“Politique de la grandeur” versus “Made in Germany”: Politische Kulturgeschichte der Technik am Beispiel der PAL-SECAM-Kontroverse (review)

Andreas Fickers is the first to examine in great detail the debates and decisions that preceded the inauguration of European color television. In the 1960s, France and West Germany each promoted their own transmission norm as the potential common European standard. Supporters of both norms claimed to standardize the transmission of monochrome and chromatic television by technical means, thereby allowing the exchange of programming and techniques. By August 1967, the Germans adopted PAL (Phase Alternating Line). A few weeks later, the French began broadcasting their colorful images using SECAM (séquentiel couleur à mémoire). “Why did this process of standardization fail?” Fickers asks. He bases his study on historical material from various European archives and on interviews with contemporaries. From the onset, he argues that there can be no single clear cut answer to this question. Instead, he maintains that one must tolerate multiple perspectives, proposing that the PAL-SECAM case proves that if there is no way to enforce the “best system” in technical terms, nontechnical factors gain importance. He claims that PAL and SECAM are to be characterized as equivalent in their technological aspects.

His hypothesis conforms to the rise and fall of an ambitious and symbolical standardization process. SECAM began as the European alternative to the U.S. National Television System Committee (NTSC) standard. Its “technological innovation” promised significant improvements, and it nourished the French government’s hopes of subsidizing a competitive electronics industry. The notes of the contemporary French minister of information, Alain Peyrefitte, imply that President de Gaulle himself ordered the use of SECAM as a “technopolitical vehicle” to establish a French foreign policy that was shifting its interest toward the Soviet Union. The Soviet- French contract to further develop SECAM can be interpreted in this context. At the same time, PAL and its promoters gained more and more supporters in the rest of Western Europe. PAL represented a “system optimization” of NTSC promoted by the German manufacturer Telefunken. Both options had specific advantages and disadvantages but neither surpassed the other technologically. The Western European world embraced the product “made in Germany.” SECAM’s popularity suffered under the French “politique de la grandeur.” Its adoption by the Soviet Union could not be explained by outstanding technological superiority. PAL and SECAM divided Western Europe in two. Only France was holding its ground as a SECAM state amid PAL countries.

Fickers is not presenting a mere chronological outline; his study design is niftier. He distinguishes technical and nontechnical, industrial, and political fields. The composition of his book is tripartite: one by one he treats these three so-called “terrains.” His hypothesis refers to these fields too. Using methodological and narrative tricks, he concisely separates historical nexuses for historical analysis and interjects his interpretations into the story. He informs his readers repeatedly that the fields overlapped and that decisions had complex causes. He discusses strange-looking yet contemporary stereotypes and provides close insights on French and German organizations. He places them thoughtfully in contexts and discusses them in light of recent historical research. His work reveals dozens of interesting stories, issues, and figures. For example, he accurately draws a portrait of Walter Bruch, the German “genius behind PAL.” Through many well-chosen quotes and Fickers’s meticulous research, one begins to grasp the volatile political constellations in postwar Europe. In 1965, Soviet engineers developed another color television system—NIR—based on the French- Soviet treaty. It was described as a merger between PAL and SECAM and a suitable trade-off in the messy negotiations among the partners. Studio technicians, long reluctant to change to chromatic television from black and- white, now tended to vote for this third option, one they hoped could turn out to be the desired common transmission standard.

It is not easy to catch Fickers’s concept of “terrains.” It bears many meanings, ranging from contemporary competitions, conflicts...