Presenting the ‘window on the world’ to the world. Competing narratives of the presentation of television at the world's fairs in paris (1937) and new york (1939)

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Notes

Note

1 Quoted in the booklet Television show by the Deutsche Reichspost at the international exhibition Paris 1937, edited by the German Post Office (Berlin, Deutsche Reichspost, 1937), 19.

2 David Sarnoff's opening speech of the regular television transmission of RCA/NBC at the New York World Fair, 21 April 1939. See Dedication of RCA seen on television, New York Times, 21 April 1939, p. 16.

3 Eduard Rhein, a German radio and television critic of the first hour wrote in the journal Fernsehen: ‘There we are standing, we, who looked up to the new coming miracle with wide eyes, quite disappointed, perhaps angry. What the daily press shouted as us—phrases! It is nothing! Whether progress is recorded, proved with differentials, integrals, slide-rules, curves—we can’t see it!’ The German audience, who first saw television at the Berlin broadcasting fairs in 1927 and 1928, finally wanted to see visible results and achievements. See Monika Elsner and Thomas Müller, The early history of German television: the slow development of a fast medium, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 10(3) (1990), 193–220. The same is true for the American context too. Even in the enthusiastic context of the start of the first regular television service during the New York World's Fair on 30 April 1939, Alva Johnston wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post, who deftly summarized the history of television's introduction:

• Television has suffered from its own prophets. Broadcasting and the talking pictures had taken people by surprise; they resolved that television would not catch them off their guard. Back in the 20's it was taken for granted that television was only a year or two away. Warnings or difficulties had no effect; scientists were regarded as gods who could solve all problems with a turn of the wrist. The public was saturated with the wonders of science; miracles were commonplace. Today, the age of miracles is just beginning to flourish, but the age of appreciation of miracles is past … Too much prophecy has made the magic box something of an anticlimax.

See Alva Johnston, Television's Here, The Saturday Evening Post, 6 May 1939, p. 8, quoted from Jowett Garth, Dangling the dream? The presentation of television to the American public, 1928–1952, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 14(2) (1994), 137.

4 The construction work had been seriously troubled by demonstrations and work stoppages of French unionists. See the unpublished memories of Walter Bruch, Vol. III, chapter 21: ‘Paris, 24. Mai 1937—Ein Theatercoup’, private estate of Walter Bruch at the archive of the Hochschule Mittweida/Germany.

5 Opening speech of Fernand Chapsal, in: Exposition Internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne. Official general catalogue, Vol. 1 (Paris, R. Stenger, 1937), 3.

6 Inaugural speech of Dr Hjalmar Schacht at the German house, in: Deutschland in Paris. Ein Bild-Buch von Heinrich Hoffmann (Berlin, Selbstverlag, 1938), 11.

7 Paul Sigel, Exponiert: deutsche Pavillons auf Weltausstellungen (Berlin, Verlag Bauwesen, 2000), 137.

8 Ibid., 149.

9 See David Nye, Synthesis: the New York World Fair of 1939, in: David Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge/London, MIT Press, 1994), 205.

10 See Joseph P. Cusker, The World of Tomorrow: science, culture, and community at the New York World's Fair, in: Sara Blackburn (ed.) Dawn of a new day. The New York Wold's Fair 1939/40 (New York, New York University Press, 1980), 11.

11 See Wolfgang Kretschmer, Geschichte der Weltausstellungen (Frankfurt am Main/New York, Campus Verlag, 1999), 205.

12 See James Gilbert, World's fairs as historical events, in: Robert W. Rydell and Nancy E. Gwinn (eds) Fair Representations. World's Fairs and the Modern World (Amsterdam, Free University Press, 1994), 13–27.

13 Several audiovisual sources of the Prelinger Archives offer a visual impression of the New York World's Fair. See for example The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair: http://www.archive.org/details/middleton_family_worlds_fair_1939 or the 1940 General Motors advertising film To New Horizons: http://www.archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940.

