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

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sat Dec 1 03:53:20 UTC 2007


At 8:50 PM -0500 11/30/07, Dennis During wrote:
>Google News generates hits on reports in US newspapers of French and German
>inventors reporting progress on "television" in 1910. They were talking
>about "videophones", not broadcast TV.

Note also the "phonovision" for the recordings on the web site Amy
West linked us to yesterday.  Those anti-"hybrid"ists must have
really been pulling out their hair, since all these formations are
Greco-Latin.

>In any event the word was around. The
>long lead time between making an announcment and actually broadcasting may
>mean that the idea that TV broadcasting would come was in circulation by the
>early 20s.
>[BTW, there were numerous spurious hits on Google News from before 1910, not
>to say there aren't some real ones in there somewhere.]
>

Thanks.  I'm now trying to zero in on "Miss Television" (Fitzgerald
1928; 1933), and the N. Y. Times archive does contain this example,
contemporaneous (give or take a few months) with the Century Magazine
story, and the language does imply a familiarity with the elected
office:

=============
November 12, 1928, Monday

No exposition or convention is complete without its presiding beauty,
its Miss America, Miss Television, or Queen of the Carnival. In Paris
this month a new royalty will be added to the list with the choice of
a Princess of Gastronomy.
=============

Maybe Fitzgerald attended one or two festivities of this kind and was
captivated by the concept (or the recipient) of that honor.

LH

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