[HN Gopher] Television is 100 years old today
___________________________________________________________________
Television is 100 years old today
Author : qassiov
Score : 389 points
Date : 2026-01-26 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)
| jedberg wrote:
| This is interesting. John Logie Baird did in fact demonstrate
| something that looked like TV, but the technology was a dead end.
|
| Philo Farnsworth demonstrated a competing technology a few years
| later, but every TV today is based on his technology.
|
| So, who actually invented Television?
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| There were a great many small breakthroughs over time. Where
| you draw the line is up to you.
| armadsen wrote:
| For what it's worth, Philo Farnsworth and John Logie Baird were
| friendly with each other. I was lucky to know Philo's wife Pem
| very well in the last part of her life, and she spoke highly of
| Baird as a person.
|
| David Sarnoff and RCA was an entirely different matter, of
| course...
| bovermyer wrote:
| The article has a photo of a plaque putting Baird's death in
| 1946, less than 40 years old.
|
| What happened?
| roarcher wrote:
| He was 57, born in 1888. Died of a stroke.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Logie_Baird#Death
| ggm wrote:
| One of his electro-mechanical units was on display in
| Victoria, Australia. Most amazing assemblage, you can
| sort-of get the idea from things.
|
| I read online that at his end, Baird was proposing a TV
| scan-rate we'd class as HD quality, which lost out to a
| 405 line standard (which proceeded 625/colour)
|
| There is also a quality of persistence in his approach to
| things, he was the kind of inventor who doesn't stop
| inventing.
| chasil wrote:
| I had a communications theory class in college that addressed
| "vestigal sideband modulation," which I believe was implemented
| by Farnsworth. I think this is a critical aspect to the
| introduction of television technology.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-sideband_modulation#Sup...
| drmpeg wrote:
| VSB came later. From
| https://www.tvtechnology.com/opinions/hdtv-from-1925-to-1994
|
| In the United States in 1935, the Radio Corporation of
| America demonstrated a 343-line television system. In 1936,
| two committees of the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA),
| which is now known as the Consumer Electronics Association,
| proposed that U.S. television channels be standardized at a
| bandwidth of 6 MHz, and recommended a 441-line, interlaced,
| 30 frame-per-second television system. The RF modulation
| system proposed in this recommendation used double-sideband,
| amplitude-modulated transmission, limiting the video
| bandwidth it was capable of carrying to 2.5 MHz. In 1938,
| this RMA proposal was amended to employ vestigial-sideband
| (VSB) transmission instead of double sideband. In the
| vestigial-sideband approach, only the upper sidebands-those
| above the carrier frequency-plus a small segment or vestige
| of the lower sidebands, are transmitted. VSB raised the
| transmitted video bandwidth capability to 4.2 MHz.
| Subsequently, in 1941, the first National Television Systems
| Committee adopted the vestigial sideband system using a total
| line rate of 525 lines that is used in the United States
| today.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| _Farnsworth..._
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Wernstrom!
| reactordev wrote:
| Baird did. Farnsworth invented the all-electric version (sans
| mechanical parts).
|
| A kin to Ed Roberts, John Blakenbaker and Mark Dean invented
| the personal computer but Apple invented the PC as we know it.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| You should read about the invention of color television. There
| were two competing methods, one of which depended on a spinning
| wheel with colored filters in it. If I remember correctly, you
| needed something like a 10-foot wheel to have a 27-inch TV.
|
| Sure enough, this was the system selected as the winner by the
| U.S. standard-setting body at the time. Needless to say, it
| failed and was replaced by what we ended up with... which still
| sucked because of the horrible decision to go to a non-integer
| frame rate. Incredibly, we are for some reason still plagued by
| 29.97 FPS long after the analog system that required it was
| shut off.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Why is an integer frame rate better?
| zoky wrote:
| For one thing, it's much easier to measure spans of time
| when you have an integer frame rate. For example, 1 hour at
| 30fps is exactly 108,000 frames, but at 29.97 it's only
| 107,892 frames. Since frame numbers must all have an
| integer time code, "drop-frame" time code is used, where
| each second has a variable number of frames so that by the
| end of each measured hour the total elapsed time syncs up
| with the time code, i.e. "01:00:00;00" falls after exactly
| one hour has passed. This is of course crucial when
| scheduling programs, advertisements, and so on. It's a
| confusing mess and historically has caused all kinds of
| headaches for the TV industry over the years.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Originally you had 30fps, it was the addition of colour with
| the NTSC system that dropped it to 30000/1001fps. That wasn't
| a decision taken lightly -- it was a consequence of
| retrofitting colour onto a black and white system while
| maintaining backward compatibility.
|
| When the UK (and Europe) went colour it changed to a whole
| new system and didn't have to worry too much about backward
| compatibility. It had a higher bandwidth (8mhz - so 33% more
| than NTSC), and was broadcasting on new channels separate to
| the original 405 lines. It also had features like alternating
| the phase of every other line to reduce the "tint" or "never
| twice the same color" problem that NTSC had
|
| America chose 30fps but then had to slow it by 1/1001ths to
| avoid interference.
|
| Of course because by the 90s and the growth of digital, there
| was already far too much stuff expecting "29.97"hz so it
| remained, again for backward compatibility.
