RCA Engineer Loren Jones on the Use of TV in World War II

By Billy Ingram

Television during World War II? TV sets didn't really start appearing in people's homes until 1948 when the networks dipped their toes in the media with their first primetime broadcasts, and even then only in the largest cities. By 1950, television was available across a large swath of the nation, TV sets really started selling in large numbers by the mid-fifties.

If it hadn't been for WWII shortages of metal and glass, TV would have been introduced to America in the early-1940s. In the meantime, during the early-1940s, TV technology was being exploited by the military in an effort to one-up the Germans who were also investing heavily in television technology.

Common household items being developed first for the military was not uncommon. Keep in mind - plastics, clinging plastic wrap, the Super Ball, and the internet were all invented for military use.

Interviewed by the Archive of American Television, RCA engineer Loren Jones recalls working alongside the Air Force in an attempt to create the first 'smart bombs,' "If a bomb could be controlled while it's falling toward its target,' Jones said. "It could be made to strike the target more accurately if in fact it has some wings and act like an airplane."

"So a bomb with a little television camera to show what it's approaching, show the target, and a radio control system, something like toy airplanes have now... you could then fly the bomb right into the target with tremendous accuracy compared to bombs that you drop and can't control or vary after it has left the plane.

The concept was a "television torpedo." But was 1940s TV tech up to the task?