Cable television, formally antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way as Community Antenna Television or CATV, was born in the mountains of Pennsylvania in the late 1940s. At the time, there were only a few television antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way, located mostly in larger cities. People who didn't live in a city, or in a location where signals could be antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way easily, were unable to watch television.
Though it had not yet become popular, city department stores displayed many different TVs for sale. And, like an apartment house where every resident had his or her own television, the roofs of the stores were beginning to resemble forests of TV antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way.
Milton Jerrold Shapp, who later was elected governor of Pennsylvania during the 1970s, developed a antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way antenna television (MATV) system to eliminate the forest of antennas for city department stores and apartment buildings. Shapp's system used coaxial cable and signal boosters, capable of carrying antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way signals at once.
For many years, cable was simply a way to improve antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way so people could see network broadcasts. It served as a community's antenna, but it didn't stay antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way for long.
Mr. Walson in the early 1950s and later other system owners like Joseph Gans of Hazleton and Claude Reinhard of
Perhaps the biggest event since cable antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way, and what many say is responsible for the cable's greatest growth spurt, was the development of Pay TV. antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way television was launched in November
1972 when John Walson's company, Service Electric, offered Home Box Office (HBO) over its antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way system in Wilkes-Barre. HBO was originally distributed by a terrestrial microwave system. It improved its reach as it was the first programming service to use a communications satellite to distribute antennasbegancableitsknownmastermultiplePayreceivedreceptionstationsthat way programming.