| masfuerte wrote:
| In the UK the two earliest channels (BBC1 and ITV)
| continued to broadcast in the 405 line format (in addition
| to PAL) until 1985. Owners of ancient televisions had 20
| years to upgrade. That doesn't seem unreasonable.
| Dwedit wrote:
| 60 interlaced fields per second, not 30 frames per second.
| The two fields do not necessarily contribute to the same
| frame.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you get those fields out of sync, you will have
| problems though, so it's okay to consider them in pairs
| per frame for sanity's sake.
| dylan604 wrote:
| understanding the affect of the 1.001 _fix_ has given me
| tons of job security. That understanding came not from just
| book learning, but OJT from working in a film /video post
| house that had engineers, colorists, and editors that were
| all willing to entertain a young college kid's constant use
| of "why?". Then being present for the transition from
| editing film on flat beds to editing film transfers to
| video. Part of that came from having to transfer audio from
| tape reels to video by changing to the proper 59.94Hz or
| 60Hz crystal that was needed to control the player's speed.
| Also had a studio DAT deck that could slow down the 24fps
| audio record in the field to playback at 23.976.
|
| Literally, to this day, am I dealing with all of these
| decisions made ~100 years ago. The 1.001 math is a bit
| younger when color was rolled out, but what's a little
| rounding between friends?
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > but every TV today is based on his technology.
|
| Philo Farnsworth invented the cathode ray tube. unless you're
| writing this from the year 2009 or before, I'm going to have to
| push back on the idea that tv's TODAY are based on his
| technology. They most certainly are not.
| shellac wrote:
| No, Braun invented the cathode ray tube.
| _nub3 wrote:
| 1897 Ferdinand Braun invents the Cathode Ray Tube dubbed
| "Braunsche Rohre"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenjiro_Takayanagi
|
| 'Although he failed to gain much recognition in the West, he
| built the world's first all-electronic television receiver,
| and is referred to as "the father of Japanese television"'
|
| He presented it in 1926 (Farnsworth in 1927)
|
| However father of television was this dude:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Ardenne
|
| Better resolution, wireless transmission and Olympics 1936
| jedberg wrote:
| He invented electronic rasterization, a form of which is
| still in use today.
| zwischenzug wrote:
| Whatever we all television now, television then was literally
| "vision at a distance", which Baird was the first to
| demonstrate (AFAIK).
|
| The TV I have now in my living room is closer to a computer
| than a television from when I grew up (born 1975) anyway, so
| the word could mean all sorts of things. I mean, we still call
| our pocket computers "phones" even though they are mainly used
| for viewing cats at a distance.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The thing is that "television" seemed like a thing but really
| it was a system that required a variety of connected,
| compatible parts, like the Internet.
|
| Different pieces of what became TV existed in 1900, the
| challenge was putting them together. And that required a
| consensus among powerful players.
| gtoubassi wrote:
| "The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the
| Birth of Television" is a great book detailing the Farnsworth
| journey.
| throwaway_20357 wrote:
| Wasn't all this early TV experimentation based on Nipkow disks
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipkow_disk)?
| tosti wrote:
| High definition is nearly 90 years old? I guess their definition
| of high is quite low by more modern standards.
| ronsor wrote:
| Going from 30 lines to 300 lines is a big leap!
| anthk wrote:
| Cinema was "HD" by design. So, in some way, 35mm movies are HD
| quality and predate PAL and NTSC standards.
| tosti wrote:
| Sure, but that's not TV.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Analogue interlaced-scan TV systems like PAL and SECAM were
| actually ''higher'' definition in relation to NTSC by visual
| line count, although the former's 25Hz refresh rate was
| noticeable for flickering compared to NTSC's ~30Hz, which was
| much closer to the human eye's comfort level.
|
| There was a prototype 819-line analogue ''high definition''
| system used to record The T.A.M.I. Show in 1964, with excellent
| results, but the recordings were committed to film for
| distribution since there was no apparatus for broadcasting it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.A.M.I._Show
|
| There were also experiments by NHK of Japan with analogue HD
| broadcasting, but digital TV was so close on the horizon that
| it was mooted.
|
| ''High definition'' has been a relative term in the
| professional TV world all along, but became consumer buzzwords
| with the advent of digital TV in the early 2000's. Nowadays we
| know it to mean 720, 1080, or higher lines, usually in
| progressive scan.
| racl101 wrote:
| Thank you Mr. Farnsworth.
| a3w wrote:
| And in Futurama, a man with the same family name invents a
| universal remote. The [drumroll] longer finger!
| goda90 wrote:
| Philo Farnsworth did make considerable contribution to
| television with his image dissector, but he didn't make the
| first TV. He was the first TV patent holder in the US though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television#History
| bilsbie wrote:
| Odd we never adapted to it.
|
| Video has a strange hypnotic power over most people and messages
| seem to bypass normal mental defenses.
| Geste wrote:
| I'd say we did, you need more and more for the same effect.
|
| Here is the first ad ever, for a watch :
| https://youtu.be/ho2OJfXkvpI
|
| For comparison, here is the latest ad for the best selling
| watch as of today : https://youtu.be/kdMTc5WfnkM
| andai wrote:
| Everyone's trying too hard to stand out, but honestly the
| first one would stand out more today, despite being a still
| image!
| chwtutha wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. Apple could probably go viral with the
| original style of ad today.
