World-level control of propaganda

One of the most serious and least understood problems of social control is above the national level, at the level of the world social system. At the world level there is an extremely dangerous lack of means of restraining or counteracting propaganda that fans the flames of international, interracial, and interreligious wars. The global system consists at present of a highly chaotic mixture of democratic, semidemocratic, and authoritarian subsystems. Many of these are controlled by leaders who are ill educated, ultranationalistic, and religiously, racially, or doctrinally fanatical. At present, every national regime asserts that its national sovereignty gives it the right to conduct any propaganda it cares to, however untrue such propaganda may be and however contradictory to the requirements of the world system. The most inflammatory of such propaganda usually takes the form of statements by prominent national leaders, often sensationalized and amplified by their own international broadcasts and sensationalized and amplified still further by media in the receiving countries. The only major remedy would lie, of course, in the slow spread of education for universalist humanism. A first step toward this might be taken through the fostering of an energetic and highly enlightened press corps and educational establishment, doing all it can to provide the world's broadcasters, newspapers, and schools with factual information and illuminating editorials that could increase awareness of the world system as a whole. Informed leaders in world affairs are therefore becoming increasingly interested in the creation of world-level media and multinational bodies of reporters, researchers, editors, teachers, and other intellectuals committed to the unity of mankind.

TEXT 2

THE PRESS

HISTORY

The earliest known journalistic product was a newssheet circulated in ancient Rome called the Acta Diurna. Published daily from 59 BC, it was hung in prominent places and recorded important social and political events. In China during the T'ang dynasty a court circular called a pao, or “report,” was issued to government officials. This gazette appeared in various forms and under various names more or less continually to the end of the Ch'ing dynasty in 1911. The first regularly published newspapers appeared in German cities and in Antwerp around 1609. The first English newspaper, the Weekly Newes, was published in 1622. One of the first daily newspapers, The Daily Courant, appeared in 1702.

At first hindered by government-imposed censorship, restrictions, and taxes, newspapers in the 18th century came to enjoy the reportorial freedom and indispensable function that they have retained to the present day. The growing demand for newspapers owing to the spread of literacy and the introduction of steam- and then electric-driven presses caused the daily circulation of newspapers to rise from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands and eventually to millions.

Magazines, which had started in the 17th century as learned journals, began to feature opinion-forming articles on current affairs, such as those in the Tatler (1709–11) and the Spectator (1711–12). In the 1830s cheap, mass-circulation magazines aimed at a wider and less well-educated public appeared, as well as illustrated and women's magazines. The cost of large-scale news gathering led to the formation of news agencies, organizations that sold their international journalistic reporting to many different individual newspapers and magazines. The invention of the telegraph and then the radio and television brought about a great increase in the speed and timeliness of journalistic activity and at the same time provided massive new outlets and audiences for their electronically distributed products. In the late 20th century satellites were being used for the long-distance transmission on journalistic information.

NEWSPAPERS

Newspaperis apublication usually issued daily, weekly, or at other regular times that provides news, views, features, and other information of public interest and that often carries advertising.

Forerunners of the modern newspaper include the Acta diurna (“daily acts”) of ancient Rome—posted announcements of political and social events—and manuscript newsletters circulated in the late Middle Ages by various international traders, among them the Fugger family of Augsburg.

In England the printed news book or news pamphlet usually related a single topical event such as a battle, disaster, or public celebration. The earliest known example is an eyewitness account of the English victory over the Scots at the Battle of Flodden (1513). Other forerunners include the town crier and ballads and broadsides.

In the first two decades of the 17th century, more or less regular papers printed from movable type appeared in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The Dutch “corantos” (“currents of news”), which strung together items extracted from foreign journals, became the sources for English and French translations published in Amsterdam as early as 1620. Rudimentary newspapers appeared in many European countries in the 17th century, and broadsheets with social news were published in Japan in the Tokugawa period (1603–1867).

The first English corantos appeared in London in 1621. By the 1640s the news book had taken the form of a newspaper—the title page being dropped. The first English daily was The Daily Courant (1702–35). Not until 1771 did Parliament formally concede journalists the right to report its proceedings. The Times, which became a model for high quality and later led in mechanical innovation, was founded by John Walter in 1785, and The Observer was founded in 1791.

