'Hear-and-see radio' in the world of tomorrow: RCA and the presentation of television at the world's fair, 1939-1940

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Volumn 21, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 361-378

  Becker, Ron ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 30444453859     PISSN: 01439685     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01439680120075491     Document Type: Review

References (50)

1. Dedication of RCA seen on television, New York Times, 21 April 1939, p. 16
2. New York Fair to start television drive in earnest, Newsweek, 20 March 1939; p. 36
3. While there are few histories of broadcasting that fail to include TV's debut at the World's Fair, most devote only a few sentences or, at most, a paragraph to the event. In general, historical accounts have simply concluded that television's debut in 1939 was either a premature attempt to instigate a television boom or a sneak preview of what was to come. Either way, media histories have considered the event noteworthy but ultimately less interesting than the technological experimentation that proceeded it or the commercial boom that followed. See Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: a history of broadcasting in the United States, Vofame II - 1933 to 1953 (New York, 1968), p. 126
4. Laurence Bergreen, Look Now, Pay Later: the rise of network broadcasting (New York, 1980), pp. 123-124
5. Sydney W. Head and Christopher H. Sterling, Broadcasting in America (Boston, 1978), p. 186
6. Curtis Mitchell, Cavalcade of Broadcasting (Chicago, 1970), p. 88
7. Joseph H. Udelson, The Great Television Race: a history of the American television industry 1925-1941 (Alabama, 1982), pp. 126-128
8. Irving Settel, A Pictorial History of Television (New York, 1983), pp. 42-43
9. For more on the 1939 New York World's Fair, see Joseph P. Cusker, The world of tomorrow: science, culture, and community at the New York World's Fair, in H. A. Horrison (ed.), Dawn of a New Day: the New York World's Fair 1939/40 (New York, 1980), pp. 3-15
10. David H. Geltner, 1939, The Lost World of the Fair (New York, 1995)
11. Helen H. Harrison, The Fair received: color and lights as elements in design and planning, in Dawn of a New Day: the New York World's Fair 1939/40, op. cit., pp. 43-55
12. Jeffrey Hart, Yesterday's America of tomorrow, Commentary, July 1985, pp. 62-65
13. Folke T. Kihlstedt, Utopia realized, the World's Fairs of the 1930s, in J. J. Cohen (ed.), Imagining Tomorrow: history, technology, and the American future (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 97-118
14. Peter J. Kuznick, Losing the world of tomorrow: the battle over the presentation of science at the 1939 New York World's Fair, American Quarterly, September 1994, pp. 341-373
15. Francis V. O'Connor, The usable future: the role of fantasy in the promotion of a consumer society for art, in Dawn of a New Day: the New York's World's Fair 1939/40, op. cit., pp. 57-71
16. Michael Robertson, Cultural hegemony goes to the fair: the case of E. L. Doctorow's World's Fair, American Studies, Spring (1992), pp. 31-44
17. Robert Rydell, World of Fairs (Chicago, 1993)
18. Eugene A. Santomasso, The design of reason: architecture and planning at the 1939/40 New York World's Fair, in Dawn of a New Day: the New York World's Fair 1939/40, op. cit., pp. 29-40
19. Warren I. Susman, The people's Fair: cultural contradictions of a consumer society, in Culture as History (New York, 1984), pp. 211-229
20. Official Guide Book of the New York World's Fair 1939 (New York, 1939), p. 41
21. Official Guide Book, p. 5
22. This attention to the consumer reflects wider economic shifts from an economy based on heavy industry to one increasingly focused on consumption and a cultural shift in which an emerging ideology centered on the consumer challenged the aging Jacksonsian ideal of the producer. See Rita Barnard, The Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance (New York, 1995), pp. 3-31
