On January 3, 1947, the very first session of Congress was televised to the American public. In particular, cameras were allowed into the House of Representatives Chamber to televise the opening of the 80th Congress. This first televised broadcast lasted around two hours and was televised in New York and Philadelphia. However, this type of televised broadcast did not occur again for around three decades. That’s because Congress could not determine what, how, and when to allow television into its chambers.

Over time, Americans began to watch more and more television. In fact, from the beginning to the end of the 1950s the number of Americans who owned TVs skyrocketed from around 2% to nearly 90%. As television became a dominant form of news and entertainment, Congress slowly began to look into how it could broadcast its proceedings.

In 1977, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas "Tip" O’Neill of Massachusetts, granted a 3-month closed-circuit TV testing period in the House Chambers. The testing period proved successful and within a year the House approved televising its proceedings and created its own television network called C-SPAN (which stands for Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network).

On March 19, 1979, C-SPAN broadcast its first live House proceeding. Now, the next time you watch C-SPAN you’ll know why and where it came from, dating back to the original first televised session of Congress on January 3, 1947.