Fred Rogers first encountered a television in 1951 during his senior year at Rollins College. He hated it.

“I saw people throwing pies in each other’s faces, and I thought: This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?” Rogers said in an interview in 1999.

Intrigued by the medium’s potential, he told his parents that he wanted to postpone his plans to become a Presbyterian minister in order to pursue a career in television.

“They said, ‘You’ve never even seen it!’” Rogers said. “And I said, ‘Well, I’ve seen enough of it here that I’d like to try.’”