My speciality. Шепелева М.А - 20 стр.

      3.3 Text 3 The Cable Option
      3.3.1 Read the text and say how the cable television is distributed.

l. Ask your friends questions on the text.
2. Find the main information in every passage of the text.

         Over the years, cable television has made some technical strides of its own
– not in how a signal is produced but in how it is distributed. People stuck an
antenna on the roof and piffled in whatever signals were in range. But what about
individuals living in outlying areas or in valleys not being reached with viewable
pictures? For them, an additional technology was needed and began to emerge
almost as soon as the television medium was released from its wartime bonds.
         In 1948, John Walson, an employee of Pennsylvania Power & Light, was
also running the family appliance store in Mahanoy City. Because the city is in a
valley, local residents could not receive television signals from the new
Philadelphia stations eighty miles away. Walson was forced to drive prospective
TV set buyers to an antenna he had constructed on top of a nearby mountain in
order to demonstrate his wares. When the disadvantage of this method became
apparent, he used his connections with the power company to string a cable from
the mountain top to his store, wiring several homes along the way. By the summer,
Walson had hooked up 725 residences and began to charge $2 per month for
providing three Philadelphia stations.
         At about the same time, Ed Parsons of Astoria, Oregon, mounted a i.iaster
antenna atop the local hotel, pulled in the signal of the new Seattle television
station, and used a combination of retransmitters and coaxial cables to pipe the
signal to residences in the community, subscribers-paid $10ft for installation and
became a part of the community cooperative. In classifying such arrangements, an
FCC staff attorney coined the term CA TV (community antenna television), and a
new branch of the electronic media was on its way.
         Notice that even from its inception, CATV was not broadcasting. It did not
send signals into the VHF/UHF airwaves for everyone who wanted to grab them.
Instead, the programming was fed down a private line to subscribers or co-op
members who contracted to receive its services. Initially, CATV was merely a
retransmission device that extended broadcasters' signals into areas not reachable
by over-the-air means.
         Other entrepreneurs, such as Robert Tarleton of Lansford, Pennsylvania,
soon entered the field. Using his background in electronics, Tarleton created the
first commercially viable cable system by modifying existing signal amplifiers
specifically for coaxial cable use. This greatly improved the quality and strength of
the cable retransmission. His Panther Valley TV Company also followed
systematic utility-company practices of running lines on poles up and down the
streets. Through the activities of Walson, Parsons, and Tarleton, the prototype for
the modern cablecaster had been established.