14 Nye, Synthesis, 214.

15 As Peter J. Kuznick has shown, the way science or scientific knowledge and know-how was popularized (‘in terms of gadgets, commodities, and magic’) was not really appreciated by a lot of well known American scholars. See 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, 46(3) (1994), 341–373.

16 Ron Becker, ‘Hear and see radio’ in the world of tomorrow: RCA and the Presentation of Television at the World's Fair 1939/40, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 21(4) (2001), 365.

17 Lisa Rubens, Re-presenting the nation: the Golden Gate International Exhibition, in: Robert W. Rydell and Nancy Gwinn (eds) Fair Representations. World's Fairs and the Modern World (Amsterdam, Free University Press, 1994), 138.

18 Nye, Synthesis, 223.

19 Théodor du Moncel, Le microphone, le radiophone et le grammophone (Hachette, Paris, Bibliothèque des Merveilles, 1882), 289–319, quote from 289.

20 Experimental television transmissions had of course been realized in France before the World's Fair. The first ‘public’ transmission of a 30-line picture had been realized by the engineer of the Compagnie des Compteurs (CdC), René Barthélémy, on 14 April 1931. See Thierry Kubler and Emmanuel Lemieux, Cognac Jay 1940. La télévision française sous l’occupation (Paris, Editions Plume, 1990), 24.

21 Kubler and Lemieux, Cognac Jay, 74–77.

22 Colette Chambelland and Danielle Tartakowsky: Le mouvement syndical à l’Exposition internationale de 1937, Le mouvement social, 186 (1999), 69–83.

23 See the unpublished memories of Walter Bruch, Vol. III, chapter 21: ‘Paris, 24. Mai 1937—Ein Theatercoup’, 2.

24 Kubler and Lemieux, Cognac Jay, 75f.

25 Cécile Méadel, Histoire de la radio des années trente (Paris, 1994), 146–148.

26 Claude Ritter, Évocations. Mozart enfant, comédie d’un acte, Bibliothèque de la Comédie radiophonique (Paris, 1938).

27 On the definition of ‘media events’ see Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, Media Events. The live broadcasting of history (Cambridge/London, Harvard University Press, 1992); On the Olympic Games as an utopian vision of modernity see Gunter Gebauer (ed.) Die Olympischen Spiele—die andere Utopie der Moderne. Olympia zwischen Kult und Droge (Frankfurt am Main, 1996).

28 On television at the Olympic Games in Berlin, see Gerhard Goebel, Vor vierzig Jahren. Fernsehen während der XI. Olympischen Spiele in Berlin, Fernsehinformationen, Vols 12, 13, 14 (1976), 264–67; 294–296; 313–314.

29 Quoted from William Uricchio, Envisioning the audience: perceptions of early German television's audiences, 1935–1945, Aura Filmvetenskaplig Tidskrift, 2 (1996), 4. For an online version see http://www.let.uu.nl/∼william.uricchio/personal/SWEDEN1.html. Because of the initiative of William Uricchio, a special issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television [Vol. 10(3) (1990)] has been dedicated on early German television history. A German compendium with these texts was published one year later. See William Uricchio (ed.) Die Anfänge des deutschen Fernsehens. Kritische Annäherungen an die Entwicklung bis 1945 (Tübingen, 1991). For a deep-going historical overview see the dissertation by Klaus Winker, Fernsehen unterm Hakenkreuz. Organisation, Programm, Personal (Köln, 1994).

30 Monika Elsner and Thomas Müller, The early history of German television: the slow development of a fast medium, in: Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, 10(3) (1990).

31 William Uricchio, Television as history: representations of German television broadcasting 1935–1944, in: Bruce A. Murray and Christopher J. Wickham (eds) Framing the Past. The Historiography of German Cinema and Television (Carbondale/Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 167–196, here 171; Ibid., Envisioning the audience, 6.