| derektank wrote:
| In case anyone accuses you of not comparing like to like,
| even a contemporary Bulova commercial is much more similar to
| the latter than the former:
| https://youtu.be/trp7p634qAU?si=fGvyxHp_cayuw5xa
| wat10000 wrote:
| Wow, I haven't watched any ads for a while and that was
| pretty jarring.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| I'm not sure it is valid to use the first ad ever as a basis
| for comparison. At this time it was a novelty to even have a
| television - of course an incredibly basic ad would work. And
| how much do you think they had to pay for an ad on a very new
| technology? I doubt much.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| And 100 years ago my great-aunt and grandmother (both RIP) were
| little kids and my great-grandmother, born in the 19th century
| and which I knew very well for she lived until 99 years old, was
| filming them playing on the beach using a "Pathe Baby" hand
| camera.
|
| I still have the reels, they look like this:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Films_Path%C3%A9-Bab...
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path%C3%A9-Baby
|
| And we converted some of these reels to digital files (well
| brothers and I asked a specialized company to "digitalize" them).
|
| 100 years ago people already had cars, tramways (as a kid my
| great-grandmother tried to look under the first tramway she saw
| to see "where the horses were hiding"), cameras to film movies,
| telephones, the telegraph existed, you could trade the stock
| market and, well, it's knew to me but TV was just invented too.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| On the one hand, it's fascinating to know just how much of what
| shapes our lives was already there a hundred years ago in some
| form.
|
| On the other hand, it's just as fascinating to realize that all
| that, and ~everything that shapes modern life, did not exist
| until ~200 years ago. Not just appliances, but medicines and
| _medicine_ , plastics and greases and other products of
| petrochemical industry and everything built on top of it,
| paints and cleaners and materials and so on...
| jakedata wrote:
| Inspired one of my absolute favorite Zappa grooves.
|
| I am the Slime
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCQcEW98OY
|
| I am gross and perverted
|
| I'm obsessed and deranged
|
| I have existed for years
|
| But very little has changed
|
| I'm the tool of the Government
|
| And industry too
|
| For I am destined to rule
|
| And regulate you
|
| I may be vile and pernicious
|
| But you can't look away
|
| I make you think I'm delicious
|
| With the stuff that I say
|
| I'm the best you can get
|
| Have you guessed me yet?
|
| I'm the slime oozin' out
|
| From your TV set
|
| You will obey me while I lead you
|
| And eat the garbage that I feed you
|
| Until the day that we don't need you
|
| Don't go for help, no one will heed you
|
| Your mind is totally controlled
|
| It has been stuffed into my mold
|
| And you will do as you are told
|
| Until the rights to you are sold
|
| That's right, folks
|
| Don't touch that dial
|
| Well, I am the slime from your video
|
| Oozin' along on your livin' room floor
|
| I am the slime from your video
|
| Can't stop the slime, people, look at me go
|
| I am the slime from your video
|
| Oozin' along on your livin' room floor
|
| I am the slime from your video
|
| Can't stop the slime, people, look at me go
|
| Source: Musixmatch
|
| Songwriters: Frank Zappa
|
| I'm The Slime lyrics (c) Munchkin Music Co
| morkalork wrote:
| Long live the new flesh
| Edman274 wrote:
| It did always strike me as funny that Cronenberg had a movie
| about "what if TV was evil and made people murderous and the
| studio execs had to pay", and a movie about "what if video
| games were evil and made people murderous and their creators
| had to pay", but never a movie about "what if movies were evil
| and made people murderous and film directors had to pay".
| Obvious bias aside I wonder if it would work as a story -
| movies don't seem as hypnotic in the public consciousness, I
| believe.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Neil Postman's theory still holds up and is extended to the
| Internet
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
| willturman wrote:
| > _In the introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman
| said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous
| Huxley 's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their
| addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell's work, where
| they were oppressed by state violence._
|
| And modern America asked itself, why can't it be both?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| My buddy has an old Portacolor, but it's only 60.
| augusteo wrote:
| The Baird vs Farnsworth debate reminds me of similar discussions
| in tech. The first demo rarely becomes the dominant standard.
|
| What strikes me is how fast the iteration was. Baird went from
| hatboxes and bicycle lenses to color TV prototypes in just two
| years. That's the kind of rapid experimentation we're seeing with
| AI right now, though compressed even further.
| wglass wrote:
| Related to discussion on Baird vs. Farnsworth, there's a plaque
| honoring Farnsworth on Green Street in San Francisco.
| https://noehill.com/sf/landmarks/cal0941.asp
| afrnswrth wrote:
| There is also a statue in the Presidio
| https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/27928
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Really? But Marquee Moon isn't even 50 years old yet. What were
| they doing for the first 50?
| Deanallen wrote:
| > Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this",
| which implies a complete absence of connection between the
| separate topics the phrase ostensibly connects.
|
| This idea is why I always take media with a grain of salt. The
| decontexualization makes it easy for people to be reactive
| towards something, that isn't logical
|
| Eg "now this is why <insert person or group> is good/evil"
|
| People call me the devils advocate when I point out these nuances
| but I just think we need to be much more critical when forming
| and holding opinions.
| masfuerte wrote:
| What are you quoting?
| criddell wrote:
| Sounds like something from Neil Postman's excellent book
| _Amusing Ourselves to Death_.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Your example isn't what your quote is referring to.
|
| "Now this" is just a segue between unrelated topics.
|
| Eg "and now a word from our sponsors".
| burkaman wrote:
| Isn't "now this" just a synonym for "moving on" or "next order
| of business" or "apropos of nothing"? I don't think the concept
| of jumping to a completely new topic is something TV
| introduced.
| empressplay wrote:
| Related: Baird's Mechanical Television
|
| https://paleotronic.com/2018/09/15/gadget-graveyard-bairds-m...
