Call it Seeing by Electricity, Seeing by Wireless, Distant Electric Vision, Distance Vision. From magic mirrors and Telectroscopes through television as we know it, the logic of this technology's history may well be the logic of dreams. Perhaps the appeal to inventors can be found in a desire to achieve universal understanding, global peace, human perfection, or wealth and notoriety. Genuinely complex, the actual Story of Television cannot easily be told, no matter how much we may long for a simple plot and a few characters to identify. As glimpses, these summaries raise many questions about individuals, events, and social and economic contexts.
Interpretation is possible from many points of view.
Confronted today with the economic, social, and physical assault of constant changes in communications technologies, it can provide both relief and illumination to discover materials that suggest parallels with the developments of the microprocessor, shrink-wrapped software, the Internet, etc. It is satisfying to anticipate the sense and order these materials will help bring to our understanding of the global powers of modern communications and technologies. By means of a lifetime of painstaking efforts, they have provided us with an invaluable resource. Edward A. Wesolowski Jr. Mr. Wesolowski is president of Information Display Systems.