TV invented earlier

[DMA]

What if TV was, not only invented earlier, but was common in Britain, Germany, the USA, & elsewhere throughout the world by 1939. Obviously it would only be in black & white. And there would be military applications as well.

So how is history effected as a result?

How is warfare effected?

Anything else?

Discuss.

[Expat]

Well I think the impulse here is to rush into a confirmation of the Vietnam effect, where watching the war every night on the television eroded confidence.
I'm not so sure about this. The violence was visible in many other forms already. For example, I recently saw a newsreel (narrated by Noel Coward I think) on the Liberation of Paris (a special feature on the Armee des Hombres dvd, HIGHLY recommended!) At one point Noel jauntily describes some Parisians holding a hotel as the Germans try to evacuate. An open-top truck drives by underneath a hotel window, German troops splayed face down in the back to avoid crossfire. An incendiary bomb is thrown into the truck and we quite clearly see the Germans catch fire and die right there on camera.
I suppose one trick is the much greater government control over such material. But there's no reason to expect that control would alter if television were available, especially in Britain and Germany.
It also depends on how long tv has been around. It's unlikely many people are buying such a wasteful home addition during the great depression, and during the war nobody's going to be making the things, let alone buying them. I guess you'd have to go back to the 20s, in which case the Great Depression is affected as well. That might result in more sympathy for the Bonus Army and other protest movements.
I wish I knew more about the technological necessities of television. What would you need to have Vietnam-style daily reports? Do you need satellites for that? Did they just ship the tapes back as fast as possible by plane, or is there another way to get a tv signal halfway across the world I don't know about?
Because if you've got taped broadcasts with the same logistical problems suffered by ALL news making its way back from the front, I don't see much of a difference on the homefront.
I think it's just treated as one more arm of the radio/film propaganda machines run by all of the war-time world governments. After the war this might affect the development of the tv industry, beginning with more emphasis on government regulation in the US.

[carlton_bach]

we aren't likely to see a Vietnam effect - that wasn't caused by TV but by satellite transmission and tape recording.

TV could well hae been an established medium by the late 30s if the Depression hadn't all but flattened middle-class purchasing power. But it would have been technologically limited the way early TV was OTL, which means no canned shows, no live broadcasts from outside the studio, and very poor quality on footage that gets rebroadcast. Early TV is pretty much a live-from-the-studio setting well suited to music, theatre and stage performances, debate, commentary and slapstick, but lousy for war reoprting. Can you envisdion some hapless OFF lieutenant standing in front of a wall map pointing at differently patterned cardboard arrows? That's what TV war coverage would be like.

[arctic warrior]

Originally Posted by carlton_bach

we aren't likely to see a Vietnam effect - that wasn't caused by TV but by satellite transmission and tape recording.

TV could well hae been an established medium by the late 30s if the Depression hadn't all but flattened middle-class purchasing power. But it would have been technologically limited the way early TV was OTL, which means no canned shows, no live broadcasts from outside the studio, and very poor quality on footage that gets rebroadcast. Early TV is pretty much a live-from-the-studio setting well suited to music, theatre and stage performances, debate, commentary and slapstick, but lousy for war reoprting. Can you envisdion some hapless OFF lieutenant standing in front of a wall map pointing at differently patterned cardboard arrows? That's what TV war coverage would be like.

But also sports events - football, World Cup, cricket... anything taking place in a confined space for one camera to cover...

[Mark E.]

Video tape was not invented until the mid-fifties, so television in the thirties would have resembled that of the late forties. You could broadcast programs from film, so there could be "canned" programs, but there would be no instant playback of current footage.

The Farnsworth picture tube was invented in 1929, providing a relatively clear, marketable picture, better than the fuzzy Felix the Cat of earlier years. I heard there were people in the movie industry who considered televison parlors as an alternative to re-fitting theatres for talkies, but as it was stated, the depression derailed the spread of new technology.

When Germany established its command economy in the thirties, they developed early versions of recording tape, but the technology never left that country until after World War II.

Had the economy been different, television could easily have been advanced ten or fifteen years.

[BCO]

Originally Posted by Expat

It's unlikely many people are buying such a wasteful home addition during the great depression, and during the war nobody's going to be making the things, let alone buying them. I guess you'd have to go back to the 20s, in which case the Great Depression is affected as well.

Actually radio ownership became much more common during the Great Depression. People did spend a lot of money on radios and also going to movies during that era.

[Expat]

Originally Posted by BCO

Actually radio ownership became much more common during the Great Depression. People did spend a lot of money on radios and also going to movies during that era.

Are you sure it's not because radios became cheaper? (That's not a challenge, I'm generally curious.)
I also wouldn't be surprised if the "one admission per day" policy of most movie theaters didn't contribute to this somewhat. An unemployed person pays a nickel and can be entertained for a whole day. Having no place to go is one of the worst parts of being indigent.
But not to hijack the thread. I'm also curious about the military advantages of television. Did tv have any military effect on Korea for example?

