The switch to digital telecasts is on, and to mark the occasion the Iowa Digital Library has released the W9XK Experimental Television at Iowa collection celebrating the birth of American prime-time TV more than 75 years ago.

This “birth” didn’t happen in a laboratory at AT&T, General Electric or RCA, however. Instead, regularly scheduled TV programs were launched on The University of Iowa campus, in a building at the corner of Iowa Avenue and Dubuque Street in Iowa City.

W9XK, as the experimental TV station was then known, went on the air in 1933. For six years the station presented a two-nights-per-week schedule of “sight and sound” lectures, musical performances, and drama…

Read the full press release here.