The First Sports Video
For this, my first post on a Sports Video Group blog, I thought I’d look back at the first sports video. Ah, but when was that?
Press coverage of the 2009 book “Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World,” by David Maraniss, sometimes said those were the first Olympic Games to be televised. They weren’t. The 1948 London Olympics were televised, and they weren’t the first, either.
Princeton at Columbia, NBC TV 1939
On March 3, 1940, The New York Times noted that “It is becoming increasingly evident to the telecasters in handling athletic events in a wide-playing area such as required by baseball, football and hockey that more than one camera is necessary.” The previous year, on May 18, Louis Effrat reported in the same newspaper that the previous day’s second baseball game between Columbia and Princeton “was televised by the National Broadcasting Company, the first regularly scheduled sporting event to be pictured over the air waves.”
It wasn’t. And never mind even the bicycle race that NBC had begun televising two days earlier.
A football (soccer) match between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves was televised in England on September 16, 1937. The Wimbledon tennis tournament was on TV before that. And amateur boxing had been televised on February 4 of that year. More »
Tags: All About Television, Bell Labs, Edison, George du Maurier, history, olympics, Punch, Radio News, Schubin, Science and Invention, sports