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Also this site, which shows how the recorded Phonovision
| broadcasts were eventually recovered:
|
| http://www.tvdawn.com/earliest-tv/phonovision-experiments-19...
| throw0101a wrote:
| In interesting plot point in the novel/movie _Contact_ (early, so
| not much of a spoiler):
|
| > [...] _This puts her at odds with much of the scientific
| community, including Drumlin, who pushes to defund SETI.
| Eventually, the project detects a signal from Vega, 26 light-
| years away, transmitting prime numbers.[a][b] Further analysis
| reveals a retransmission of Adolf Hitler 's 1936 Olympic speech,
| the first TV signal to escape Earth's ionosphere.[1]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)
| willturman wrote:
| > _It's entirely possible that my plangent noises about the
| impossibility of rebelling against an aura that promotes and
| vitiates all rebellion say more about my residency inside that
| aura, my own lack of vision, than they do about any exhaustion of
| U.S. fiction's possibilities. The next real literary "rebels" in
| this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-
| rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic
| watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and
| instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old
| untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence
| and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue.
| These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even
| started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed.
| Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the
| point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real
| rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern
| insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage,
| censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism.
| Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists
| willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the
| nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the "Oh how banal."
| To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of
| overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a
| world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above
| imprisonment without law. Who knows. Today's most engaged young
| fiction does seem like some kind of line's end's end. I guess
| that means we all get to draw our own conclusions. Have to. Are
| you immensely pleased._
|
| - David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and US
| Fiction
| shevy-java wrote:
| In a way television was kind of cool. I loved it as a child, give
| or take.
|
| Nowadays ..... hmmm. I no longer own a TV since many years. Sadly
| youtube kind of replaced television. It is not the same, quality-
| wise I think youtube is actually worse than e. g. the 1980s era.
| But I also don't really want to go back to television, as it also
| had low quality - and it simply took longer, too. On youtube I
| was recently watching old "Aktenzeichen XY ungelost", in german.
| The old videos are kind of cool and interesting from the 1980s. I
| watched the new ones - it no longer made ANY sense to watch it
| ... the quality is much worse, and it is also much more boring.
| It's strange.
| the_af wrote:
| > _It is not the same, quality-wise I think youtube is actually
| worse than e. g. the 1980s era_
|
| Is it though? I of course watched TV as a kid through the 80s
| and have some feelings of nostalgia about it, but is it true
| that YouTube today is worse?
|
| I mean, YouTube is nothing in particular. There's all sorts of
| crap, but Sturgeon's Law [1] applies here. There is also good
| stuff, even gems, if you curate your content carefully. YouTube
| can be delightful if you know what to look for. If you don't
| filter, yeah... it's garbage.
|
| ----
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Definitely good stuff on YouTube, but I do miss the curation
| and, as was talked about here recently I believe, shared
| experiences that brought. I'm also crazy addicted to YouTube
| in a way that I wasn't to TV, but that's another issue.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| There is many times more things on youtube than were ever on
| TV over it's entire lifetime up to the YT era, even
| discounting old TV show content on Youtube. But it also feels
| like the ratio of of good-to-shit has not remained constant
| between the two.
| tadfisher wrote:
| I remember when we organized our lives around television. On
| Saturday mornings it would be cartoons (including the first
| full-CGI television shows, Reboot and Transformers: Beast
| Wars), Wednesday evenings would be Star Trek: TNG, Fridays
| would be the TGIF block of family shows (from early-to-mid-90s
| USA perspective here). It felt like everyone watched the same
| thing, everyone had something to talk about from last night's
| episode, and there was a common connection over what we watched
| as entertainment.
|
| We saw a resurgence of this connection with big-budget serials
| like Game of Thrones, but now every streaming service has their
| own must-watch thing and it's basically as if everyone had
| their own personal broadcast station showing something
| different. I don't know if old-school television was healthy
| for society or not, but I do have a feeling of missing out on
| that shared connection lately.
| victorperalta wrote:
| Planet Money recently released an episode that mentions some
| of these points around drop vs drip programming
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5646673/stranger-
| things...
| jedberg wrote:
| This is something I've been lamenting for a long time. The
| lack of shared culture. Sometimes a mega-hit briefly
| coalesces us, but for the most part everyone has their own
| thing.
|
| I miss the days when everyone had seen the same thing I had.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know if it's good or bad but, outside of some
| megahit films, people mostly don't regularly watch the same
| TV series. I don't even have live TV myself.
| Diederich wrote:
| I found this the other day:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFhXFuRblg "NBC Nightly
| News, June 24, 1975" I strongly urge people to watch this,
| it's 30 minutes but there are many very illuminating
| insights within. One word for you: Exxon.
