Have you ever noticed the bronze plaque on Coxcomb Hill that honors the site of the first community television installation in the U.S. in February 1949?

The installation was the brainchild of former Astoria resident L.E. (Ed) Parsons, who was responsible for creating cable television. “Ghosts in the Arctic” is his biography, as written by his son, Mark E. Parsons, who was born in Astoria in 1939.

Initially, Parsons Sr. harnessed the television signal from Seattle and then routed it to a few spots in Astoria with televisions. But problems quickly arose when crowds would gather and hang around to watch at a hotel or appliance store 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 Parsons 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.

“Dad liked working in the downtown district. He strung cable up buildings, through underground tunnels and down elevator shafts,” Mark added. ‟Someone told me he also flushed (coaxial cable) down toilets and pulled it out the other end, but I couldn’t verify this story.”

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.” (Photos: Mark Parsons/Popular Mechanics)