Electronic Television: The Picture Radio | S24-E1

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The invention of the electronic television was uniquely complicated for its time. So complicated, in fact, that the prevailing narrative is that it couldn’t have been invented by a single person -- let alone Philo Farnsworth.

After all, some of the most brilliant minds in the world spent the first quarter of the 20th century working on television systems -- and some even managed to transmit images. But none of those systems were ever able to deliver the quality of images they’d need to be commercially viable. None except Philo Farnsworth, a farm boy from Utah, who got the idea for television when he was fourteen years old.

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Transcript

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0:14.2	podcasts.
0:17.0	It's 1957 at a television studio in Los Angeles, California.
0:26.0	A trim, prospectical man emerges from behind a curtain
0:30.0	and takes a seat on one side of the stage.
0:32.8	This is the set of a popular CBS show called
0:36.0	I've got a secret.
0:37.4	And the man is an unusual contestant.
0:39.8	The host quickly explains the rules of the game.
0:43.6	Now we're not going to identify this contestant panel because to identify him would be to tip off his
0:48.0	secret. We will call him simply Dr X.
0:50.6	The way the game works is like a version of 20 questions. A panel of celebrities will ask the contestant a series of questions and at the end they'll try to guess his secret identity.
1:00.0	Now doctor, if you will whisper your secret to me, we will show it at the same time to the folks out there.
1:05.0	The secret is revealed on a screen behind the panel. And the celebrity panelists start their questions.
1:18.0	Is there any object connected with this secret in Dr X?
1:21.0	Well, yes, I think you, I'm quite sure there's an object.
1:25.7	Do doctors use this object?
1:27.6	Yes, it's been used in surgery.
1:30.8	Is this some kind of a machine that might be painful when it's used?
	...

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