Screen Mirror (Jun 1930 - Mar 1931)

12 • Imagine a fire . . hot, blistering, roaring and raging through a tenement district, impelled on a hurricane of its own making — the Television broadcasting station cuts in on their program with this startling announcement. “Searing thousands of impoverished tenement dwellers, a monster fire has broken out on the East Side. Television cameras are now being focussed on the scene of the tragedy. Stand by for the television broadcast of the terrific East Side fire ...” On your screen comes a whirl of smoke. People run like purposeless ants. The red tongue of flame licks up through the smoke. A crash . . charred timbers snarl themselves in crazy figures . . precipitate themselves earthward in a shower of stinging sparks and flames . . shrieks spell some piteous creature’s end . . . Impossible? It was considered a joke . . ephemeral . . wild . . impossible. But no wild fancy this. Crank scientists once boasted that instantaneous transmission of sight and sound were possible. We guffawed at them . . you and I. Were their peculiar, elusive minds less occupied by mad dreams which become facts tomorrow, the scientists might now be laughing at you . . and me. For Television is here. • In England, television has become so far developed that during any hour of day or night, owners of television receiving sets throughout Europe or the British Isles can receive the transmissions from London or Brookman’s park. Plays, events, personages, are seen and heard. John L. Baird, British inventor, godfather of television, sells television receiving sets for the equivalent of $125.00. One step further . . the great American electrical laboratories are busy with the perfection of television cameras for news service. The possibilities tapped are staggering. Nothing in all the world can be kept from the public . . if . . If the public wakens to the things which television can do for it, how the literal truth of things which hap by robert joyce tasker pen can be brought over the television . . and if the public demands of the government that the new medium of news transmission be kept unpolluted — then the greatest educational, informative, enlightening step of all time will have been made. Civilization will have made a great leap forward. • The great moving picture, “All Quiet on the Western Front”, stunned us . . for it showed people whom even yet some of us were inclined to believe brutish . . and showed them as humans, such as we are . . struggling with things none of us can quite comprehend . . fighting blindly . . uselessly. With the war hysteria now totally gone, we realize — cynically— how propaganda, and a meager, lying part of the truth, came to us through official channels. Now . . while our minds are cool . . let us demand that there shall be television broadcasting from every battlefield. The facts must not be concealed. Imagine watching the battlefield . . seeing your own son, crusted with mud and vermin . . drawn and exhausted . . fighting the unseen enemy, who lies in wait beyond the cold, gassoured muck and slime . . . and suddenly comes the alarming scream of a shell . . an explosion . . your own son lying mangled before you. That would end war .forever. But, beware! We have other great mediums which might give us unvarnished truth . . truth of the sort we are trying to give you here . . and those mediums have become perverted • Awake to what television may mean! Don’t let it be perverted! Let every American citizen feel that here is something which is intrinsically his . . that he must keep it his. If every man feels that . . then it will be easier for petty politicians to keep their new pos