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Most telecasters believe that eventually Hollywood will be forced to spend at least 50% of its time and effort on making films that television can afford. So far, except for a few shorts, the only films being specially made for television are commercials, which often add a new dimension of irritation to radio advertising. In a typical TV plug, the camera peers fixedly at a chart, showing the superior cushion effect of Firestone tires. Or it may ogle a picturesque blonde, pointing out the virtues of a refrigerator. Rarely has television hit on a first-class formula, like Lucky Strike's animated marching battalions of cigarettes.
The Slow Past. Television is imperfect and crude, compared with what it will be, but it is a modern miracle. The process of sending electronic pictures through the air and reassembling them in the living room is one of the great achievements of modern science. It all began in 1873 with a sharp-eared Irishman and a leprechaun sunbeam.
The place was Valentia, Ireland, European terminus of Cyrus Fields' newly laid transatlantic cable. A young telegrapher named Joseph May heard an unfamiliar hum on his code receiver. He stumbled on the cause: a shaft of sunlight, streaming through the window, fell on an electrical resister and jammed his code receiver. When May passed his hand between the light and the resister, the hum stopped. But why? May decided, rightly and brightly, that the resister (or the selenium that coated it) must have what are now called photoelectric properties; i.e., that it could convert light values into electric values.
A hundred scientists of a dozen nations seized on May's incandescent hunch. In 1884 a German, Paul Nipkow, invented a whirling metal disc, which eventually picked up vague picture outlines and was the basis for mechanical television. Italy's Marconi, with his wireless, and America's Edison, with his motion picture, added ears and movement to the dim silhouettes that were forming.
In 1906 Lee de Forest invented the vacuum tube—a milestone for television as well as for radio. In 1923 a Russian immigrant, Dr. Vladimir K. Zworykin (now an RCA engineer) patented the iconoscope—the tube that changed television from a somewhat mechanical to a purely electronic science. In 1928, a Scot, John Logie Baird, telecast a woman's face from London to the S.S. Berengaria, 1,000 miles out at sea, and in the U.S. fuzzy facsimiles of Felix the Cat were televised. Three years later, in a Montclair, N.J. basement, Dr. Allen B. Du Mont brought forth a workable television receiver. The image was becoming clearer.
The U.S. public first saw electronic television at the New York World's Fair in 1939. (Britain's BBC, using a lot of U.S. equipment, had a three-year head start.) Before the U.S. could take a good look, the war interfered; the toy had to be put back in the closet for five years. When it was examined again, it had two heads: one (a CBS product) was gaudy with all the colors of the spectrum; the other (by RCA) was black & white. Since the industry could not go off in both directions, and still take the public along,* the Federal Communications Commission had to make a hard choice. In a momentous decision (TIME, March 31, 1947), the color process, at present impractical commercially, was sent back to the laboratory, and the black & white boom was on.