Television before TV: New Media and Exhibition Culture in Europe and the USA, 1928-1939

In the late 1920s and 1930s, national fairs and international exhibitions hosted numerous demonstrations of television, which Anne-Katrin Weber examines in her book Television before TV. She argues that these public displays were crucial for negotiating and stabilizing television's symbolic, cultural, political, and social definitions, and that they highlight the transnational circulations of artefacts and ideas across borders of democratic and totalitarian regimes.

Format: Hardback
Length: 390 pages
Publication date: 09 May 2022
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Television before TV rethinks the history of interwar television by exploring the mediums numerous demonstrations organized at national fairs and international exhibitions in the late 1920s and 1930s. Building upon extensive archival research in Britain,Germany,and the United States,Anne-Katrin Weber analyses the sites where the new medium met its first audiences. She argues that public displays offered spaces where televisions symbolic, cultural, political, and social definitions were negotiated and eventually stabilized; for the historian, the exhibitions therefore constitute crucial events to understand not only the mediums pre-war emergence, but also its subsequent domestication in the post-war years. Designed as a transnational study, her book highlights the multiple circulations of artefacts and ideas across borders of democratic and totalitarian regimes alike. Richly illustrated with 100 photographs, Television before TV finally emphasizes that even without regular programmes, interwar television was widely seen.

Television before TV rethinks the history of interwar television by exploring the mediums numerous demonstrations organized at national fairs and international exhibitions in the late 1920s and 1930s. Building upon extensive archival research in Britain,Germany,and the United States,Anne-Katrin Weber analyses the sites where the new medium met its first audiences. She argues that public displays offered spaces where televisions symbolic, cultural, political, and social definitions were negotiated and eventually stabilized; for the historian, the exhibitions therefore constitute crucial events to understand not only the mediums pre-war emergence, but also its subsequent domestication in the post-war years. Designed as a transnational study, her book highlights the multiple circulations of artefacts and ideas across borders of democratic and totalitarian regimes alike. Richly illustrated with 100 photographs, Television before TV finally emphasizes that even without regular programmes, interwar television was widely seen.

Weight: 990g
Dimension: 161 x 312 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789463727815