23. Michael E. Parrish, Anxious Decades: American prosperity and depression, 1920-1941 (New York, 1992), pp. 387-390
24. Grover Whalen, What the Fair means to business and industry, New York World's Fair Bulletin, June 1937, p. 1
25. According to Fortune, 'during 1938 there was scarcely a convention that did not feature an address on public relations, scarcely a trade magazine that did not devote some space to the subject, scarcely a board of directors that did not deliberate weightily on the powers of the new goddess'. The public is not dammed, Fortune, March 1939, p. 83
26. Howard Wood, Business must 'sell' itself, Nation's Business, January 1938, p. 27
27. Public relations as good business, Business Week, 18 February 1939, pp. 50-51
28. Roland Marchand, The designers go to the Fair II: Norman Bel Geddes, the General Motors 'Futurama,' and the visit to the factory transformed, Design Issues, Spring (1992), p. 35
29. Also see Roland Marchand, The designers go to the Fair: Walter Teague and the professionalization of corporate industrial exhibits, 1933-1940, Design Issues, Fall (1991), pp. 4-17
30. Except for buses, there were no means of mass transit in GM's vision of 1960s America. Meanwhile in the same period, GM was buying up streetcar systems nationwide, dismantling them, and replacing them with buses. See Jeffrey L. Meikle, Twentieth-Century Limited: industrial design in America, 1925-1939 (Philidelphia, 1979), p. 207
31. Lenox R. Lohr, Memo to Sarnoff, 1 June 1939, NBC 79/20, p. 1
32. J.D'Agostino, Memo to C.W. Fitch, 18 August 1938, NBC 63/7
33. David Sarnoff, Statement on television, presented at the Annual Meeting of RCA Stockholders, 7 May 1935, NBC 102/4
34. David Sarnoff, Statement before the Federal Communications Commission, 14 November 1938, NBC 60/41
35. Lenox R. Lohr, Memo to R. R. Beal, 20 October 1938, NBC 63/6
36. Lenox R. Lohr, Memo to R.R. Beal, 20 October 1938, NBC 63/6
37. also see J.D'Agostino, Letter to Douglas Crone, 1 August 1938, NBC 63/6
38. Also see Orrin E. Dunlap, Ceremony is carried by television as industry makes its formal bow, New York Times. 1 May 1939, p. 8
39. Lenox, R. Lohr, Memo to Sarnoff, 1 June 1939, NBC 79/20
40. In the 1940 season, GM and RCA would join efforts to demonstrate a working prototype of a 'telephone of tomorrow' which joined television technology with phone service. The presentation was widely covered and closely tied to military purposes. One of the most touted applications would be for government use at times of crisis. Fears generated by Nazi success in deceiving Allied forces in the North Sea with fake messages made the idea of a visual link attractive. GM stated that the demonstration showed 'how television may in the future be used for utilitarian as well as entertainment purposes' - a comment that suggests how television was otherwise being promoted at the Fair. Milton Bracker, Television phone shown, New York Times, 18 June 1940, p. 28
41. and Vladimir Zworykin; Dedication of RCA seen on television, New York Times, 21 April 1939, p. 21
42. Orrin E. Dunlap. Act I reviewed, New York Times, 7 May 1939, p. 12
43. Gerald Cock, My impressions of American television, Television and Short Wave World, August 1939, p. 453
44. When NBC camera crews returned to cover the 1940 re-opening for the Fair they did have more cameras, and close ups. See Radio will carry opening ceremony, New York Times, 5 May 1940, p. 46
45. Harry Gordon, Letter to Frank E. Mullin, 10 January 1941, NBC 103/21
46. See Irving Fiske, Where does television belong, Harper's Magazine, February 1949, pp. 265-269
47. Alva Johnston, Now what can we do with television, Saturday Evening Post, 30 May 1939, pp. 20-21 +
48. Denver Lindley, Before your very eyes, Collier's, 18 March 1939, pp. 12-13 +
49. Too early for television? Time, 15 April 1939, p. 81
50. Francis X. Welch, The economic birth pangs of television, Nation's Business, June 1940, pp. 20-21 +