In 1948, people living in remote valleys in Pennsylvania solved their reception problems by putting antennas on hills and running cables to their houses. These days, the same technology once used by remote villages and cities allows viewers around the country to access a wide variety of programs and channels that meet their individual needs and desires. In the 1990's, cable TV has reached nearly half of households in the United States.
Today, the U.S. cable systems deliver hundreds of channels to about 60 million homes, while also providing a growing number of people with access to high-speed Internet. Some cable systems even allow phone calls and receive new programming technologies! In this article, we will show how cable television brings so much information and a wide range of programs, from education to the source of inspiration to just plain weird.
The first cable systems were, in effect, strategically placed antennas with very long connecting cables to TV subscribers. Since the signal from the antenna became weaker as it traveled through the length of cable, cable providers enter the amplifiers at regular intervals to increase the strength of the signal and make it acceptable for viewing. According to Bill Wall, technical director of subscriber networks at Scientific-Atlanta, a leading manufacturer of equipment for cable television systems, limitations of these amplifiers were an important issue for designers of cable systems in the next three decades.
"In a cable system, the signal could have passed for 30 or 40 amplifiers before reaching your home, one at 1,000 feet more or less," says Wall. "With each amplifier, you would get noise and distortion. Also, if one of the amplifiers are not, you lost the image. Cable has a reputation for not having the best image quality and not reliable." In late 1970, the cable TV to find a solution to the amplifier. By then, they had also developed technology that allowed them to add more programming to cable service.
Cable Television 2011
