On This Day, April 7, 1927, Herbert Eugene Ives of Bell Laboratories and the inventor of long-distance television transmission, broadcasts a picture from Washington D.C. to New York, a distance of about 200 miles over telephone lines.

It was a speech by then U.S. Secretary of Commerce and future U.S. President Herbert Hoover announcing, "Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world's history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown."

Ives was born on July 31, 1882 in Philadelphia to Frederic Eugene Ives and Mary Olmstead. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania.

Just like his father, Herbert Ives became an expert in color photography. His main point of interest was aerial photography. He was also an avid coin collector.

In 1903, Ives patented the technique for the "Changeable Sign", which showed different pictures from different angles.

He continued his studies at ...