The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) set back incipient newspapers in Germany, and censorship in various forms was general throughout Europe. Sweden passed the first law guaranteeing freedom of the press in 1766.

In France the first daily, Journal de Paris, was started in 1771, and the Journal des Débats (1789), published until World War II, was founded as a daily to report on sessions of the National Assembly. Papers multiplied during the Revolution and decreased sharply after it.

The first newspaper in the United States, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick (Boston, September 1690), was suppressed by the colonial governor after one issue. In 1704 the Boston News-letter began publication as a weekly issued by the postmaster. The Boston Gazette (1719) was printed by James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's brother. Independent newspaper publishing in the English colonies is considered to have begun with James Franklin's New-England Courant (1721). Freedom of the press was advanced in a landmark case in 1735 when John Peter Zenger, a New York City newspaper publisher, was acquitted of libel on the defense that his political criticism was based on fact. Press freedom in the United States was further secured by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1791). Most of the press of the new republic proved fiercely partisan in the political struggles between the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.

Circulation in the low thousands was common for papers at the beginning of the 19th century. Rising circulations were made possible by technological advances in mechanical typesetting, in high-speed printing (rotary press), in communications (telegraph and telephone), and in transport (railway). Led by papers in Great Britain and the United States, newspapers broadened their appeal and reduced prices. The Times, for example, increased circulation from 5,000 in 1815 (price seven pence) to 50,000 by the mid-19th century (five pence). In the United States, Benjamin Day established the Sun in New York City (1833) as the first successful penny paper. Two years later James Gordon Bennett began the New York Herald. He shaped many of the directions of modern journalism, including comprehensive coverage and an emphasis on entertainment. Horace Greeley, who crusaded for women's rights and against slavery, founded the independent New York Tribune (1841). Another independent, though less flamboyant, paper, The New York Times, appeared 10 years later. By the mid-19th century, there were 400 dailies and 3,000 weekly papers in the United States.

What became the Associated Press was organized (1848) by New York publishers as a cooperative news-gathering enterprise, and in London Paul J. Reuter began his foreign news service for the press (1858). Competition in New York City between Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the World from 1883, and William Randolph Hearst (Journal, 1895) led to excesses of lurid and sensationalized news, called yellow journalism (q.v.), and reactions against it in the late 1890s. In western Europe many papers became primarily organs of political and literary opinion.

In 1896 Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe) launched the London Daily Mail as a national paper. Priced low to increase circulation, it was deliberately based on a plan for earning most of the revenues from advertising. He also introduced the first tabloid (Daily Mirror, 1903)—about half the size of a standard paper (15 × 23 inches [38 × 58 cm]). The first American tabloid was the New York Daily News (1919), started by Joseph Medill Patterson and devoted to sex and sensationalism. Early in the 20th century, the number of American papers reached a peak (more than 2,000 dailies and 14,000 weeklies). They declined in number thereafter, though total circulation rose. During the 1920s and '30s competition for circulation continued, and the wide use of syndicated columnists and ready-to-use features, comic strips, crossword puzzles, and other amusements developed.

A dozen large chains later came to control more than half of the American dailies. The first American chain was organized by Edward W. Scripps in the 1890s. A pattern of consolidation and merger was seen worldwide, especially in the second half of the 20th century.

Dissatisfaction with established papers, notably among younger readers, led to the rise in the second half of the 20th century of a diverse “underground,” or alternative, press. The Village Voice in New York City began publishing in 1955. The alternative press, sometimes strident and irreverent, was forthright in seeking fresh approaches. Various special-interest groups, among them trade, ethnic, and religious interests, are also served by papers edited expressly for them.

Asia had more than 2,500 dailies in the late 20th century and Europe more than 2,600. There were some 2,200 in North America, South America had more than 760, and Africa fewer than 160. Most of the news distributed internationally is provided by only four agencies, all in Western countries: Reuters, the Associated Press, United Press International, and Agence France-Presse.

REUTERS

British news agency that was founded in 1851 and became one of the leading news wire services in the world. It was established by Paul Julius Reuter, a bank clerk who became a partner in a book-publishing firm. He initiated a prototype news service in Paris in 1849, using electric telegraphy as well as carrier pigeons in his network. Upon moving to England, he launched Reuter's Telegram Company two years later. The company was concerned with commercial news service at its inception and had headquarters in London serving banks, brokerage houses, and leading business firms. The agency expanded steadily, and in 1858 its first newspaper client, the London Morning Advertiser, subscribed. Newspapers bulked ever larger in the Reuters clientele thereafter.