32 Unpublished memories of Walter Bruch, chapter III, 19/1 and 20/5.

33 Walter Bruch: Die Fernsehstory (Stuttgart, Telekosmos-Verlag, 1969).

34 Wilhelm Füßl and Helmuth Trischler (eds) Geschichte des Deutschen Museums (München, 2003); Ulf Hashagen, Oskar Blumtritt and Helmuth Trischler (eds) CIRCA 1903. Artefakte in der Gründungszeit des Deutschen Museums (München, 2003).

35 The Visiotelephonie-device consisted of two television–telephone boxes, set up at the two ends of the long exposition hall of the German pavilion. By this way, two visitors were able to make a television–telephone conversation, which was shown on parallel receivers at both boxes in order to enable the participation of a larger public on this event. The television images were transmitted in 180 lines and 25 frames per second. The system shown in Paris was already in use since one year in an experimental television–telephone-service between Leipzig and Berlin. See: Telefunken auf der Weltausstellung in Paris, Telefunken-Zeitung, 76 (1937), 85–87. An interesting analysis of the failure of the picture phone in the history of communications is presented by Kenneth Lipartito, Picturephone and the information age, Technology & Culture, 44(1) (2003), 50–82.

36 Unpublished memories of Walter Bruch, chapter III, 20/2.

37 Unpublished memories of Walter Bruch, chapter III, 24/4.

38 David Sarnoff, Forging an electrical eye, The New York Times, 18 November 1928, p. XX:3.

39 Ron Becker, ‘Hear and see radio’, 372.

40 Ibid., 365f.

41 Ibid., 369.

42 David Nye, Ritual tomorrows: the New York World's Fair of 1939, History and Anthropology, 6(1) (1992), 16.

43 Albert Abramson, Zworykin, Pioneer of Television (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press, 1995).

44 As William Boddy has put it, ‘the history of the commercial exploitation of television is a story of patent battles, corporate strategies, and regulatory decisions rather than of technological breakthroughs, or the general public by surprise.’ See William Boddy, Fifties Television. The Industry and Its Critics (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1993), 16. On the early battle for standardization in American television broadcasting, see Hugh R. Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation. Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920–1960 (Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. See especially chapter 3: Competition for standards: television broadcasting, commercialization, and technical expertise 1928–1941, 68–112.

45 Becker, See-and-hear radio, 368.

46 See Orrin E. Dunlap, Act I Scene I, The New York Times, 19 March 1939, pp. XI 12. Quoted from Becker, Hear-and-see radio, 373.

47 Robert W. Rydell and Nancy E. Gwinn, Introduction, in: Fair Representations, 1.

48 Burton Benedict, The Anthropology of World's Fairs: San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition (Berkeley, 1983), 10.

49 Walter Benjamin, Paris, capital of the nineteeth century, in: Walter Benjamin, Reflections, Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (ed. Peter Demetz) (New York, Harvest/HBJ, 1978), 151.

50 Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983).

51 In his book, William Boddy analyses so-called ‘discrete historical moments’ in which communication technologies like film, radio and television had emerged. ‘At such moments, the consequences of technological innovation, real and imagined, provoked both euphoria and unease within and without the communication industries’. William Boddy, New Media and Popular Imagination. Launching Radio, Television and New Media in the United States (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 3.

52 See the excellent study of Michel Hilmes, Only Connect. A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States (Belmont, CA, Wadsworth Press, 2002).

53 The notion of ‘cadre structurant’ (structuring patterns) is taken from the French historian and political scientist Stéphane Olivesi. Stéphane Olivesi, Histoire politique de la télévision (Paris, 1998).

54 Raymond Williams, Communications (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1962), 11. Quoted from Boddy, New Media and Popular Imagination, 3.

55 Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV. Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago/London, University of Chicago Press, 1992).

56 One of the highlights of the Berlin Broadcast Exhibition in July 1939 was the presentation of the ‘deutsche Einheits-Fernseh-Empfänger für das Heim’—the ‘German Unity Television Receiver for the home’ at the price of 650,–Reichsmark. See Riedel, 70 Jahre Funkausstellung, 106.