Baird, a British television pioneer, experimented with video recording on gramophone discs in the late 1920s. McLean (a consultant) has restored the surviving "Phonovision" discs and, using computer techniques reminiscent of an archaeological dig, has revealed the images on the discs and uncovered details of how the recordings were made. McLean also restored amateur recordings of the BBC's 30-line Television Services (1932-1935), providing a glimpse at what viewers were then watching. This book helps explain this period in television history. Illustrated with historic photographs, it sheds light on the achievements of Baird, the development of video recording, and the definition and invention of television itself. c. Book News Inc.
When the BBC launched the world's first regular, high-definition television service on 2 November, 1936 it was the culmination of decades of technological innovations. More than this, however, the service meant that the principle of television had finally found its place. The Birth of British Television – A History traces the early history and development of television, from the experiments of amateurs to the institutionalised developments that led to the world's first regular, high definition television service. Author Mark Aldridge provides a clear, in-depth and accessible introduction for those either exploring the period for the first time or seeking new insights into the beginnings of the industry. In tracing the origins and development of television, Aldridge focuses on a number of important factors including the attitude of the press towards early television and examines the way that expectations of television changed over time prior to its official launch. Utilising new research, this illuminating study examines how the aims for a new television service developed, and the extent to which content and technology were linked. The Birth of British Television approaches this formative period from several perspectives, from private individuals to the BBC and government, while also examining the broader opinions at the time towards the new medium through press reports and feedback from the general public. Also included is an assessment of early programming, which helps to offer a new and profound evaluation of the development of early television. Mark Aldridge is a Lecturer in Film and TV Studies at Southampton Solent University, UK. He specialises in British television and both film and television history. His previous publications include T is for Television (2008), an analysis of the work of Russell T. Davies, co-written with Andy Murray.
This is a balanced biography of one of the 20th Century's outstanding inventors, published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Baird's first public demonstration of a rudimentary television system.
'A fabulous distillation of all the joy and bitterness, hurt and humour of an extraordinary man... I doubt there will be a better written, more interesting or important book published in Scotland this year' - Daily Mail (2004) 'Funds were going down, the situation was becoming desperate and we were down to our last £30 when at last, one Friday in the first week of October 1925, everything functioned properly. The image of the dummy's head formed itself on the screen with what appeared to me almost unbelievable clarity. I had got it! I could scarcely believe my eyes, and felt myself shaking with excitement.' In one of the most extraordinary and entertaining autobiographies to be written by any scientist or inventor, John Logie Baird tells the story of his life and the scientific journey which led to the creation of television. He writes with blunt candour and caustic wit about his childhood in Scotland and the wild escapades of his early business career, when he marketed his own patent brand of medicated undersocks, failed in a hilarious attempt to set up a jam-making factory in the Caribbean and went on to sell soap wholesale. Then he gives the definitive account of the epoch-making experiments through which television was created, and his later troubled relationship with the fledgling BBC and his bête noir, Lord Reith, who disliked television. The BBC obstructed and snubbed Baird at every opportunity. Some of his commercial and scientific rivals made a concerted attempt to discredit his status as the central figure in the invention of television, and even today, this has led to his importance being misunderstood. Edited and introduced by Baird's only son, Malcolm, this new edition will help to set the record straight. This edition features a new preface and updated and expanded footnotes, referencing two important technical books by Dr. Douglas Brown on Baird's work on colour and 3D television during World War II. In August 2020, an American journal published a research article by Brandon Inglis and Prof, Gary Couples, with details of the special photocell that Baird used in early stages of his research (1924-26).
A New Yorker and Fortune Best Book of the Year "A must-read for all Americans who want to remain the ones deciding what they can read, watch, and listen to.” —Arianna Huffington Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of today’s great information powers—Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T—Tim Wu uncovers a time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry begets empire. It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry—from the telephone to radio to film—once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this pathbreaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of "the master switch"? Here, Tim Wu shows how a battle royale for the Internet’s future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out.
But what does your furniture point at?' asks the character Joey in the sitcom Friends on hearing an acquaintance has no TV. It's a good question: since its beginnings during WW2, television has assumed a central role in our houses and our lives, just as satellite dishes and aerials have become features of urban skylines. Television (or 'the idiot's lantern', depending on your feelings about it) has created controversy, brought coronations and World Cups into living rooms, allowed us access to 24hr news and media and provided a thousand conversation starters. As shows come and go in popularity, the history of television shows us how our society has changed. Armchair Nation reveals the fascinating, lyrical and sometimes surprising history of telly, from the first demonstration of television by John Logie Baird (in Selfridges) to the fear and excitement that greeted its arrival in households (some viewers worried it might control their thoughts), the controversies of Mary Whitehouse's 'Clean Up TV' campaign and what JG Ballard thought about Big Brother. Via trips down memory lane with Morecambe and Wise, Richard Dimbleby, David Frost, Blue Peter and Coronation Street, you can flick between fascinating nuggets from the strange side of TV: what happened after a chimpanzee called 'Fred J. Muggs' interrupted American footage of the Queen's wedding, and why aliens might be tuning in to The Benny Hill Show.
First demonstrated in 1928, color television remained little more than a novelty for decades as the industry struggled with the considerable technical, regulatory, commercial, and cultural complications posed by the medium. Only fully adopted by all three networks in the 1960s, color television was imagined as a new way of seeing that was distinct from both monochrome television and other forms of color media. It also inspired compelling popular, scientific, and industry conversations about the use and meaning of color and its effects on emotions, vision, and desire. In Bright Signals Susan Murray traces these wide-ranging debates within and beyond the television industry, positioning the story of color television, which was replete with false starts, failure, and ingenuity, as central to the broader history of twentieth-century visual culture. In so doing, she shows how color television disrupted and reframed the very idea of television while it simultaneously revealed the tensions about technology's relationship to consumerism, human sight, and the natural world.
While the discoveries of scientists have provided vital knowledge which has made innovation possible, it is more often than not the amateur who enjoys the "eureka moment" when an invention works for the first time. Weightman tells fascinating stories of struggle, rivalry, and the ingenuity of both famous inventors and hundreds of forgotten people, and offers a fresh take on the making of our modern world.
Albert Abramson published (with McFarland) in 1987 a landmark volume titled The History of Television, 1880-1941 ("massive...research"--Library Journal; "voluminous documentation"--Choice; "many striking old photos"--The TV Collector). At last he has produced the follow-up volume; the reader may be assured there is no other book in any language that is remotely comparable to it. Together, these two volumes provide the definitive technical history of the medium. Upon the development in the mid-1940s of new cameras and picture tubes that made commercial television possible worldwide, the medium rose rapidly to prominence. Perhaps even more important was the invention of the video tape recorder in 1956, allowing editing, re-shooting and rebroadcasting. This second volume, 1942 to 2000 covers these significant developments and much more. Chapters are devoted to television during World War II and the postwar era, the development of color television, Ampex Corporation's contributions, television in Europe, the change from helical to high band technology, solid state cameras, the television coverage of Apollo II, the rise of electronic journalism, television entering the studios, the introduction of the camcorder, the demise of RCA at the hands of GE, the domination of Sony and Matsushita, and the future of television in e-cinema and the 1080 P24 format. The book is heavily illustrated (as is the first volume).