Reuter saw the possibilities of the telegraph for news reporting and built up an organization that maintained correspondents throughout the world. The Press Association (PA), an organization representing the provincial press of Great Britain, acquired a majority interest in Reuters in 1925 and full ownership some years later. In 1941 the PA sold half of Reuters to the Newspaper Proprietors' Association, representing Britain's national press, and in 1947 co-ownership was extended to associations representing the daily newspapers of Australia and New Zealand. Reuters had become one of the world's major news agencies, supplying both text and images to newspapers, other news agencies, and radio and television broadcasters. Directly or through national news agencies, it provided service to most countries, reaching virtually all of the world's leading newspapers and many thousands of smaller ones.

In the 1960s Reuters became one of the first news agencies to use computers to transmit financial data overseas, and in 1973 it began making computer-terminal displays of foreign-exchange rates available to clients. In 1981 Reuters began providing the capacity to make electronic transactions over its network, and it went on to develop a wide array of electronic trading and brokering services. In 1984 Reuters became a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange. In addition to its traditional news-agency business, Reuters is now a major provider of financial information, both historical and current, to businesses, governments, and individuals worldwide.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

(AP), cooperative news agency (wire service), the oldest and largest of those in the United States and long the largest and one of the preeminent news agencies in the world. Its beginnings trace to 1848, when six New York City daily newspapers pooled their efforts to finance a telegraphic relay of foreign news brought by ships to Boston, the first U.S. port of call for westbound transatlantic ships. In 1856 the service took the name of the New York Associated Press, a mutual, which sold its service to various regional newspaper groups. Pressure from the regional customers forced changes in its control, and in 1892 the modern AP was set up under the laws of Illinois. The Chicago Inter Ocean, a newspaper that did not have AP membership, brought an anti-monopoly suit in 1900, and AP moved to New York, where association laws permitted the group to continue its strict control of membership, including blackballing of applicants for membership by existing members. In the early 1940s, Marshall Field III, who had established the Chicago Sun, fought his exclusion from the AP service. Prosecution under the federal antitrust powers ended the AP's restrictive practices.

In the early 1980s, AP's annual operating budget, swollen by the cost of installing and maintaining electronic equipment for satellite relay of radioteleprinter and other services, exceeded $170,000,000, by far the largest of any such agency in the world. Its staff of some 2,500 reporters and correspondents, in bureaus in more than 100 U.S. and 50 world cities, collected and relayed to member papers news from about 100 countries. Staff efforts were augmented by those of more than 100,000 reporters of member papers. The agency had more than 6,500 newspaper clients in the early 1980s. For many years, AP leased more than 400,000 miles of telephone wire to carry its transmissions, but its use of radioteleprinters—begun in 1952—began mitigating the need for leased wires, a trend that increasing employment of satellite transmissions will carry on as subscribers install appropriate antennas.

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

American-based news agency, one of the largest proprietary news wire services in the world. It was created in 1958 upon the merger of the United Press (UP; 1907) with the International News Service (INS). UPI and its precursor agencies pioneered in some key areas of news coverage, including the wired transmission of news photographs in 1925.

In 1907 newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps combined three regional news services under his control to sell news to all newspapers, not only those with a franchise (as had the Associated Press). Scripps made the enterprising Roy W. Howard the UP's general manager in 1912. Soon the agency established bureaus in major European capitals. It began to supply news to Latin-American papers during World War I. Throughout its history United Press stressed human-interest and feature news, and it developed the subsidiary United Features syndicate to sell special features. It also established UP Movietone News to supply news film to television stations.

William Randolph Hearst had set up INS to provide news to morning newspapers. In 1928 other Hearst news services were merged into INS to enable it to provide around-the-clock service. It had about 2,000 domestic and foreign clients in 1958, when it was merged with UP, then much larger.

The merged organization, by the late 20th century, served newspaper and telecommunications clients in the United States and other countries, transmitting in many languages over radio and leased wire facilities. As befell many of its clients, UPI found costs rising faster than revenues in the 1970s, and the number of subscribers dropped sharply. From 1982, UPI underwent a series of changes of ownership.

