Du Mont TVs for 1956

National Geographic, March 1956

Dr. Allen B. DuMont started his company in 1931 with only $1000 and a lab in his basement.  It went on to develop a number of important TV innovations, and was considered a "gold standard" in the 1940's.  In 1946, the company also created one of the world's first commercial television networks, through which it introduced Jackie Gleason.  It failed for a variety of reasons, but according to its Wikipedia entry, here's the real kicker:

"DuMont produced more than 20,000 TV episodes during the decade from 1946–1956. Because the shows were created prior to the launch of Ampex's electronic videotape recorder in late 1956, all of them were initially broadcast live in B&W and then recorded on film kinescope for reruns and for West coast rebroadcasts. By the early 1970s their vast library of 35mm and 16mm kinescopes eventually wound up in the hands of ABC, who reportedly disposed of all of them in New York's East River to make room for more recent-vintage videotapes in a warehouse. Other kinescopes were put through a silver reclaiming process, because of the microscopic amounts of silver that made up the emulsion of B&W film during this time. It's estimated that only about 350 complete DuMont TV shows survive today, the most famous being virtually all of Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners comedy sketches."