Who's who on firsts: A search for challengers

If nobody tells them about this article, perhaps few graduate students will discover the wonderful shortcut that Dr. Lichty has provided them. For generations, theses and dissertations have been written, each claiming to be the “first” in its narrow field of specialization. Each author has claimed that his review of the literature carried him back to the origin of his particular topic. In very few cases has this been true. The inventor of radio was Marconi—or Dolbear, or Stub‐blefield, or Loomis. Television is building upon the technology of 30 years, or 40 or 50 or 100 or (as Hubbell titled his book) on the discoveries of 3000 years. “Who's on first?” is a line from an old Abbott and Costello comedy routine that is singularly apt when one skeptically examines the multitude of claims of primacy in any given field. In the present article, Dr. Lichty did “far more reading . . . than was good for” him, and presents the fruits of his labors as a challenge to other claimants to primacy in the field of the literature of broadcasting. John M. Kinross and Kenneth Harwood of the University of Southern California have already taken up this challenge, communed with their personal libraries and unpublished bibliographies, and have added approximately two pages to the original length of this article. It is hoped that blame for any errors they may have made will be apportioned accordingly. Dr. Lichty, a frequent contributor to the Journal, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech (Broadcasting) at the University of Wisconsin.