75
w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m
O
N THE EVENING OF AUGUST 14, 1953, SEVERAL YOUNG BOYS
STOOD IN FRONT OF AN APPLIANCE STORE IN BUTTE, MON-
TANA, THEIR EYES TRANSFIXED ON SOMETHING DISPLAYED
IN THE STORE WINDOW. At the same time, not far across town on the
second floor of Frank Reardon's Pay-N-Save Supermarket on Harrison
Avenue, a man named Ed Craney—the same man who first brought radio
to Montana—was fine-tuning the dial on some piece of electronic hard-
ware. After final calibrations were made, Craney gave the signal to his
small crew to send the signal.
Back in town, the faces of the young boys gathered around the shop win-
dow took on a pale, bluish glow. They watched as a ghostly image mate-
rialized right before their eyes on the 17-inch RCA television screen. It
wasn't a show or a commercial or anything approaching programming
as we would know it today, but a simple test pattern that Craney had
broadcasted from just down the street—a monochromatic pattern of
lines and geometric shapes over which a Native American chief's head in
full headdress was superimposed. This test signal first broadcasted from
a room above a supermarket on Harrison Avenue would soon be beamed
into living rooms around the state—from Butte to Billings, Missoula to
Miles City, and beyond. Montana would finally join millions of other liv-
ing rooms across America—and it would never look the same again.
THE
FIRST
SIGNAL
by CAB TRAN
