Cable Television - Brought to you in Part By Jensen Precast Structures

Cable television is in its most basic terms is a structure of supplying television via radio frequency signals that are transmitted through stable optical fibers or coaxial cables. Cable has separated itself from the more customary over-the-air method, which entails the use of an antenna.

With the innovations in cable television, now more than 84% of American homes have cable television. Globally, Europe, Australia, and East Asia are all seeing similar demands for cable television. For years, Jensen Precast has been providing structures for cable television structures. Cable television began quite simply: to give families in rural areas of the country better television reception. Both of the men credited with creating cable television, Robert Tarlton and John Walson, lived in rural areas. Tarlton owned an appliance store in Lansford, PA that also sold televisions. The town was over 100 miles away from the more densely populated cities of New York City and Pennsylvania to the north.

Tarlton set out with a group of savvy businessmen who were very aware of the advertising potential for everything from Tarlton's used television parts to used cosmetic equipment and everything in between. They fashioned an antennae on the top of a mountain, and Tarlton then strung wire from the antennae on the top on the mountain back to Tarlton's home and shop. Tarlton's group also developed that basic infrastructure for what we know now as cable television. Along with Walson, also from Pennsylvania, but from Mahanoy City, he was the first to use a cable signal amplifier to position and allocate cable wire to homes within a community for a price. Both of the men's systems were originally three channel systems and at a later day upgraded to five channel systems. Looking at the variety of cable television options available today, it is difficult to fathom that until the 1970s cable television was a technology only available in rural areas of the United States.

Cable television employs a headened master facility for television signals over a cable television system. Many cable television systems utilize a system called "Headened in the Sky" or "HITS." HITS represent a unit of Comcast that holds hundreds of channels. HITS is used by many smaller systems to add service and keep the used dishes in place; thus avoiding costly purchases of new dishes. Trying to keep costs as low as possible for consumers is a common practice among businesses, and re-use of capital equipment is increasingly apparent in the used packaging equipment markets. Just a trip to the local office supply store these days can get you a refill of your used ink catridges to go with your used ink jet coder!

Perhaps, the late columnist Ann Landers said it best when she remarked, with he usual humorous flair, "Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other." With the continued innovations only history will decide the rest of the television debate, which more certainly now, the cable television debate.