Have you ever noticed the bronze plaque on Coxcomb Hill? It honors L.E. (ED) PARSONS, pictured above, right, as being responsible for the BEGINNING OF CABLE TV, which got its start in Astoria.

Local history buff alert: “GHOSTS IN THE ARCTIC,” cover is pictured above, left is his biography, as written by his son, MARK E. PARSONS, who was born in Astoria in 1939.

Initially, Parsons Sr. harnessed the TV signal from Seattle, and then routed it to a few spots in Astoria with TVs. But problems quickly arose when crowds would gather and hang around to watch at a local hotel or appliance store, for instance, and completely disrupt business.

A solution was at hand. “Anywhere I could get a cable there was a television set,” Ed Parsons is quoted as saying. “Pretty soon every bar in town had a set and that was the end of the problem of people on the street at night, creating another problem. Everyone wanted a cable and television in their house. We started running cable all over the city.”

“Dad wasn’t selling cable television in Astoria,” Mark wrote, “he was selling television sets. His store, Radio and Electronics was on Commercial Street in the heart of the business district and the sets were selling as fast as he could restock them. This made it official; Dad had developed the world’s first cable television system. It was soon being called CATV, or Community Antenna Television.”

The Ear loved this aside: “Dad liked working in the downtown district. He strung cable up buildings, through underground tunnels and down elevator shafts. Someone told me he also flushed coax down toilets and pulled it out the other end, but I couldn’t verify this story.”

Mark wrote in a letter to the Ear that after leaving Astoria, Ed Parsons “went on to Alaska and further fame in 1953, but that cable system in Astoria was … one of the greatest achievements in his life.”

“Ghosts in the Arctic” is available at Lucy’s Books and Godfather’s Books.