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Story of Television

This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Audio/Visual: sound, b&w/color

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: Dodsworth the Cat - - May 16, 2008
Subject: Voice-over By
Is the announcer on this piece not Mel Brandt, one-time chief announcer of NBC who was the second voice of the "living color" TV IDs of the early 60s?

Reviewer: Chris Villion - - March 25, 2007
Subject: Story of Television, The
This is a rather myopic view of RCA's contribution to the development of TV. Whereas RCA's contributions were important and vital, no mention is made of the invention of the Nipkow scanning disk as far back as 1884. This enabled the first mechanical TV scanning system to be developed, with the Scotsman John Logie Baird giving the world's first public demonstration of live, moving images in 1925. Nothing is mentioned of the competition between the mechanical and electronic scanning systems. Nothing is mentioned of the development of colour TV in France (the SECAM system) or in Germany (the superior PAL system, perfected by Walter Bruch).
As an overview of RCA's contribution it is a historical document, but by no means does it do justice to the early TV pioneers elsewhere.

Reviewer: Spuzz - - June 25, 2005
Subject: (Until 1956 that is)
Not bad doc about the many advances television had gone through to 1956. Although padded somewhat at the beginning with a history of how man wanted to see "beyond the valleys" the film gets back on course by telling the many wonders television pioneers, more specifically, RCA, has done. We get to see a very badly done "conversation" between two of them. What could have been an interesting talk just looks like two old men reading from cue cards (and that's what it is). The historical aspect of tv is shown from it's mainstream introduction at the world's fair to them bringing tv on the road, and then! to Color! (film ends at that point (Missing reel?).
The film is somewhat badly spliced but still somewhat interesting to watch.

Reviewer: paulwl - - September 17, 2004
Subject: One side of the TV story - worth it for unique early footage
"The Story of Television" might be better titled "The Official Story of RCA Television." No hint of Baird, Jenkins, Farnsworth or other pioneers in this company promo piece. RCA always claimed to have perfected and introduced TV to the public single-handed.

The intro presages the satirical film "Your Name Here" - taking us from the Sphinx to Chartres cathedral to...wherever the camera crew happened to alight from the subway in Queens looking for rooftop antennae. A pretty model in an Andrew Wyeth-like setting realizes her eyes don't work around corners or far away. Luckily she has binoculars along, but something more remains to be seen.

That is where RCA comes in. Chairman David Sarnoff and inventor Vladimir Zworykin discuss the birth of the Iconoscope tube. Watching Sarnoff read his "conversation" off idiot cards is excruciating. He was never at his best in front of a camera, but the great mind that had built RCA was obviously beginning to stumble a bit by 1956.

Concise animation shows how TV works (still does, pretty much, except now cameras have chips instead of tubes, and 3 scanning guns for color).

Then - some 1930s footage that is absolutely priceless for showing a buried era of TV history. The ID card of W2XBS was one of the only pictures NBC broadcast for several years (along with a revolving Felix The Cat figure). The idea was to hold a place on the TV band until RCA developed a system it could own and control. Even then, they were not anxious to develop content. After $50 million spent on R&D, NBC's first actual TV show went on the air in 1936 with only one camera and no scenery. Clips with a cameraman, floor director, cyclorama and large movie lights are from that show.

Scenes of the giant 2-truck Telemobile Unit, New York World's Fair, and experimental NBC studio with silver painted cameras and small orchestra, all date to about 1938-40. Print and photo documentation on these years is plentiful, but only a few minutes of movie film is known to survive. (All of the clips here are stock film. Only about 5 minutes of kinescope exists from the prewar broadcasts.)

The narration line about "the vital bloodline of competition" rings a bit hollow. NBC stopped experimental broadcasts at least once when competitors such as DuMont beat them to the market with home sets. As NBC was the only station on the air, no one could demo sets, and RCA could be the pioneer in home television.

The film ends abruptly with a viewer's-eye shot of an early set. Is this a problem with the file? (I streamed & downloaded the 256k .mp4.)

Once again, the experimental scenes are unique as far as I know, and the overview of TV history is a modestly good, quick summary once RCA's interests are understood.