|
| While I was young in 1975, I did watch ABC's version of the
| news with my grandparents, and continued up through high
| school. Then in the late 1980s I got on the Internet and
| well you know the rest.
|
| "Back Then", a high percentage of everybody I or my
| grandparents or my friends came into contact with watched
| one of ABC, NBC, or CBS news most nights. These three
| networks were a bit different, but they generally they all
| told the same basic stories as each other.
|
| This was effectively our shared reality. Later in high
| school as I became more politically focused, I could still
| talk to anybody, even people who had completely opposite
| political views as myself. That's because we had a shared
| view of reality.
|
| Today, tens of millions of people see the exact same
| footage of an officer involved shooting...many angles, and
| draw entirely different 'factual' conclusions.
|
| So yes, 50 years ago, we in the United States generally had
| a share view of reality. That was good in a lot of ways,
| but it did essentially allow a small set of people in power
| to decide that convincing a non-trivial percentage of the
| US population that Exxon was a friendly, family oriented
| company that was really on your side.
|
| Worth the trade off? Hard to say, but at least 'back then'
| it was possible, and even common, to have ground political
| discussions with people 'on the other side', and that's
| pretty valuable.
| eloisant wrote:
| This is why I like it when streaming services release one
| episode every week instead of dropping the whole season in
| one shot.
| parpfish wrote:
| i hate the single season dumping at once for a big binge.
| it always feel like i'm plugging into the content trough
| and gorging myself to pass the hours.
|
| you can't talk about a show with somebody until they're
| also done binging, so there's no fun discussion/speculation
| (the conversation is either "did you watch that? yeah.
| <conversation over>" or "you should watch this.
| <conversation over>".
| elevation wrote:
| > but I do have a feeling of missing out on that shared
| connection lately
|
| Mass media isolates individuals who don't have access to it.
| I grew up without a TV, and when TV was all my neighbors
| could talk about, I was left out, and everyone knew it.
|
| While other children were in front of the television gaining
| "shared experience", I built forts in the woods with my
| siblings, explored the creek in home made boats, learned to
| solder, read old books, wrote basic computer programs,
| launched model rockets, made up magic tricks. I had a great
| childhood, but I had a difficult time connecting with
| children whose only experiences were these shallow, shared
| experiences.
|
| Now that media is no longer "shared", the fragmented content
| that people still consume has diminishing social value --
| which in many cases was the only value it had. Which means
| there are fewer social consequences for people like me who
| choose not to partake.
| parpfish wrote:
| it feels like you're advocating that "unless _everybody_
| can form a shared connection through common culture,
| _nobody_ should for a shared connection through common
| culture ".
| rexpop wrote:
| Mass media even moreso isolates individuals who DO have
| access to it.
|
| Their "shared experience" is, actually, a debilitating
| addiction to flat, untouchable, and anti-democratic
| spectacle.
|
| The least hundred years have seen our society drained of
| social capital, inescapably enthralled by corporate
| mediators. Mass media encourages a shift from "doing" to
| "watching." As we consume hand-tailored entertainment in
| private, we retreat from the public square.
|
| Heavy television consumption is associated with lethargy
| and passivity, reinforcing an intolerance for unstructured
| time. This creates a "pseudoworld" where viewers feel a
| false sense of companionship--a parasocial connection with
| television personalities--that creates a feeling of
| intimacy while requiring (and offering) no actual
| reciprocity or effort.
|
| Television, the "800-pound gorilla of leisure time," has
| privatized our existence. This privatization of leisure
| acts as a lethal competitor for scarce time, stealing hours
| that were once devoted to social interaction--the picnics,
| club meetings, and informal visiting that constitute the
| _metis_ or practical social knowledge of community life.
| procflora wrote:
| The broadcast nature of it is something that I missed just last
| night. I was walking past several bars as the Seahawks won a
| big football game, but of course each spot was on a different
| stream delay so instead of one full-throated simultaneous cheer
| echoing across the neighborhood it was three or four quieter,
| distinct cheers spread over 20-30 seconds. Not really a big
| deal but still, it felt like a lesser experience to this aging
| millennial.
| josalhor wrote:
| On the one hand I look at some tech lifecycles and feel
| everything moves so slow (cars, energy and train infrastructure
| etc..). And then I look at other stuff and I cannot phantom that
| someone who was born 100 years ago saw a TV (or media electronic
| screen) from conception to modern miracle. As someone in his 20s
| I can't imagine what I'll see in the next 80 years!
| jibolash wrote:
| Unfortunately technological progress is not always exponential.
| An human landed on the moon 56 years ago and people back then
| thought space travel would be a routine thing today so it'll be
| interesting to see how things go
| sodafountan wrote:
| It's certainly not routine, but I'd say the privatization of
| the space industry that's unfolded over the last few decades
| is significant progress.
|
| When I get depressed and look out at the world, I'm actually
| amazed at what I'm living through--the internet, space
| travel, electric and autonomous cars, smartphones. It's
| really amazing.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I had a look at the Gemini capsule in the Smithsonian a few
| years ago. I was shocked at how primitive the controls
| looked.
| sosomoxie wrote:
| CRTs are peak steam punk technology. Analog, electric, kinda
| dangerous. Just totally mindblowing that we had these things in
| our living rooms shooting electric beams everywhere. I doubt it's
| environmentally friendly at all, but I'd love to see some new
| CRTs being made.
