, and 11 out Chicago; 2, 4, 6, 10, and 12; 13 was out of Rockford. Maybe 3 was actually Madison or from across the pond; it didn't come in very well.
They were paired so ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS each had a channel in both cities, usually right next to each other on the dial. So 4 paired with 5, 6 with 7, 10 with 11, etc. 10 and 11 were PBS, which is where the kids' programs were. Well, and 9: 9 was WGN out of Chicago, which was its own thing.
And that's all you got. The Milwaukee channels were clear, the Chicago ones a bit noisy. 13 wasn't good, and 3 wasn't worth trying.
We did watch channel 9 a lot.
But 2 paired with 12 for CBS. Dunno why. 4/5 were NBC and 6/7 were ABC.
It was a simpler time. And no, there just wasn't cable available.
So saying that "cable TV is from the 50s" just isn't fair.
I wonder whether they paired adjacent channels so if there was bleed it was still the same programming, at least during prime time.
People had these massive antennae on their roof that you had this primitive fully-wired controller connected to that you could use to crank the motorized electrical gears at its base to rotate it every which way to try to get things to come in better. Usually this was futile.
8. 8 was from across the pond. It came in so poorly you probably only got something on it you could watch a few times a year during weird weather.
I think it was out of Grand Rapids. Michigan. Transpondian.
It basically wasn't a channel for us.
Rockford was a little better than Madison.
But in both those cases I wonder whether they just didn't broadcast with enough juice.
We were 45 minutes from Milwaukee, 75 minutes from Chicago, 60 minutes from Rockford, 90 minutes from Madison. And Grand Rapids is a can't-there-from-here-unless-you're-a-seagull.
Where of course minutes=miles, as it should always be.
We of course had only VHF channels, which is why 2–13 was all you could ever get. Anywhere.
Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter.
Frequencies immediately below VHF are denoted high frequency (HF), and the next higher frequencies are known as ultra high frequency (UHF).
Common uses for radio waves in the VHF band are digital audio broadcasting (DAB) and FM radio broadcasting, television broadcasting, two-way land mobile radio systems (emergency, business, private use and military), long range data communication up to...
> Radio waves in the VHF band propagate mainly by line-of-sight and ground-bounce paths; unlike in the HF band there is only some reflection at lower frequencies from the ionosphere (skywave propagation). They do not follow the contour of the Earth as ground waves and so are blocked by hills and mountains, although because they are weakly refracted (bent) by the atmosphere they can travel somewhat beyond the visual horizon out to about 160 km (100 miles).
> They can penetrate building walls and be received indoors, although in urban areas reflections from buildings cause multipath propagation, which can interfere with television reception. ... Occasionally, when conditions are right, VHF waves can travel long distances by tropospheric ducting due to refraction by temperature gradients in the atmosphere.
That's why weather mattered.
And why occasionally you could get things skipping across the big water.
I remember Dad trying to explain band frequencies for radio and TV to me, and AM and FM and all, from before kindergarten. All I remembered was that day and night were different in their propagation of the different radio frequencies for reasons of big words.
So like mid 60s. He was a bit techogeeky for his day, but that means radio stuff.
From a pharma document that describes the parameters that are monitored and studied during the manufacture of an antibody drug:
Non-critical output attributes: Material characteristic that represents performance parameters (e.g. cell count, viability, yield) and/or generates process trend and kn...
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