[Mark E.]

Let's look at the OTL for television.

1897 - Nicholas Tesla develops wireless radio transmission.
1903 - Marconi and a counterpart in Britain allow Theodore Roosevelt to conduct a transatlantic conversation with King Edward.
1909 - Marconi shares the Nobel Prize in Physics for wireless transmission. For the next decade, wireless transmission becomes an important part of navigation and communication.
1919 - Voice radio transmission is developed.
1920 - KDKA in Pittsburgh becomes the first licensed radio station. The rest is history.
1921 - Fifteen year old Philo Farnsworth, an electronic genius, is admitted to Brigham Young University in Utah. That same year Vladimir Zworykin, a PhD electrical engineer, immigrates to the U.S. and takes a job with Westinghouse.
1923 - Farnsworth leaves school for family reasons and continues his electronic pursuits.
1922-1924 - Zworykin at Westinghouse develops the crude television transmission that features a toy Felix the Cat. Westinghouse applies for patents.
1927 - Farnsworth applies for a patent on his inventions. They are awarded in 1930.

Zworykin works for RCA. The thirties are characterized by patent disputes between Farnsworth and RCA. Farnsworth wins royalties, but the limited distribution of television hinders their magnitude.

1939 - A few television stations are licensed in the United States.
1941 - World War II causes the U.S. to halt production of televisions.
1946 - Television comes back, this time with the FM-based audio section that will prevail until the present.
1947 - Farnsworth's 1930 patents expire, placing his picture tube in public domain and television spreads worldwide.

Now, let's introduce a POD. In 1921, Dr. Zworykin goes to BYU and meets Farnsworth. They collaborate to produce a better working television by 1923. Soon, BYU recognizes the potential and puts teams of researchers into the project.

The next step is to create a scenario that sends the work to economically starved but technologically rich Germany. By combining the Mormon work ethic with German engineering, television is perfected years before OTL in the late twenties. In OTL, television stalled out with the depression. In the new time line, TV will join the automobile as the new technology that remains active during the period. By involving Germany, we might change their time line.

[Expat]

Originally Posted by Mark E.

Let's look at the OTL for television.

1897 - Nicholas Tesla develops wireless radio transmission.
1903 - Marconi and a counterpart in Britain allow Theodore Roosevelt to conduct a transatlantic conversation with King Edward.
1909 - Marconi shares the Nobel Prize in Physics for wireless transmission. For the next decade, wireless transmission becomes an important part of navigation and communication.
1919 - Voice radio transmission is developed.
1920 - KDKA in Pittsburgh becomes the first licensed radio station. The rest is history.
1921 - Fifteen year old Philo Farnsworth, an electronic genius, is admitted to Brigham Young University in Utah. That same year Vladimir Zworykin, a PhD electrical engineer, immigrates to the U.S. and takes a job with Westinghouse.
1923 - Farnsworth leaves school for family reasons and continues his electronic pursuits.
1922-1924 - Zworykin at Westinghouse develops the crude television transmission that features a toy Felix the Cat. Westinghouse applies for patents.
1927 - Farnsworth applies for a patent on his inventions. They are awarded in 1930.

Zworykin works for RCA. The thirties are characterized by patent disputes between Farnsworth and RCA. Farnsworth wins royalties, but the limited distribution of television hinders their magnitude.

1939 - A few television stations are licensed in the United States.
1941 - World War II causes the U.S. to halt production of televisions.
1946 - Television comes back, this time with the FM-based audio section that will prevail until the present.
1947 - Farnsworth's 1930 patents expire, placing his picture tube in public domain and television spreads worldwide.

Now, let's introduce a POD. In 1921, Dr. Zworykin goes to BYU and meets Farnsworth. They collaborate to produce a better working television by 1923. Soon, BYU recognizes the potential and puts teams of researchers into the project.

The next step is to create a scenario that sends the work to economically starved but technologically rich Germany. By combining the Mormon work ethic with German engineering, television is perfected years before OTL in the late twenties. In OTL, television stalled out with the depression. In the new time line, TV will join the automobile as the new technology that remains active during the period. By involving Germany, we might change their time line.

This is just a thought, but television as a novelty gimmick seems to me to fit in well with the Modernists operating in Weimar theater groups. Brecht for example might appreciate how annoying television can be. There were plenty of German artists (Fritz Lang for example) leaving for Hollywood throughout the 1920s who could have gotten a whiff of the technology and written back to their contacts in Berlin.
I can just see Brecht relishing in the concept of an actor that you can see and hear, but who isn't there.
From there it's just a happy accident that the right people pick up the technology and run with it, turning it from a novelty into an industry. Who those "right people" are I don't know.