Something extraordinary happened between 1950 and 1962. Television

changed the world. Nine percent of the households in the United States had a television set in 1950. By 1962, it was 90%.

Hey, it's Seth. And this is a Kimbo.

This isn't a podcast actually about how television changed the world. It's about how

we've been fooled by the magic moment that television created because that moment is

over. But first, here's a word from our sponsor.

The Magic Moment of Television is actually a byproduct of the

television is actually a byproduct of the electromagnetic spectrum.

And to talk about that, we have to talk about the Hertz family.

Matilda Hertz, the youngest, who did pioneering work in the Raven and its behavior and eyesight.

Her uncle, Gustav, Hurts, won a Nobel Prize.

Her cousin, Carl Hurts. Not to be confused with Carl Hurts, the stage

magician helped invent the inkjet printer and the Sonogram.

But we're really talking about Matilda's dad, Heinrich Hertz, for whom the Hertz is named.

What Hertz demonstrated, what Maxwell theorized is that Light isn't just Roy G Biv, red-orellie-Green-Blue

Indigo Violet, there are the Gamma gamma rays that turn Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. There are the X-rays.

The gamma's too high. There are the X-rays. There are the high frequency ways that lead us to radio and then television.

Spectrum, it's all the same stuff. Light at different frequencies enables us to communicate analog

signals at long distances. It enables us to use x-rays to see through your skin and scan a bone and it enabled television.

The thing is, Spectrum is scarce that in any given band of the spectrum there's only a little bit

available for each use. CB radio gets two dozen channels. You could try to put more channels in the CB radio section of the spectrum.

But because analog is imprecise, we have to leave enough spacing between the channels.

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