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According to TV is 75, TV and I share the same birthday though I'm not quite 75 this year. TV is a Virgo :) The History of the first 75 years of TV is really intriguing, especially how the TV itself has changed over the years much like the computer has evolved over time to become smaller and more easily integrated into our daily lives. The TV omnipresent in American life; from the laundromat to the pub, to the grocery store, to the shopping mall to the automobile.

The TV, like the computer, started life as a big, clunky, expensive, esoteric device that eventually became a fixture in every home. So many moments in the past century have been vicariously enjoyed by those tuning in to witness events that would otherwise have just been a front page story with a photo in a newspaper. Who doesn't remember watching the assasination of JFK, the lunar landing, Watergate, the Vietnam War, the Challenger explosion, Chernobyl, the falling of the Berlin Wall, the first shots of Desert Storm or the attack on the WTC and Pentagon? I hate the TV. I love the TV. It's difficult to articulate the affection for something that makes you feel like a vegetable, a passive voyeur. Love it or hate it but it was the printing press of the 20th Century and the internet is just a speedbump on the way to something even more revolutionary I suspect. The perfect popculture delivery system.

Tube: The Invention of Television is part of the Sloan Technology Series and is the best book to date on the history of television. A new book about Farnsworth and the early development of TV, The Boy Genius and the Mogul has just been published. Another pre-history, Please Stand By and The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind [ companion website ] deal with more of the effects of TV on society.