MAGAZINE

also called Periodical, a printed collection of texts (essays, articles, stories, poems), often illustrated, that is produced at regular intervals (excluding newspapers).

The modern magazine has its roots in early printed pamphlets, broadsides, chapbooks, and almanacs, a few of which gradually began appearing at regular intervals. The earliest magazines collected a variety of material designed to appeal to particular interests. One of the earliest ones was a German publication, Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (“Edifying Monthly Discussions”), which was issued periodically from 1663 to 1668. Other learned journals soon appeared in France, England, and Italy, and in the early 1670s lighter and more entertaining magazines began to appear, beginning with Le Mercure Galant (1672; later renamed Mercure de France) in France. In the early 18th century, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele brought out The Tatler (1709–11; published three times weekly) and The Spectator (1711–12, 1714; published daily). These influential periodicals contained essays on matters political and topical that continue to be regarded as examples of some of the finest English prose written. Other critical reviews treating literary and political issues also started up in the mid-1700s throughout western Europe, and at the end of the century specialized periodicals began appearing, devoted to particular fields of intellectual interest, such as archaeology, botany, or philosophy.

By the early 19th century a different, less learned audience had been identified, and new types of magazines for entertainment and family enjoyment began to appear, among them the popular weekly, the women's weekly, the religious and missionary review, the illustrated magazine, and the children's weekly. Their growth was stimulated by the general public's broader interest in social and political affairs and by the middle and lower classes' growing demand for reading matter. Woodcuts and engravings were first extensively used by the weekly Illustrated London News (1842), and by the end of the 19th century many magazines were illustrated.

Magazine publishing benefited in the late 19th and 20th centuries from a number of technical improvements, including the production of inexpensive paper, the invention of the rotary press and the halftone block, and, especially, the addition of advertisements as a means of financial support. Other developments since then have included a greater specialization of topics; more illustrations, especially those reproducing colour photographs; a decline in power and popularity of the critical review and a rise in that of the mass-market magazine; and an increase in magazines for women. See also little magazine.

LITTLE MAGAZINE

any of various small periodicals devoted to serious literary writings, usually avant-garde and noncommercial. They were published from about 1880 through much of the 20th century and flourished in the United States and England, though French writers (especially the Symbolist poets and critics, 1880– c. 1900) often had access to a similar type of publication and German literature of the 1920s was also indebted to them. The name signifies most of all a noncommercial manner of editing, managing, and financing. A little magazine usually begins with the object of publishing literary work of some artistic merit that is unacceptable to commercial magazines for any one or all of three reasons—the writer is unknown and therefore not a good risk; the work itself is unconventional or experimental in form; or it violates one of several popular notions of moral, social, or aesthetic behaviour.

Foremost in the ranks of such magazines were two American periodicals, Poetry: a Magazine of Verse (founded 1912), especially in its early years under the vigorous guidance of Harriet Monroe, and the more erratic and often more sensational Little Review (1914–29) of Margaret Anderson; a group of English magazines in the second decade of the 20th century, of which the Egoist (1914–19) and Blast (1914–15) were most conspicuous; and Eugene Jolas' transition (1927–38). In all but the last of these, a major guiding spirit was the U.S. poet and critic Ezra Pound; he served as “foreign correspondent” of both Poetry and the Little Review, manoeuvred the Egoist from its earlier beginnings as a feminist magazine (The New Freewoman, 1913) to the status of an avant-garde literary review, and, with Wyndham Lewis, jointly sponsored the two issues of Blast. In this case, the little magazines showed the stamp of a single vigorous personality; similar strong and dedicated figures in little magazine history were the U.S. poet William Carlos Williams (whose name appears in scores of little magazines, in one capacity or another); the British critic and novelist Ford Madox Ford, editor of the Transatlantic Review (1924–25) and contributor to many others; and Gustave Kahn, a minor French poet but a very active editor associated with several French Symbolist periodicals.

