Early Television: A Bibliographic Guide to 1940

“Who invented television?” Maybe it is the singular character of the name “television” itself that suggests that a straightforward answer does exist. Anyone who has asked the question, though, must be introduced to Early Television: A Bibliographic Guide to 1940. George and May Shiers’s extensive index makes it clear that this technology’s history is no simple tale. Their goal was “to index every patent and the more important publications concerning television’s development before World War II.” Unfinished at the time of George Shiers’s death in 1983, the bibliography was completed by Christopher Sterling and Elliot Sivowitch. Cataloged in twenty-five chapters that represent a chronology of the history of the development of television, references are provided for virtually all of the publications, events, and individuals associated with television development during the period.

Early Television indicates the complexity of the genesis of the technology and business of television. It maps a unique time when opportunity knocked and an overwhelming appeal existed for individuals and companies to invent a means of seeing at a distance by electricity. By the 1920s, the belief itself that television was just around the corner fueled further excitement and work. As the editors note, “This imminence became a fact in 1928, with many demonstrations and a proliferation of reports and articles: newspaper items rose from 40 in 1927 to 120, and items of all kinds in periodicals increased from 125 to 325” (p. 132).

RCA’s public relations of the middle of the twentieth century succeeded in inserting into popular culture the story of RCA’s invention of television. This bibliography, however, documents a surprisingly extensive list of inventors and precursors to our current electronic television system. An extraordinary number of individuals contributed to the development. In the United Kingdom, John Logie Baird is known as the father of television. (It is apparent from the materials collected here that Baird’s reputation results as much from his stand against the BBC monopoly as from his pioneering work in mechanical television and broadcasting.) Belin in France, Ardenne in Germany, Sanabria, Zworykin, Farnsworth, Jenkins, Tihanyi, Rosing: this tiny fraction of a long list of characters who were instrumental in television’s development should give pause to writers trying to find a story like the invention of the light bulb or the invention of the telephone.

Call it Seeing by Electricity, Seeing by Wireless, Distant Electric Vision, Distance Vision. From magic mirrors and Telectroscopes through television as we know it, the logic of this technology’s history may well be the logic of dreams. Perhaps the appeal to inventors can be found in a desire to achieve universal understanding, global peace, human perfection, or wealth and notoriety. Genuinely complex, the actual Story of Television cannot easily be told, no matter how much we may long for a simple plot and a few characters to identify.

The chapters of this volume begin with overviews of television’s development that offer a “just the facts” view of the period covered. As glimpses, these summaries raise many questions about individuals, events, and social and economic contexts. “This expansion of the art on all fronts,” the editors note, “was linked with an increasingly optimistic commercial outlook and the rise of speculative business activities as well as the worldwide spread of telecommunications. Surface signs included a considerable growth in periodical literature and news reports, occasioned by a series of public demonstrations” (p. 131). Interpretation is possible from many points of view.

Confronted today with the economic, social, and physical assault of constant changes in communications technologies, it can provide both relief and illumination to discover materials that suggest parallels with the developments of the microprocessor, shrink-wrapped software, the Internet, etc. It is satisfying to anticipate the sense and order these materials will help bring to our understanding of the global powers of modern communications and technologies. Compliments and appreciation are due to George and May Shiers...