EARLY DEVELOPMENT
RCA, the company that dominated the radio business in the United States with its two NBC networks, invested $50 million in the development of electronic television. To direct the effort, the company's president, David Sarnoff, hired the Russian-born scientist Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, who had participated in Rosing's experiments. In 1939, RCA televised the opening of the New York World's Fair, including a speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the first president to appear on television. Later that year RCA paid for a license to use Farnsworth's television patents. RCA began selling television sets with 5 by 12 in (12.7 by 25.4 cm) picture tubes. The company also began broadcasting regular programs, including scenes captured by a mobile unit and, on May 17, 1939, the first televised baseball gameÑbetween Princeton and Columbia universities. By 1941 the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), RCA's main competition in radio, was broadcasting two 15-minute newscasts a day to a tiny audience on its New York television station