Fwd: Re: early instances of the word "television"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Neat!  The 1927 dummy looks a little like Howdy Doody's Evil Twin!

  JL

Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Amy West
Subject: Fwd: Re: early instances of the word "television"
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LH's (I think) post about the early instances of television as a
broadcast medium prompted me to talk to a friend who's a media
historian of sorts and here's some info off the top of his head...

---Amy West

>
>
>The BBC started regular television broadcasts in the late 1920s -- I
>think 1927. Amazingly, a few folks at home recorded some of the
>broadcasts on their home phonograph recording machines, and a few of
>those discs have survived. So there exist recognizable video
>recordings of television broadcasts from the late 1920s. You can
>see small excerpts here.
>http://www.tvdawn.com/
>
>Boston had a television station with a regular schedule in 1928.
>
>When I was in middle school, I talked to a fellow who worked on the
>first television dramatic broadcast in the US, in 1928, from WGY in
>Schenectady. The factoid I most remember is that so much light was
>needed to make the broadcast that the lights were water cooled. The
>water cooling lines were leaky, so the crew all wore raincoats to
>avoid getting wet. He also said that at the time, there were only
>two sets which could receive the broadcast.
>
>All of these broadcasts used a primitive, extremely low definition
>system that created postage stamp sized images.
>
>Bill

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