For our
homework assignment this weekend I watched Television
Tomorrow. This film was about the progression of televisions and the
predicted advancements that would be implemented once World War 2 was over. I
actually found this film to be very interesting and insightful. It was amusing
to see how excited society was about such simple concepts to us now. At this
time, Americans were not even sure of how successful TVs would be. As shown in
this film, it was almost as if they were trying to sell Americans on TVs,
proving to them that they would benefit society and be something worth
investing in. This film is useful to students of our modern information
infrastructure because it gives insight into how technology would change the
lifestyles of Americans and also provided a vast range of job opportunities.
The latter
part of this film discussed the mechanics of TVs including how they were made
and the scientific concepts at work behind the screen. Viewers were informed
about the new skyscraping antennas they would be seeing around the city, in
order to allow for the transmission of television waves. The forecasted booming
television market would also produce hundreds of thousands of job
opportunities. There were countless positions that needed to be filled within
TV broadcasters, people to assemble the TVs and their parts, and distributors
to sell the TVs.
It was
interesting to see how much technology has advanced from after World War 2. TV
screens were initially not much larger than a standard piece of paper yet the
TV set itself was massive. Now TVs are nearly paper thin. The technology that
was used to film TV shows was also huge and boxy. Overall, I found this film to
be very interesting, especially considering they had to try and sell people on the
ideas of TVs whereas nowadays there is a large push towards watching less TV
because it has become overly popular.
Here's the link to the film: https://archive.org/details/tomorrow_television
Here's the link to the film: https://archive.org/details/tomorrow_television
2 comments:
Carly-
This is very interesting. I think the evolution of television is so interesting because it has changed dramatically. One thing I always think about with television back then is how Live was it. Now, television occurs simultaneously with the even that is going on, but with technology back then, do you think there was a time buffer?
Carly
I agree with you that one of the most fascinating aspects of this film is that people did not know how successful TV would be. If only they knew that people now cannot get enough TV! It is amazing how something that we think of as so simple and something we could not imagine living with created such an impact on society, not only by means of entertainment but also by impacting the economy. The TV opened many windows of opportunity that were never there before it hit the market.
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