Science: Television

In a General Electric laboratory at Schenectady last fortnight people peered at the small 3″ x 3″ screen of Dr Ernst Frederik Werner Alexanderson’s television receiving set. They were waiting for the performance of the first playlet broadcast by television. It was J. Hartley Manners’ The Queen’s Messenger. There being only two parts, there were only two actors:

The screen glowed pinkishly; a loud speaker in the same room susurrated A human head appeared on the screen, tiny and wraithlike: its lips moved; simultaneously the loud speaker squawked words. Another head appeared; more words. Hands replaced heads, gestured, poured a liquid, shot a gun, wound a watch; the speaker gurgled, crashed, crackled.

The whole performance was gawky.

Yet it pleased Dr. Alexanderson and his guests, for it was another demonstration that television would some day become practical.*

…

General Electric and Westinghouse. who are working hard to hasten the commercialization of television, have a great fear−that the public may gull itself about this new entertainment. Last week Westinghouse’s Vice President H. P. Davis warned: “Television, in so far as present accomplishments warrant, has been ‘overplayed.’ . . . Unfortunately, this has created the opportunity to foist on the public, much as in the early days of radio, a widespread sale of unsuitable apparatus, which those who purchase naturally expect will permit them to view television broadcasts, but which will only lead to disappointment and dissatisfaction. . . . The gawkish period in the development of television should be passed in the laboratories.”

General Electric’s Manager of Broadcasting Martin P. Rice was somewhat less admonitory: “The experimenter should guard well against ignorant or unscrupulous dealers. . . . With many hundreds dabbling in the new art, there is reason to expect that the record of television will parallel that of radio broadcasting.”. . .

Already television producers have discovered that a certain type of person appears best before their machines. Specifications :

Red hair, long and preferably wavy;

Large, limpid eyes of a light color, preferably blue;

Perfect teeth;

Cameo features of distinctiveness, so that in profile and in full view each will stand out clear-cut and on its own merits;

A voice suitable for radio broadcasting.

* A description of the Alexanderson−G. E. device appeared in TIME, Jan. 23. A description of another device, the Conrad−Westinghouse, appeared in TIME, Aug. 20. .