TELEVISION LOOKS AHEAD:

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 227, 29 October 1943, Page 4

TELEVISION LOOKS AHEAD:

"With the coming of peace, a television vastly improved by wartime invention and discovery should emerge as a vigorous new industry"-

N the last war there was a song that ran, "Though your lads are far away they dream of home." Soldiers everywhere try to picture to themselves the familiar scenes they have left. Those who have talked with American fighters, for instance, say that what they miss most in far parts of the world are the sports-the boxing and wrestling matches, the football, hockey and baseball games-which they were in the habit of watching, back home. Television has not yet been developed to the point where events occurring in the United States can be seen at the same time in the Solomon Islands and North Africa. True, a telecast from the National Broadcasting Company’s New York City studios has been picked up by an aeroplane over Washington, 200 miles away, and in 1940 a religious service broadcast by television from New York City was seen at Lake Placid, more than 300 miles away. In general, however, images are not now broadcast over an area with a radius of more than 50 or 60 miles. As an educational medium, television has great possibilities-a fact that is already being demonstrated in the metropolitan area of New York city. Many thousands of air-raid wardens have been trained for their vital war work in the quickest possible time, and in the most effective way, through the transmission of visual as well as oral lessons over the air. Contribution to the Peace All the potentialities exist for ‘eleVision’s rapid development as a powerful new force in the social, educational,

and economic life of mankind. It is only a matter of time until its range will be extended so that travellers in foreign lands can see with their own eyes what is happening in their homelands. The pleasure of watching a fine opera or play, listening to a great speech, or seeing the Olympic Games will be shared by audiences hundreds, even _ thousands, of miles away. ° And television will make the world one neighbourhood and contribute to the just and lasting ,peace which the United Nations are fighting for, by giving men a better understanding of one another’s. daily lives and problems. Because of the war, television’s development as a service to

cas the public has marked time. Commercial operation of this new device began on July 1, 1941, with a schedule of 15 hours a week. With the entry of the United States into the war, all manufacture of radio and television equipment was suspended for the duration, but television research on the other hand has made rapid progress under the stress of war urgency. It has been responsible for technical advances in the science of radio-electronics as applied to modern warfare. The development of radar, the vitally important radio detection and ranging instrument which has saved thousands of lives by warning of the enemy’s approach, owes much to this research. With the coming of peace, a television vastly improved by wartime invention

and discovery should emerge as a vigorous new peacetime industry. Secrecy cloaks most scientific developments of a military nature; but it can be said that when the war is over, television cameras will have become much more sensitive, capable of "seeing" under relatively poor lighting conditions, instead of the intense lights which made the first telecasts an ordeal for all concerned; viewing screens on home receivers may be larger than pre-war types; and the images reproduced on the screen will be clearer, brighter and sharper. The new horizons of visual programming are practically unlimited. They lie not only in the field of variety entertainment and vaudeville, of drama on the stage and in films, but in the world of everyday happenings. Television cameras have a voracious appetite. Once they have looked at something and broadcast what they have seen to their audience, that programme is finished. Were motion pictures alone to be drawn upon as a source of entertainment, an entire year’s output from Hollywood could be consumed by television in 30 days! Music, which takes up many hours of sound-broadcasting time, will not furnish a complete television fare unless something to divert the eye is offered with it. Scenes from a Broadway play have already been telecast, and the new television screen----15 by 20 feet in size-opens up possibilities of entertaining an audience of millions in theatres across the lands. The acrobat, the juggler, the tumbler, the magician, the song-and-dance team, may enjoy a renaissance of their arts in the postwar world. It is possible that television may create an entirely new art form and

type of entertainment, as the motion picture did 30 years ago. While it will draw inspiration from the stage, the films, and sound broadcasting, the finished product will differ from all three, and something new under the sun will have been created. In the field of education alone, the possibilities of television are exciting for (continued on next page)

k SAYS the President of the Radio Corporation of America

New Horizons of Art and Entertainment

(continued from previous page) the future. Already lessons in cooking, dressmaking, physical culture and _firstaid have been telecast. Industrial processes, scientific experiments, languages, drawing, nursing, modern farming, and a hundred other things which people wish to learn, may be taught’ by television courses, broadcast to many classes and homes at the same time. To the reporting of news and sports the television of the post-war world will bring a new element, that of immediacy. Newspapers, newsreels, and sound radio mow provide excellent on-the-scene reports of all that is newsworthy. The one thing they cannot do, however, is to show the news in action when and as it happens, while the outcome of the event is still in doubt. Television can supply the essence of dramaspectator suspense-in reporting an athletic contest, a fire, a flood, or perhaps even a battle. News events worthy of pictorial coverage are happening every day in the United States, in Europe, in Russia, in North Africa, and the Far East. The sources are as unlimited as human beings themselves. Already television is freed from the limits of a broadcasting studio. It has the mobile and portable equipment to report "spot" news, or some unscheduled happening, as well as events which are known to be :developing. These mobile camera units vary in size from rather large installations, which are transported in big vans, to relatively small "suitcase" instruments that can be carried in an ordinary automobile. And television will not always be earthbound. Before the war, it was successfully installed in aeroplanes, and experiments in sending and receiving were carried out. When this development is perfected, huge _ spectacles, major disasters, occurring anywhere, may be reached by plane from nearby centres and transmitted to peoples’ homes from telecast aeroplanes. Already these new tools have been developed for telecasting as soon as ce comes: electronic cameras capable of translating moving or stationary

images from light waves into electrical impluses; television transmitters, which broadcast these impulses on_ ultra-high-frequency radio waves; and television receivers with antennae which can pick up these broadcast signals and_ retranslate them into pictures of great clarity and detail. Television radio relay systems and coaxial cables can now be used to establish television networks re-. gionally, and in_ the future nationally and internationally, Neighbours the World Over When this happens, distance will have been conquered. The peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, will be neighbours, and the pleasures, sorrows, and pressing problems. of one will be shared by all. The big task at the end of the war will be to make television service available to the public as widely and as rapidly as_ possible. Some idea of the number of stations required to’ serve the United States alone .may be obtained from the fact

that more than 920 radio stations now operate in the sound-broadcasting field. In time, American television stations may exceed that number, because their area of individual coverage is not so great. As transmitting stations make their appearance in each city, television receivers for the home will appear in the shop windows of the-local merchants. And so a great industry awaits us in the post-war world. The operation of television studios, mobile units and programme departments, will call for

technicians, cameramen, stage designers, production men, lighting experts, directors and writers. The need for dramatic talent will be almost limitless. With calls in all parts of the country for entertainment telecasts, dramatic groups may be expected to materialise in many centres, instead of gravitating to the theatre and to moticn-picture studios, as now. In the manufacture of equipment and in financial and business management the new television industry will also offer great opportunities. In recent years, radio without television achieved the status of a _ 1,000,000,000-dollar — industry in the United States, providing employment for 400,000 persons. Postwar television has the potentiality of substantially increasing these figures. The public will not long be denied a new service which will add so much education, information and _ entertainment to the every-day life of human beings.