The DuMont Television Network was launched in 1946 and ceased broadcasting in 1956. Allen DuMont, who created the network, preserved most of what it produced in kinescope format; however, many of these were destroyed around 1958 in order to recover the silver content. By the 1970s, however, the DuMont archive was considered worthless – so much so that all remaining kinescopes and videotapes were loaded into three trucks and dumped into Upper New York Bay. Since then, there has been extensive research on which DuMont programs have episodes extant.