September 3, 2014 (Wednesday)
I think it was in 1948 that I stood on a sidewalk before a store’s display window and marveled at what I was seeing. It was a television set that featured a screen I estimate today at 9 inches square. What was being shown was not of interest; what was exciting was the fact that moving pictures were being sent through the air and captured by a device that showed them to us. It was truly an amazing and unbelievable sight.
If your family bought one of these new-fangled boxes and brought it home, 
you were slightly disappointed to discover that pictures were being broadcast only a few hours each day. The picture was small, sometimes indistinct, and not very entertaining, unless you enjoyed “Howdy Doody Time,” which featured a live audience watching clowns and puppets. And, of course, color was not to be part of it for another 20 years. Nevertheless, you closed the blinds, turned out the lights, and invited your neighbors to enjoy television with you.
The closest thing resembling what was to become television was a rear projection screen in a box that traveled to stores, etc. around the country featuring cigarette commercials with travelogues. I saw one of these advertising Lucky Strike at a corner grocery store and ice house when I was about 9 years old (around 1940). Of course, it was not television. There was no broadcast. It was simply a movie projector hidden in the rear section of the “magic” box, projecting pictures on the inside of an opaque glass “screen.” It imitated television, which for most of us in Texas was only something we could read about.
What I saw in the store window in 1948 had been in the making since 1873 when scientists discovered that selenium could conduct light. First attempts at transmitting pictures were mainly mechanical devices. But would-be inventors kept trying until finally in the late 1920’s real pictures were transmitted through the air. Pioneer efforts took place in England and other countries, but our inventors were chasing that dream, too, and by the time I got my first view of a rarely seen television set in Houston, New York City already had 30,000 subscribers.
Once introduced to the homes of our nation, television became an industry that exploded in growth. Technology improved, pictures got bigger and better, programing began to catch up, color was introduced and television became an integral part of the civilized world. As I look at the 42″ flat screen in my den, I rarely think of the pioneer efforts that finally brought all this. Did you ever think you would get down on the football field and look the downed player in the eye? In living color? We do it often this time of year.
When U.S.A. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover and others gathered in 1927 to see the first television pictures transmitted over long distances, someone was heard to say, “Interesting, but commercial use is in doubt.” Say it with me: “Wrong!”
What next? The world of 2014 is very different from the world of 1914, which was different from the world of 1814, and just think of the changes in the century following 1714. In the broad sweep of history, a century is not much more than a snap of the fingers. Will TV still be around in 2114, or will it have been replaced by something we cannot even imagine today?