| fecal_henge wrote:
| Extra dangerous aspect: On really early CRTs they hadn't quite
| nailed the glass thicknesses. One failure mode was that the
| neck that held the electron gun would fail. This would propell
| the gun through the front of the screen, possibly toward the
| viewer.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Likewise, a dropped CRT tube was a constant terror for TV
| manufacturing and repair folks, as it likely would implode
| and send zillions of razor-sharp fragments airborne.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| My high school science teacher used to share anecdotes from
| his days in electrical repair.
|
| He said his coworkers would sometimes toss a television
| capacitor at each other as a prank.
|
| Those capacitors retained enough charge to give the person
| unlucky enough to catch one a considerable jolt.
| freedomben wrote:
| Touching one of those caps was a hell of an experience.
| It was similar in many ways to a squirrel tap with a
| wrench in the auto shop (for those who didn't do auto
| shop, a squirrel tap with a wrench is when somebody
| flicks your nut sack from behind with a wrench. Properly
| executed it would leave you doubled over out of breath).
| cf100clunk wrote:
| The shadow mask system for colour CRTs was a huge improvement
| that thwarted worries about ''beams everywhere'':
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Also, I believe precursors to CRT existed in the 19th century.
| What was unique with television was the creation of a full CRT
| system that allowed moving picture consumption to be a mass
| phenomena.
| pinnochio wrote:
| We're getting awfully close to recreating CRT qualities with
| modern display panels. A curved 4:3 1000Hz OLED panel behind
| glass, and an integrated RetroTink 4K with G-Sync Pulsar
| support would do it. Then add in a simulated degauss effect and
| electrical whine and buzzing sounds for fun.
| soperj wrote:
| still can't play duck hunt on it though.
| gzalo wrote:
| Yes you can, see https://neslcdmod.com/
|
| It basically mods the rom to allow for a bit more latency
| when checking the hit targets
| itisit wrote:
| And perhaps peak atompunk too when used as RAM. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Damn, what I wouldn't give to be able to look at my computer
| and see the bits bobbing in its onboard ram
| itisit wrote:
| Like the MegaProcessor? [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNa9bQRPMB8
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| The 1940-1990 era of technology can't be beat. Add hard drives
| and tape to the mix. What happened to electromechanical design?
| I doubt it would be taught anymore. Everything is solid state
| kazinator wrote:
| With CRTs, the environmental problem is the heavy metals: tons
| of lead in the glass screen, plus cadmium and whatnot.
| Supposedly there can be many pounds of lead in a large CRT.
| ortusdux wrote:
| One summer odd-job included an afternoon of throwing a few
| dozen CRTs off a 3rd floor balcony into a rolloff dumpster.
| I'da done it for free.
| kleiba wrote:
| What do you mean "had"? I just turned mine off a minute ago. I
| am yet to make the transition to flat screen TVs but in the
| mean time, at least no-one's tracking my consumer habits.
| femto wrote:
| This thread makes me realise that the old Telequipment D61
| Cathode Ray Oscilloscope I have is worth hanging on to. It's
| basically a CRT with signal conditioning on its inputs,
| including a "Z mod" input, making it easy to do cool stuff with
| it.
| retrac wrote:
| There's an synchronicity and instantaneous nature you don't
| find in modern designs.
|
| The image is not stored at any point. The receiver and the
| transmitter are part of the same electric circuit in a certain
| sense. It's a virtual circuit but the entire thing -
| transmitter and receiving unit alike - are oscillating in
| unison driven by a single clock.
|
| The image is never entirely realized as a complete thing,
| either. While slow phosphor tubes do display a static image,
| most CRT systems used extremely fast phosphors; they release
| the majority of the light within a millisecond of the beam
| hitting them. If you take a really fast exposure of a CRT
| display (say 1/100,000th of a second) you don't see the whole
| image on the photograph - only the most recently few drawn
| lines glow. The image as a whole never exists at the same time.
| It exists only in the persistence of vision.
| marcd35 wrote:
| funny story - I had a job recently that installed DirecTV setups
| for mostly retirement communities. On almost every service call,
| I'd show up and 95% of the time, without fail, they'd either be
| watching Fox News, CNN, or CNBC. It was quite depressing to see
| 24/7 news stations had completely consumed their lives and became
| the majority of topics of conversation while I was there.
|
| I eventually quit the job. I decided I didn't want to be a part
| of making our society worse by installing these devices that were
| causing manufactured outrage, hate, and selective truth telling.
|
| Soon after I left, I found a book while thrifting that came out
| in 1978 called "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television"
| by Jerry Mander. I laughed at the title and couldn't believe
| someone was already arguing for the detriments of TV before I was
| born. It's very well written and the points he makes are still
| relevant today.
|
| From the wikipedia -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimina...
|
| Mander believes that "television and democratic society are
| incompatible" due to television removing all of society's senses
| except for seeing and hearing. The author states that television
| makes it so that people have no common sense which leads
| to...being "powerless to reject the camera's line of sight, reset
| the stage, or call on our own sensory apparatus to correct the
| doctored sights and sounds the machine delivers".
