Without knowing it, Uncle Ralph had just created a tiny, makeshift cable TV operation. And, indeed, that is exactly how cable TV actually started around the United States, beginning in the late 1940s. It was called community antenna television, and it was typically used in places that couldn’t get reception because of significant distance from transmitters or because of hilly terrain. Cable wouldn’t have its own programming for decades; it was simply a way to bring broadcast television to outlying small towns and communities far from the larger cities where the signals originated.
