Prime-time TV in America didn’t start in a laboratory at General Electric, RCA or AT&T, but instead at the corner of Dubuque Street and Iowa Avenue in Iowa City. W9XK, the University of Iowa’s experimental television station, went on the air January 25, 1933, with a weekly or twice-weekly schedule of lectures, music, and drama. It was the first educational TV station in the U.S.

Nationally about 30 experimental TV stations were broadcasting test signals in the early 1930’s. Only W9XK, however, aired programs regularly, attracting a small but loyal audience. Viewers from as far away as Pennsylvania reported receiving the signal.

E.B. Kurtz, head of the UI’s Department of Electrical Engineering, Carl Menzer, manager of WSUI radio, and Clement F. Wade, a 1913 UI College of Law graduate and president of the Chicago-based Western Television Corporation, launched the project. Telecasts originated from the electrical engineering building two blocks east of Old Capitol. Programs included lectures on such varied topics as oral hygiene, identifying trees, and charcoal sketching. Faculty and students from across the campus participated.

The video portion of the broadcasts was delivered via short-wave frequency 2050 kHz, while sound was provided by WSUI at 880 kHz on AM. The W9XK experiment ended in 1939, when the station’s mechanical-disk system of transmission became obsolete, succeeded by an electronic system largely in use today. Another experimental station, W9XUI, operated briefly as a closed-circuit (non-broadcast) service during 1940-41. Though the University was granted a license to operate W9XUI using the new electronic standard, it never built a transmitter for that purpose.

This collection, featuring over 100 items, includes photographs, correspondence, and articles chronicling W9XK’s brief but significant history. Materials are from the University of Iowa Archives, Department of Special Collections. No video or film footage of W9XK’s broadcasts is known to exist today.