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Technologists began investigating the idea of television even before electronics was discovered. They first worked at sending a picture along a telephone wire. The idea was to break it into small sections. The pieces would be reassembled at the destination, much like a jigsaw puzzle. One inventor developed a transmission and reception theory based on a spinning disk. It was called mechanical television. Charles Francis Jenkins used this method to become America's most successful early television pioneer. The Federal Radio Commission granted him the first American television license in 1928. Operating from Washington, DC, its call letters were W3XK.
Jenkins was born near Dayton, OH, and attended high school in Fountain City, Indiana. He graduated from nearby Earlham College and moved to Washington in 1890. He went to work for the U.S. Life Saving Service, now the U.S. Coast Guard. Jenkins, impressed by Thomas Edison's work with motion picture equipment, spent his free time constructing an improved film projector. Jenkins completed an experimental one in 1894 that...