One summer day century ago, a crowd packed a second-floor office on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle. The space held the labs of inventor Charles Jenkins , and people had come to watch a 10-by-12-inch “radiovision” screen, onto which a shadowy image of spinning windmill blades soon flickered into view. The model windmill was being blown by a fan at a naval research facility in Anacostia; the image was sent to a rooftop antenna and broadcast to Jenkins’s lab. The audience applauded as they witnessed these “motion pictures by radio,” as the Washington Post described the technology. We now call it television.

That day, June 13, 1925, is a good candidate for the moment when TV broadcasting was born—or at least first witnessed by the public. Later that month, Jenkins secured a pat

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