JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2887

I didn’t expect such a good photo-essay of the Du Mont labs and assembly facilities after the very odd first few pages of the manufacturer’s 1944 brochure. It started the history of the cathode ray tube at Genesis and then had a couple of pages of cartoonish timelines, but then settled into the turf and surf of their business. Well, nearly so, anyway–there were a few odd bits with the introduction of a sort of scary-looking “Alex Electron” showing how television images were made, otherwise this was an engaging assembly-line view of television manufacturing.  

It did have this gloriously colorful display, including a look at the television of the future:

It did prompt me to check out the history of the word “television” for its first and early appearances in the OED,  and there I found the following:

• 1900   Cent. Mag. June   Through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.

• 1900   Electrician 31 Sept. 822/2   At the afternoon sitting on Friday, M. C. Perskyi read a communication on ‘Television’, describing a number of apparatus based on the magnetic properties of selenium.

• 1926   Glasgow Herald 20 Dec. 11/8   Mr. John L. Baird, a native of Helensburgh,..recently invented an apparatus which makes television possible.

• 1930   J. Buckingham Matter & Radiation 122   We have heard so much about Television lately that we are apt to forget that no portion of the apparatus used is novel to scientists.
  

• 1948   N. Wiener Cybernetics 10   Television was destined to be more useful to engineering by the introduction of such new techniques than as an independent industry.

• 1957   Technology Mar. 9/2   The solution of the major problems in colour television, the public introduction of which is now more a question of economics than of technical difficulty.