There were four principal periods in the general history of little magazines. In the first, from 1890 to about 1915, French magazines served mainly to establish and explain a literary movement; British and U.S. magazines served to disseminate information about and encourage acceptance of continental European literature and culture. In the second stage, 1915–30, when other magazines, especially in the United States, were in the vanguard of almost every variation of modern literature, a conspicuous feature was the expatriate magazine, published usually in France but occasionally elsewhere in Europe by young U.S. and British critics and writers. The major emphasis in this period was upon literary and aesthetic form and theory and the publication of fresh and original work, such as that of Ernest Hemingway (in the Little Review, Poetry, This Quarter, and other publications), T.S. Eliot (in Poetry, the Egoist, Blast) James Joyce (in the Egoist, the Little Review, transition), and many others. The third stage, the 1930s, saw the beginnings of many leftist magazines, started with specific doctrinal commitments that were often subjected to considerable editorial change in the career of the magazine. Partisan Review (1934) was perhaps the best known example of these in the United States, as was the Left Review (1934–38) in England.

The fourth period of little magazine history began about 1940. One of the conspicuous features of this period was the critical review supported and sustained by a group of critics, who were in most cases attached to a university or college. Examples of this kind of periodical were, in the United States, The Kenyon Review, founded by John Crowe Ransom in 1939, and in Great Britain, Scrutiny, edited by F.R. Leavis (1932–53). This and related kinds of support, such as that of publishers maintaining their own reviews or miscellanies, represented a form of institutionalism which was radically different from the more spontaneous and erratic nature of the little magazines of earlier years.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

morning daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City, often the newspaper with the largest circulation in the United States.

The New York Daily News was the first successful tabloid newspaper in the United States. It was founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News by Joseph Medill Patterson and was a subsidiary of the Tribune Company of Chicago. After a few months the paper changed its name to the Daily News. The Daily News attracted readers with its sensational coverage of crime, scandal, and violence, its lurid photographs, and its cartoons and other entertainment features. By 1930 its circulation had risen to 1,520,000; it reached 2,000,000 in the next decade.

The New York Daily News found abundant subject matter in the United States of the 1920s. Like other popular dailies, it gave great prominence to political scandals such as the Teapot Dome oil leases and to society scandals such as the romance and abdication of King Edward VIII. The paper devoted much attention to its photography; it was an early user of the Associated Press wirephoto service in the 1930s and developed a large staff of skilled photographers. In spite of strikes, rising production costs, and an unsuccessful attempt at an afternoon edition, the Daily News has continued to have one of the highest circulation rates in the United States.

DAILY MAIL

morning daily newspaper published in London, long noted for its foreign reporting, it was one of the first British papers to popularize its coverage to appeal to a mass readership. It is the flagship publication of the Daily Mail and General Trust PLC, a London media company incorporated in 1922 with holdings in radio, television, and weekly and daily newspapers.

The Daily Mail was founded in 1896 by Alfred Harmsworth, later 1st Viscount Northcliffe (see Northcliffe, Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount). Its roots can be traced to the Hull Packet (founded in 1787), which was merged with the Hull Evening News in 1884 and 12 years later moved to London and became the Daily Mail. In 1902, its circulation exceeded one million, rivaling the New York World and the New York Journal for the top circulating newspapers. Although the Mail lost circulation in the 1970s, it became one of Britain's best-selling newspapers at the close of the 20th century.

Historically the paper has been known for its independent editorial stance and coverage of foreign news, such as the Dreyfus affair in France (1894–1906) and the South African War (1899–1902). The paper also syndicates news, features, and pictures to newspapers in other countries.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

daily business and financial newspaper edited in New York City and sold throughout the United States. Other daily editions include The Asian Wall Street Journal, edited in Hong Kong, and The Wall Street Journal Europe, edited in Brussels.

The Wall Street Journal was founded by Charles H. Dow, of Dow Jones & Company, primarily to cover business and financial news. The first issue was published on July 8, 1889. The newspaper's accuracy and the breadth and detail of its coverage won it respect and success from the start. From its founding until early in the Great Depression, the Journal rarely ventured beyond business and economic news. Then, however, it began to carry occasional feature articles on other subjects. After World War II this trend increased, and by the 1960s the Journal regularly carried two feature articles on page one that only occasionally addressed business subjects, and then in a whimsical or amusing way.