|
| Mander's four arguments in the book to eliminate television are:
|
| 1. that telecommunication removes the sense of reality from
| people,
|
| 2. television promotes capitalism,
|
| 3. television can be used as a scapegoat, and
|
| 4. that all three of these issues negatively work together.
| 0PingWithJesus wrote:
| Reminds me of Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death"
| (1985), in which he argues that TV as a medium is fundamentally
| incapable of producing anything other than entertainment. So
| things like news, political discussion, or any other type of
| educational programming can only exist on TV as a nutrition-
| less pantomime of the real thing.
| timonoko wrote:
| I saw TV first time in 1957. Finland had no TV transmitters, so
| programs came from Soviet Estonia. I distinctly remember watching
| romantic Russian film with a catching tune. Perhaps named "Moscow
| Lights"?
|
| How this is even possible that I remember all this, because I was
| 4 yrs old?
|
| Gemini knows:
|
| The Film: In the Days of the Spartakiad (1956/1957)
|
| The song "Moscow Nights" was originally written for a documentary
| film called "In the Days of the Spartakiad" (V dni spartakiady),
| which chronicled a massive Soviet sports competition.
|
| The Scene: In the film, there is a romantic, quiet scene where
| athletes are resting in the countryside near Moscow at night.
|
| The Music: The song was sung by Vladimir Troshin. It was intended
| to be background music, but it was so hauntingly melodic that it
| became an overnight sensation across the USSR and its neighbors.
|
| The Finnish Connection: In 1957, the song became a massive hit in
| Finland and Estonia. Since you were watching Estonian TV, you
| likely saw a version where the dialogue or narration was dubbed
| into Finnish--a common practice for broadcasts intended for
| Finnish-speaking audiences across the Gulf of Finland.
| therein wrote:
| I easily have many memories from age 4. I think I even remember
| the first time that I started forming memories. It was a few
| years before that, I had come out of my room and saw some toys
| I was playing with the night before. I realized they were at
| the same spot I left them, which made me realize the world had
| permanence and my awareness had continuity. I could leave
| things at a certain spot and they would be there the next day,
| that I could build things and they would stay that way. I
| realized I could remember things, in a way like "homo sapiens
| sapiens" being thinking about thinking, I realized I remember
| that I could remember.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Definitely have some memories from 3 years old - some people
| claim earlier and I wouldn't doubt that, although it's very
| rare for memories before 2 to be recalled episodically.
| rubslopes wrote:
| I have one memory that I can place between late 2 and early
| 3: my mum telling me I was going to have a brother. When he
| was born, I was 3 years and 6 months old.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| My first memory of TV (but not my earliest memory by far) was,
| at age 4, seeing the first Space Shuttle launch. It was live on
| a little black-and-white set my parents had in their bedroom.
| poisonarena wrote:
| link to "Vladimir Trochin - Moscow nights (1956)"
| https://youtu.be/fRFScbISKDg?si=UsVHVnlnUnU2SP6v
| scotty79 wrote:
| Isn't it wild that you are asking 5th (or so) technological
| miracle that happened in your life time about the first one you
| remember?
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| I don't care to start a debate about who first invented
| television when, but I remember hearing (conformed by wikipedia
| [1]) that Leon Theremin, inventor of the musical instrument named
| after him, demonstrated mechanical television at roughly the same
| time.
|
| [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Theremin
| robotmachine wrote:
| Funny you bring Leon Theremin up. I just showed a friend of
| mine The Thing[0] today.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Love the name of the blog!
|
| I think that LCD screens, huge digital bandwidth, and CCD
| sensors, have turned video ("television"), into a _vast_ new
| landscape.
|
| I'm old enough to remember putting foil on the rabbit-ears...
| Kye wrote:
| Blogger was new when TV was 75 years old. Glad to see it's still
| around.
| Avalaxy wrote:
| Does anyone here still have television? Ever since I moved out of
| my parents house (15 years ago), I never had a TV subscription. I
| did own a TV screen, but only to run apps like Netflix and
| Youtube. I'd rather have a simple monitor without the TV options
| to do so, but strangely that never existed or was too expensive.
|
| Edit: to make it clear, I absolutely did not miss having TV for
| even a second in all of those years.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Colloquially called "the idiot box" in Australia.
|
| I remember asking as a teenager if that because there are
| idiots on the box, or because you turn into one when you watch
| it.
|
| The answer is "yes"
|
| Have not had or watched one in well over 20 years.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| My mom still pays for cable, so since I live with her I suppose
| I have it by proxy. When I move out I'll still be buying one of
| those digital OTA antennas because I don't watch enough tv to
| justify a streaming service or cable, and sometimes it's nice
| to just watch something that's on without much of a choice
| nabbed wrote:
| I have some sort of old flat screen TV, which I bought before
| there were "smart" TVs. But I don't have cable or over-the-air
| reception. Instead I have a Roku soundbar with Netflix, Apple
| TV+, and Youtube apps (plus some other apps that I don't use,
| like Tubi and Pluto). I haven't had cable or over-the-air
| reception for ~18 years.
|
| I can't watch anything live unless Youtube is showing some live
| event (which it sometimes does). I could probably watch some
| live news using Pluto, but I never do.
| nephihaha wrote:
| I got rid of mine. Predictable mind numbing content. I do
| stream occasionally but I have not paid a TV licence in over
| twenty years.
