In September 1944, World War II nonetheless had a yr to go, however that didn’t cease LIFE from waiting for peacetime in its Sept. 4, 1944 problem. The journal ran large story on the brand new know-how that it predicted would reshape life after the battle. The story was headlined, “Television: The Next Great Development in Radio is Ready Now For Its Enormous Postwar Market.”
However odd it appears at the moment to talk of tv as a “nice growth in radio,” LIFE was dead-on in assessing how large a deal the mixture of sound and transferring photos can be:
Within the primary postwar decade tv shall be firmly planted as a billion-dollar U.S. business. Its affect on U.S. civilization is past current prediction. Television is greater than the addition to sight to the sound of radio. It has an influence to annihilate time and area that can unite everybody in every single place within the fast expertise of occasions in up to date life and historical past.
After getting readers excited in regards to the new know-how, the story then went on to element its mechanics. The pictures by Andreas Feininger are stunning and fascinating in the way in which they distinction the equipment of the tubes and plates with the ensuing picture they produce of a feminine mannequin whose presence is a form of siren music. All that cup and metallic, pricey reader, will magically convey this girl into your lounge.
At the time this LIFE story ran, only a few Americans owned tv units. In 1946, the primary yr the federal government has knowledge for tv possession, the full variety of units in American households was 8,000. By 1951, although, the quantity had ballooned to greater than 10 million.
The LIFE story appropriately predicted that TV would give Americans the brand new energy to witness historical past dwell, and that was transformative. Part of the immense energy of the signature moments of the unique run of LIFE journal—whether or not or not it’s triumphs such because the moon touchdown or tragedies just like the assassination of John F. Kennedy—was that Americans skilled these moments collectively, huddled round their televisions, seeing the identical issues on the similar time.
The lens, at proper, centered its picture onto a plate in an RCA tv digital camera tube, 1944.
Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This “dissector digital camera tube” was a part of a 1944 story in LIFE on the model new know-how of tv. Here’s how the journal described the tube’s perform: “Image is focussed on light-sensitive plate (left). Electrical subject transforms seen picture into prolonged digital picture…Electromagnetic subject pulls this prolonged picture again and forth in entrance of scanning finger mounted vertically at entrance of tube.”
Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A Schmidt projector threw this picture of a mannequin onto a display screen. A 1944 article in LIFE on the brand new TV know-how said that “projection screens shall be a part of postwar house receivers.”
Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A 1944 LIFE story on how tv labored confirmed a picture of lady being centered by a lens, 1944.
Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A shade tv digital camera, 1944.
Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
An picture from LIFE’s have a look at the technical aspect of the rising know-how referred to as tv, 1944.
Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In a 1944 story about rising tv know-how, this demonstration photograph illustrated how strains got here collectively to make an image.
Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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