From laboratory to living room: The development of television in the United States, 1920--1960

This dissertation examines the development of television in the United States from 1920 to 1960. During these years, television grew from a laboratory experiment and a hobbyist's plaything into a sophisticated and widespread means of communication and entertainment. Television is a large-scale technological system, comprised of technical artifacts, social relationships, business organizations, and government agencies. As such, the main goals of this dissertation are to demonstrate the social, political, and economic factors that shaped the formation of this new technology and to identify the points at which the television system could have developed differently.; The chapters are organized chronologically, with each corresponding roughly to a separate decade. The first chapter explores mechanical television and its independent inventors and amateur operators. The second chapter examines the shift to electronic television and the development of that technology at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Chapter Three focuses on World War II and the application of television technology to military projects under the direction of the National Defense Research Council (NDRC) and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Chapter Four analyzes the development of color television and the controversy surrounding the “color war” that raged between the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and RCA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The last chapter explores military, industrial, and space applications of television in the 1950s.; This dissertation draws on corporate, government, and other types of sources. The main body of material that this dissertation relies upon is the RCA Collection at the Hagley Library and Museum. This collection consists of materials from the RCA Camden facility library, including thousands of laboratory reports written between 1930 and 1960. This dissertation also uses the records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development for its analysis of television during World War II. The George Clark Radioana Collection at the National Museum of American History is the third main body of sources for this dissertation.