Margaret Bourke-White 1904-1971

warm-toned, with black border, mounted, signed by the photographer in pencil on the mount, her credit stamp, typewritten caption label, and various notations, including 'G. E.,' in unidentified hands in pencil, on the reverse; accompanied by a backing board with a typed caption label, 'A Margaret Bourke-White Photograph.  Panel in N. B. C. Mural Showing Transmitting Tubes,'  and annotated 'Given me by J. C. Warner Nov. 1935, dated December 193_(torn)' in an unidentified hand in ink, circa 1930 (Goldberg, fig. 27; Photography of Design, p. 71; Retrospective, p. 12)

The photographer to J. C. Warner, General Electric, circa 1933

Gift to William C. White from the above, 1935

By descent to the present owner

The image offered here is one of a number of studies used by Bourke-White in her mammoth 1933 mural for NBC's new studios at Rockefeller Center.  The mural's theme was 'The Story of Radio,' and the images included photographs of microphones, receiving tubes, loudspeakers, winding condenser coils, and the transmitting tubes of the present image, among many others.  The 160-foot-long mural, the largest photo-mural in the world at that time, was opened to the public in 1934 and remained in place until the 1950s.