Although perceived as favouring the interests of businesses, the Journal 's opinion and editorial pages reflect a wide range of highly informed business, political, and economic opinion; readers' letters; and reviews of and comments on the arts. The long-established structure of the Journal includes complete tables reporting all financial and stock market activity for the preceding day as well as thorough reports and analyses of current business topics. Published Monday through Friday, the national, Asian, and European editions of the Journal had a combined circulation of more than two million at the turn of the 21st century. Its sister publications have included Barron's, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and SmartMoney. In 2002 the paper received its 26th Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded to the entire staff for its breaking news coverage of the attack on New York City's World Trade Center. The staff won another Pulitzer in 2003 for coverage of corporate scandals in the United States.

DAILY EXPRESS

morning daily newspaper published in London, known for its sensational treatment of news and also for its thorough coverage of international events.

Since its founding in 1900, the Express aggressively appealed to a mass readership; it is a perennial competitor with other popular dailies for circulation leadership, which it not infrequently claims. Its determination to cover foreign news thoroughly was reflected as early as World War I, when its war correspondent, Percival Phillips, by chance a U.S. national, was knighted for his war reporting. In contemporary Britain the Daily Express has ardently promoted British products and symbols of national identity while maintaining an independent political stance. Other sensational dailies appear in a tabloid format, but the Daily Express uses a full-size page. Owned by Express Newspapers, Ltd., the Daily Express belonged in 1980 to a family of newspapers that included the Daily Star and the Sunday Express.

THE GUARDIAN

influential daily newspaper published in London and Manchester, generally accounted, with The Times and The Daily Telegraph, as one of the United Kingdom's “big three” quality newspapers.

Founded in 1821 as the weekly Manchester Guardian, the paper became a daily after the British government lifted its Stamp Tax on newspapers in 1855; 100 years later “Manchester” was dropped from the name, as the paper had become a national daily with an international reputation. The paper's high standards of writing and the quality and style of its presentation of news and opinion won for it worldwide respect far beyond the usual lot of a provincial newspaper.

The Guardian is distinguished by its cosmopolitan views, its literary and artistic coverage and criticism, and its foreign correspondence. Owned by a trust and financially secure, the paper has always taken an independent liberal stance and was once called “Britain's non-conformist conscience.” Its editorial excellence is generally credited to the 57-year tenure of Charles Prestwich Scott, which began in 1871, when the paper covered both the Prussian and the French sides in the Franco-German War. From time to time the paper has lost readers because it espoused unpopular causes, but it has always maintained an independent editorial policy and great breadth and depth of news coverage.

KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA

(Russian: “Young Communist League Truth”), morning daily newspaper published in Moscow that was the official voice of the Central Council of the Komsomol, or Communist youth league for young people aged 14 to 28. Founded in 1925, Komsomolskaya Pravda historically had its main offices in Moscow, with those of Pravda, the Communist Party daily newspaper, but with its own editorial staff.

In 1953 Komsomolskaya Pravda began to use a livelier layout and a greater variety of material. Under its then editor, Nikita S. Khrushchev's son-in-law, Alexei Adzhubei, it introduced more travel articles, sports pieces, and short fiction and reduced the amount of propaganda. At its peak in the 1970s and early '80s, Komsomolskaya Pravda 's circulation was more than 15 million. The newspaper continued after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

TEXT 3

TELEVISION

Television is the electronic delivery of moving images and sound from a source to a receiver. By extending the senses of vision and hearing beyond the limits of physical distance, television has had a considerable influence on society. Conceived in the early 20th century as a possible medium for education and interpersonal communication, it became by mid-century a vibrant broadcast medium, using the model of broadcast radio to bring news and entertainment to people all over the world. Television is now delivered in a variety of ways: “over the air” by terrestrial radio waves (traditional broadcast TV); along coaxial cables (cable TV); reflected off of satellites held in geostationary Earth orbit (direct broadcast satellite, or DBS, TV); recorded on magnetic tape and played in videocassette recorders (VCRs); and recorded optically on digital video discs (DVDs).

The technical standards for modern television, both monochrome (black-and-white) and colour, were established in the middle of the 20th century. Improvements have been made continuously since that time, and today television technology is in the midst of considerable change. Much attention is being focused on increasing the picture resolution (high-definition television) and on changing the dimensions of the television receiver to show wide-screen pictures. In addition, the transmission of digitally encoded television signals is being instituted, with the ultimate goal of providing interactive service and possibly broadcasting multiple programs in the channel space now occupied by one program.

