With the manuscript of my book at the editors, I can once again look at some piece of arcana of Capitol Hill history. And little is more arcane than what I discovered while researching something completely different: The electric scoreboard.
In those long-ago days before TV – or even radio – the only way to find out what was going on during an away baseball game was to hang around the telegraph offices of the city to find out how the game stood. In 1908, someone came up with a new idea: To display the information garnered from the telegraph dispatches on a scoreboard displayed in a theater.
The idea of a scoreboard which would allow spectators to keep track of the progress of a game was far from new: As far back as 1897, an electric scoreboard had been used in the Michigan-Chicago college football game to allow all spectators to keep track of the exact status of the game. Ten years later, this was done at baseball games, as well.
Thus the idea of combining these two technologies made keeping track of away games a far more pleasant experience. A 10 cent ticket gave the holder a warm seat, the progress of the game – and usually a show, as well.
Two companies jumped on this new technology: Rodier and Playograph. Though the former started earlier, Playograph soon became the generic name for this form of entertainment. The setup each used was similar: A board with a baseball diamond painted on it, as well as slots for the players names, and the state of play – as well as the score. Two operators behind the board ensured that the information was kept up-to-the-minute, including a method for showing the ball going from the pitcher to home plate, which allowed the operator to show what type of pitch had been thrown.
The technology was used by various theaters for the next couple of years, with the Rifle Armory hosting matches one year, the Gayety another. In 1912, though, baseball fever swept through DC and suddenly, multiple theaters began using this new attraction.
An electric scoreboard in use outside the Washington Post building during the 1912 World Series (Shorpys')
One of the six theaters in DC to ‘show’ the June 16, 1912 game was Meader’s theater, on 8th Street SE, which promised ‘an improved electric scoreboard.’ Sadly, other than one mention in a Washington Herald article that day, no further mention is made of this technology on Capitol Hill.
In the course of the 1920s, Playographs disappeared from the scene as radio took over. At first, the radio worked much the same way as the Playgraph: The announcers would be given the barest information and convert that into a fully-fleshed out report on what was going on. Fans of the series M*A*S*H may remember the episode “Out of Sight Out of Mind” in which Hawkeye and co recreate a baseball match in the same way.
Today, you can get the same experience by looking at MLB’s gameday program.