| talla_unica wrote:
| Over here in some European countries TV license fee is
| mandatory even if you don't own a set. The licence funds
| watchable content, so it makes sense to have one. (I kind-of
| pity the US and other countries without a strong public TV
| system). Actually I have access to three TV markets via
| satellite (which includes UK with the BBC) and the amount of
| good content free to receive and record it much better than
| what Netflix offers. (Of course, nothing can match youtube)
|
| BTW, I also still have a CRT in constant use - but the sources
| are now digital (It's my kitchen background TV - I feed it from
| a Raspberry PI with Kodi). On great thing about CRTs is that
| there's no computer inside monitoring what you watch.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Kept a few mini portable CRTs. I don't have any CRT monitors
| though.. sold my beloved diamondtron to a movie editor, sadly
| transporter probably shook it too hard and the device wasn't
| operating on arrival (at to refund the guy and lose the screen,
| double whammy)
| elliotec wrote:
| I am not really sure what you mean by "have television" - I, as
| I assume many here, have a TV "screen" as you put it, but it's
| used for Apple TV apps, home media server viewing, Netflix, and
| video games. I actually do have a digital antenna with it but
| never use it. I think the only time I have in the last 10 years
| or so was to watch one olympic event last summer.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Inventor status is a bit murky: https://farnovision.com/wp/no-
| iconoscope-in-1923/
| gcanyon wrote:
| The interesting question (to me) is how directly a line can be
| drawn from the original invention to what we in modern times
| think of as "the thing"?
|
| As an example, the Wright brothers built a biplane that had
| wing warping instead of ailerons and a canard design. That
| bears little resemblance to most modern airplanes, but people
| have little trouble crediting it as "the invention of the
| airplane" --- questions of whether the Wrights were first or
| not notwithstanding.
|
| Can "TV" be thus simplified so that an electromechanical device
| with spinning discs qualifies?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The invention of the "airplane" is just a simplified term for
| "controlled and sustained powered flight".
|
| Which the Wrights did with both controlled and powered in the
| 1903 Flyer.
|
| (The Wrights invented the first 3-axis control system, and
| designed & built the first aviation engine capable of
| sustained flight.)
|
| While the Wrights were first, by several years, its invention
| was inevitable.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| for every episode of the A-Team, for Saturday morning cartoons,
| for I Love Lucy, and for Miami Vice, I give thanks.
|
| Edit: And Star Trek, and Cosmos
| nephihaha wrote:
| Diamonds on a dung heap. For every good series which we love
| there are dozens of terrible/forgettable ones.
|
| A shame since TV has so much potential as a medium.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Watching Dallas on a Tuesday evening with the entire family
| gathered in our parents' bedroom with me and brother and sister
| at the end of the bed on the floor watching the latest schemes of
| JR Ewing and poor hapless brother Bobby.
|
| We never had the TV set in the lounge - it was meant for special
| occasions like tea and cake for family gatherings.
|
| We still have a TV but it hardly used - everybody has iPads in
| the house.
| nephihaha wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about television and no longer have one.
| Some great series but also tonnes and tonnes of forgettable and
| insulting trash.
|
| I think television has had a negative effect on community and
| social interaction.
| rexpop wrote:
| Television, arguably, can be blamed for the near-total
| degradation of civic life and, subsequently, human liberty. By
| substituting the unilateral flow of images for the dialogue of
| the community, television enforces a banking concept of reality
| where we are reduced to passive receptacles, stripping us of the
| bridging social capital necessary to resist domination.
|
| This privatization of leisure generates a vicious circle of
| isolation, transforming the active citizen into a member of a
| lonely crowd. In this atomized state, we lose our _metis_ --the
| practical, situated knowledge essential for self-governance--and
| become vulnerable to the high-modernist state's imposition of
| simplified, legible grids upon our lives. Furthermore, the media
| inundates us with the myths, preventing us from naming the world
| for ourselves. To break this cycle, we must move from
| submissiveness to a liberating praxis that reclaims our time to
| build alternative social institutions and counterhegemony through
| direct, face-to-face cooperation.
|
| Why, even here on Hacker News we've corroborated my position
| regarding the necessity of breaking the "spectacle" through
| direct, generative action. On a recent thread about the
| "loneliness epidemic," HN folks argued that the epidemic is not
| merely an individual failing but a structural byproduct of a
| "death spiral" where digital convenience and "behavior
| modification schemes" have cannibalized the "real world". The
| community identifies that the privatization of leisure--
| manifested in car-centric suburban sprawl and the erasure of
| "third places"--has stripped us of the capacity for spontaneous
| encounter, leaving us waiting for "nicely packaged solutions"
| rather than facing the "great unknown" of human connection.
| Consequently, the proposed remedy aligns precisely: individuals
| must transition from passive consumers to active "Hosts",
| building "alternative social institutions" like non-profit event
| platforms that reject "dark patterns", organizing "physical
| social networks" on street corners, or reclaiming public spaces
| through guerilla cleanup efforts, effectively proving that we
| must "stop waiting for someone else" to reconstruct the civic
| dialogue.
| lr1970 wrote:
| Another important person in creation of the TV technology was
| Vladimir Zworykin [0]. He developed cathode-ray tube based TV
| transmission devices that he patented in 1923 and 1925.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_K._Zworykin
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