Many histories of television begin with the 1950s, as this was the decade that the technology reached a tipping point and entered the mainstream of society. This panel explores the decades before, when a variety of methods were used to add images to the technology of radio broadcasting. The topics include Lee De Forest’s earliest research into visual broadcasting, mechanical television, CBS programming from the early 1930s, and the phenomenon of “radio-facsimile.”
Moderator: Noah Arceneaux, San Diego State University
Panelists: Michael Adams, San Jose State University: The Visual Lee de Forest
Don Godfrey, Arizona State University: Radio Finds Its Eyes: The Advent of Still and Motion Picture Transmissions by C. Francis Jenkins
Mike Conway, Indiana University; CBS Experimentation During Television’s First Boom
Noah Arceneaux, San Diego State University; Radio Facsimile Newspapers of the 1930s and 40s