City, then a radio link from Whippany, New Jersey. Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality. Subjects of the telecast included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. A flying-spot scanner beam illuminated these subjects. The scanner that produced the beam had a 50-aperture disk. The disc revolved at a rate of 18 frames per second, capturing one frame about every 56 milliseconds. (Today's systems typically transmit 30 or 60 frames per second, or one frame every 33.3 or 16.7 milliseconds respectively.) Television historian Albert Abramson underscored the significance of the Bell Labs demonstration: "It was in fact the best demonstration of a mechanical television system ever made to this time. It would be several years before any other system could even begin to compare with it in picture quality." In 1928, General Electric launched their own experimental television station W2XB, broadcasting from the GE plant in Schenectady, New York. The station was popularly known as "WGY Television", named after the GE owned radio station WGY. The station eventually converted to an all-electronic system in the 1930s and in 1942, received a commercial license as WRGB. The station is still operating today. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, Léon Theremin had been developing a mirror drum-based television, starting with 16 lines resolution in 1925, then 32 lines and eventually 64 using interlacing in 1926, and as part of his thesis on May 7, 1926, he electrically transmitted and then projected near-simultaneous moving images on a square screen. By 1927 he achieved an image of 100 lines, a resolution that was not surpassed until 1931 by RCA, with 120 lines. Because only a limited number of holes could be made in the disks, and disks beyond a certain diameter became impractical, image resolution on mechanical television broadcasts was relatively low, ranging from about 30 lines up to 120 or so. Nevertheless, the image quality of 30-line transmissions steadily improved with technical advances, and by 1933 the UK broadcasts using the Baird system were remarkably clear. A few systems ranging into the 200-line region also went on the air. 180-lines broadcast tests were carried out by the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft in 1935, with a 16kW transmitter in Berlin. Transmissions happened three days a week for 1:30 hour each day, with sound/visions frequencies being 6.7m and 6.985m. Likewise, a 180-line system that Compagnie des Compteurs (CDC) installed in Paris was tested in 1935, and