Massachusetts Television Institute opens a "television theater" in Boston on this day in 1938, the first theater of its kind. The Institute charged 25 cents for admission. Some 200 people attended the first show, which broadcast singers, musicians, and dancers who were performing in a studio above the auditorium.
In the theater below, the audience viewed a black-and-white image on a 9-by-12-inch screen. Such experimental uses of television persisted throughout the 1930s, and televisions did not become common household appliances until after World War II.
