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EDITORIAL
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REMEMBER when the first crystal radio sets came out? When one or two amateur "bugs" in your neighborhood, an electrician or so, and engineering departments in colleges were practically the only possessors of radio receivers?
We'd visit one of these "bugs," listen politely through earphones to an assortment of squawks, whistles and squeaks, tell him how wonderful it was, and go home and listen to some good phonograph records in peace.
For entertainment purposes, television is almost in that stage right now, in the West. In the East, where experimentation has been carried on more extensively, a few individuals are beginning to dabble in its mysteries with outfits of their own. Several broadcast stations are broadcasting television "programs," with reception reported at a thousand miles in some cases, its quality depending entirely on favorable atmospheric conditions. Thrilling, probably, but not very heavy entertainment.
In the West, experimentation has been much slower. There are no stations at present attempting to actually entertain the public with television "programs." In a few places, permits have been issued, but no active broadcasting is being done, except for strictly experimental purposes.
Television will be primarily for entertainment. For this reason, it will be a pretty safe bet to watch the theaters as barometers of television's progress. Theater owners are the wisest judges of entertainment. They are the first to snap up any opportunity to increase the box office returns, and when television is ready for the public, our theaters will be Johnny-on-the-spot.
Until then, television "hams" and experimental laboratories will still plug away at the new science, grinding away the rough edges that still confront satisfactory reception.
What the result will be when television is broadcast in the West, for better or for worse, is problematical. Will we buy a lot of parts, wires, tubes, and apparatus, assemble them ourselves, and putter around with it in our homes as we did with radios, or will we wait until it is better perfected?
Some of us will; some of us won't. There will be a large number of each, we imagine. Maybe we're busier, or lazier, than we were ten years ago when radio was new. Maybe not.
Anyway, the main thing is that television is here; it is a reality, and no longer a promise. Though it is now approaching the "crystal stage" rapidly, we still have better entertainment in our talkies and our radio. And soon we'll probably be visiting our television "bug" friends' homes, listening and watching politely, and going home to listen to our favorite radio program, or to a movie.
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