Despite this continuous technical evolution, modern television is best understood first by learning the history and principles of monochrome television and then by extending that learning to colour. The emphasis of this article, therefore, is on first principles and major developments—basic knowledge that is needed to understand and appreciate future technological developments and enhancements.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEVISION SYSTEMS

MECHANIVAL SYSTEMS

The dream of seeing distant places is as old as the human imagination. Priests in ancient Greece studied the entrails of birds, trying to see in them what the birds had seen when they flew over the horizon. They believed that their gods, sitting in comfort on Mount Olympus, were gifted with the ability to watch human activity all over the world. And the opening scene of William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 1 introduces the character Rumour, upon whom the other characters rely for news of what is happening in the far corners of England.

For ages it remained a dream, and then television came along, beginning with an accidental discovery. In 1872, while investigating materials for use in the transatlantic cable, English telegraph worker Joseph May realized that a selenium wire was varying in its electrical conductivity. Further investigation showed that the change occurred when a beam of sunlight fell on the wire, which by chance had been placed on a table near the window. Although its importance was not realized at the time, this happenstance provided the basis for changing light into an electric signal.

In 1880 a French engineer, Maurice LeBlanc, published an article in the journal La Lumière électrique that formed the basis of all subsequent television. LeBlanc proposed a scanning mechanism that would take advantage of the retina's temporary but finite retainment of a visual image. He envisaged a photoelectric cell that would look upon only one portion at a time of the picture to be transmitted. Starting at the upper left corner of the picture, the cell would proceed to the right-hand side and then jump back to the left-hand side, only one line lower. It would continue in this way, transmitting information on how much light was seen at each portion, until the entire picture was scanned, in a manner similar to the eye reading a page of text. A receiver would be synchronized with the transmitter, reconstructing the original image line by line.

The concept of scanning, which established the possibility of using only a single wire or channel for transmission of an entire image, became and remains to this day the basis of all television. LeBlanc, however, was never able to construct a working machine. Nor was the man who took television to the next stage: Paul Nipkow, a German engineer who invented the scanning disk. Nipkow's 1884 patent for an Elektrisches Telescop was based on a simple rotating disk perforated with an inward-spiraling sequence of holes. It would be placed so that it blocked reflected light from the subject. As the disk rotated, the outermost hole would move across the scene, letting through light from the first “line” of the picture. The next hole would do the same thing slightly lower, and so on. One complete revolution of the disk would provide a complete picture, or “scan,” of the subject.

This concept was eventually used by John Logie Baird in Britain and Charles Francis Jenkins in the United States to build the world's first successful televisions. The question of priority depends on one's definition of television. In 1922 Jenkins sent a still picture by radio waves, but the first true television success, the transmission of a live human face, was achieved by Baird in 1925. (The word television itself had been coined by a Frenchman, Constantin Perskyi, at the 1900 Paris Exhibition.)

The efforts of Jenkins and Baird were generally greeted with ridicule or apathy. As far back as 1880 an article in the British journal Nature had speculated that television was possible but not worthwhile: the cost of building a system would not be repaid, for there was no way to make money out of it. A later article in Scientific American thought there might be some uses for television, but entertainment was not one of them. Most people thought the concept was lunacy.

Nevertheless, the work went on and began to produce results and competitors. In 1927 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) gave a public demonstration of the new technology, and by 1928 the General Electric Company (GE) had begun regular television broadcasts. GE used a system designed by Ernst F.W. Alexanderson that offered “the amateur, provided with such receivers as he may design or acquire, an opportunity to pick up the signals,” which were generally of smoke rising from a chimney or other such interesting subjects. That same year Jenkins began to sell television kits by mail and established his own television station, showing cartoon pantomime programs. In 1929 Baird convinced the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to allow him to produce half-hour shows at midnight three times a week. The following years saw the first “television boom,” with thousands of viewers buying or constructing primitive sets to watch primitive programs.

Not everyone was entranced. C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, warned: “Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of it.” More important, the lure of a new technology soon paled. The pictures, formed of only 30 lines repeating approximately 12 times per second, flickered badly on dim receiver screens only a few inches high. Programs were simple, repetitive, and ultimately boring. Nevertheless, even while the boom collapsed a competing development was taking place in the realm of the electron.

ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS

The final, insurmountable problems with any form of mechanical scanning were the limited number of scans per second, which produced a flickering image, and the relatively large size of each hole in the disk, which resulted in poor resolution. In 1908 a Scottish electrical engineer, A.A. Campbell Swinton, wrote that the problems “can probably be solved by the employment of two beams of kathode rays” instead of spinning disks. Cathode rays are beams of electrons generated in a vacuum tube. Steered by magnetic fields or electric fields, Swinton argued, they could “paint” a fleeting picture on the glass screen of a tube coated on the inside with a phosphorescent material. Because the rays move at nearly the speed of light, they would avoid the flicker problem, and their tiny size would allow excellent resolution. Swinton never built a set (for, as he said, the possible financial reward would not be enough to make it worthwhile), but unknown to him such work had already begun in Russia. In 1907 Boris Rosing, a lecturer at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, put together equipment consisting of a mechanical scanner and a cathode-ray-tube receiver. There is no record of Rosing actually demonstrating a working television, but he had an interested student named Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, who soon emigrated to America.

In 1923, while working for the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Zworykin filed a patent application for an all-electronic television system, although he was as yet unable to build and demonstrate it. In 1929 he convinced David Sarnoff, vice president and general manager of Westinghouse's parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), to support his research by predicting that in two years, with $100,000 of funding, he could produce a workable electronic television system. Meanwhile, the first demonstration of a primitive electronic system had been made in San Francisco in 1927 by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a young man with only a high-school education. Farnsworth had garnered research funds by convincing his investors that he could market an economically viable television system in six months for an investment of only $5,000. In the event, it took the efforts of both men and more than $50 million before anyone made a profit.

With his first hundred thousand dollars of RCA research money, Zworykin developed a workable cathode-ray receiver that he called the Kinescope. At the same time, Farnsworth was perfecting his Image Dissector camera tube (shown in the photograph). In 1930 Zworykin visited Farnsworth's laboratory and was given a demonstration of the Image Dissector. At that point a healthy cooperation might have arisen between the two pioneers, but competition, spurred by the vision of corporate profits, kept them apart. Sarnoff offered Farnsworth $100,000 for his patents but was summarily turned down. Farnsworth instead accepted an offer to join RCA's rival Philco, but he soon left to set up his own firm. Then in 1931 Zworykin's RCA team, after learning much from the study of Farnsworth's Image Dissector, came up with the Iconoscope camera tube (see the diagram), and with it they finally had a working electronic system.

In England the Gramophone Company, Ltd., and the London branch of the Columbia Phonograph Company joined in 1931 to form Electric and Musical Industries, Ltd. (EMI). Through the Gramophone Company's ties with RCA-Victor, EMI was privy to Zworykin's research, and soon a team under Isaac Shoenberg produced a complete and practical electronic system, reproducing moving images on a cathode-ray tube at 405 lines per picture and 25 pictures per second. Baird excoriated this intrusion of a “non-English” system, but he reluctantly began research on his own system of 240-line pictures by inviting a collaboration with Farnsworth. On November 2, 1936, the BBC instituted an electronic TV competition between Baird and EMI, broadcasting the two systems from the Alexandra Palace (called for the occasion the “world's first, public, regular, high-definition television station”). Several weeks later a fire destroyed Baird's laboratories. EMI was declared the victor and went on to monopolize the BBC's interest. Baird never really recovered; he died several years later, nearly forgotten and destitute.

By 1932 the conflict between RCA and Farnsworth had moved to the courts, both sides claiming the invention of electronic television. Years later the suit was finally ruled in favour of Farnsworth, and in 1939 RCA signed a patent-licensing agreement with Farnsworth Television and Radio, Inc. This was the first time RCA ever agreed to pay royalties to another company. But RCA, with its great production capability and estimable public-relations budget, was able to take the lion's share of the credit for creating television. At the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, Sarnoff inaugurated America's first regular electronic broadcasting, and 10 days later, at the official opening ceremonies, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to be televised.

Important questions had to be settled regarding basic standards before the introduction of public broadcasting services, and these questions were not everywhere fully resolved until about 1951. The United States adopted a picture repetition rate of 30 per second, while in Europe the standard became 25. All the countries of the world came to use one or the other, just as all countries eventually adopted the U.S. resolution standard of 525 lines per picture or the European standard of 625 lines. By the early 1950s technology had progressed so far, and television had become so widely established, that the time was ripe to tackle in earnest the problem of creating television images in natural colours.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14