If you were a television manufacturer in the mid-20th century, not only did you need to
hire a team of electrical engineers to bring your product to the market, but you also had
to design your device with home décor in mind.
That meant that you needed to enlist the help of carpenters, lumber suppliers, and other
such craftsmen in order to sell your product to the tech-adverse, apprehensive masses.
Anyone born after 1985 might be scratching their heads and wondering what the heck we're
talking about, but simply put, the reason why TV manufacturers needed all of those extra
hands when developing their products was that the TVs of yesteryear were furniture!
That Zenith, RCA, Crosley, or Westinghouse "boob tube" sitting in your family room had
to match your couch upholstery, drapes, bookshelves, and coffee tables.
Those ungodly bulky CRT TVs required sizable wooden cabinets to house all of their innards.
Because of this, televisions, for a couple of brief, glorious decades, required the work
of true craftsmen.
But that wasn't the only thing that made the TV of yesterday such a vastly different kind
of appliance compared to the slick, thin, modern panes of video glass that we have today.
You see, back in the good ol' days, all we had to watch was just three TV networks.
Compare that to the nearly infinite amount of content that we can tune into today with
our countless streaming services, thousands of cable or satellite networks, and an endless
barrage of user-created content on Youtube.
Remember UHF?
Well, neither do I.
But all jokes aside, TV has clearly gone through some truly amazing evolutionary changes in
the past century.
From the primitive tech that used to power our oversized, laminated, veneered, and stained
wooden idiot boxes in the 40s, 50s, and 60s to the introduction of flashy technologies
like Plasma, LCD, and OLED displays, the television of the past compared to the TVs of our modern
era hardly even resemble each other.
Can you imagine what future tech has in store for us?
Since we produce a lot of our content covering classic television shows, it seems only natural
for us to take a look back at the evolution and development of TV.
Facts Verse Presents: These Retro TVs Will Take Yuu Back To Simpler Times
The Birth Of Television And Consumer Anxiety
While there is considerable debate about its origins, the very first "mechanical" the television-like
facsimile machine capable of transmitting moving images was invented by Alexander Bain
sometime between 1843 and 1846.
Several other engineers continued working on improving Bain's design over the course
of the next decade or so, including working models and systems developed by English physicist
Frederick Bakewell and Italian priest Giovanni Caselli.
You heard that right, a catholic priest helped give us television!
The mechanical television showed potential, but it was far too limited, and the technology
needed to produce its images was much too large and expensive to make it a viable consumer
product.
Even so, you can't discuss the history of television without at least mentioning the
contributions of these long-since-dead fellas.
Other notable players in the early development of television include Leon Theremin, the inventor
of the musical instrument that shares his namesake, and Slovenian nobleman and inventor
Anton Codelli.
For brevity's sake, let's go ahead and fast forward a bit to the invention of the first
all-electronic television system featuring an electronic-image pickup device.
That tech was first invented in 1927 by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.
The television was initially written off as a 'rich man's toy'.
Throughout the 30s and the 40s, it was commonly believed that it was 'declasse' or uncouth
to have a TV or even watch one.
By the end of the 1940s, about two percent of American families owned one – and the
ones that did, were usually actively trying to hide the thing.
As you'll soon see, this would become a recurring theme in the history of the television set.
After World War II, however, we saw a big marketing push to bring these devices into
our homes.
That was around the time that the big radio networks were making the move to TV.
If that hadn't happened, we wouldn't all be familiar with those old photos of those big,
furniture-like units that were the conspicuous centerpieces of living rooms everywhere in
the "I Love Lucy" days.
With a few noteworthy exceptions, like the wonky TV stove, the big idea was that the
TV was meant to live in, well, the living room.
So, the designers of television sets came up with various styles of units that were
meant to look just like furniture.
The TVs of that bygone era had to mesh with the interior design sentiments of the time.
Not only that, but they also had to appease the anxiety that marketers insisted that women
would have about having machines in the home.
There was this common, pervasive fear that was regularly expressed in the high-end architectural
journals of the time, that these new-fangled televisions were going to be the bane of interior
design.
"Interiors" magazine even ran an entire issue devoted to the TV with the dire warning 'beware
the eye'.
Modern viewers might assume that people were over the moon thrilled about the idea of television.
After all, it was like having a tiny, little personal movie theater smack-dab in the middle
of your home, right?
But, no.
People were nervous about placing these picture-tube monstrosities into their sacred living rooms.
They were convinced that they were going to clash horrifically with their love seats and
dinner tables.
Hide It!
This anxiety over the perceived way that TVs were going to conflict with the rest of the
interior décor led to the need to disguise or conceal the TV set.
This, in turn, led to rather creative and fancy solutions such as the George Nelson
Storagewall – a piece of furniture that allowed consumers to 'tuck away' the machines
of everyday life.
That concept of hiding the television set and other unsightly machine appliances became
an important design trend in the higher-end mid-century approach to dealing with media.
Either you hid the thing by literally tucking it away behind a closed door, cabinet, or
movable wall, or you did everything in your power to camouflage it.
"No that's not a TV, that's just my….uh...bookshelf!"
The fear that the TV would somehow take over the living room led to middle-class women
tucking them behind bookshelves and paintings.
Apparently, some folks even put them inside of fireplaces, which up until then was the
primary focal point of the room.
Universal Adoption Changed Everything
By 1960, nearly 90 percent of US homes had a TV, and people were already spending an
average of five days watching one.
That shift was substantially faster than any prior tech adoption.
Throughout that decade and well into the next one, clever marketing for television had a
significant impact on its almost universal adoption throughout the western world.
In the late 40s and early 50s, the TV had closely resembled the radio cabinets of the
day.
By the mid-50s, their footprint had become increasingly larger.
It was around this time that you began seeing ads that advocated for TVs being used as something
akin to a console table.
You could plop a vase of flowers or a bowl of fruit on those bad boys and call it a day.
The natural progression of this trend, as we already touched on, was to continue to
conceal these devices or pretend that they were something they were not.
Some early TV sets could even hold a large lamp!
Once again, "No that's not a TV, that's my...coffee table!".
Whenever the company came over, the screen, went "bye bye".
God forbid the Jones's found out that your file cabinet was actually one of those devilish
picture tubes!
But on that note, check out this hidden pop-up unit!
Isn't it just darling!
Before we get to the TVs of the late 60s and 70s, check out this ad for the Zenith Space
Command remote control.
While adopters of the device might have thought of it at the time as being something super
futuristic straight out of the world of Lost In Space, the TV itself could have fit in
easily in the Victorian era!
Then you had all those sets that incorporated elaborate faux fixtures like knobs, handles,
and keyholes?
Like, what were they trying to pretend to be hiding inside of their TVs?
It makes you wonder how many kids tugged on those knobs and handles in vain, hoping to
finally see what mysterious item was tucked away behind the fake doors?
I know, when I was a kid, I yanked on Mamaw old Phillo a few times before I realized that
the grown-ups who designed the thing were just compensating for something.
But anywho, let's get back on track.
By the 'swingin' 60s and 'groovy' 70s, the television became a way for people to get
away from their family.
The TV was no longer just an object of admiration for happy, healthy, wholesome families to
sit down and enjoy together, only to feverishly throw a tablecloth over when they were done
watching Leaving it to Beaver.
No, as the times changed and television content began to be more risque and provocative, so
did the marketing and design aesthetics for the actual sets.
Ads commonly depicted 'liberated' women and men holding, small personal devices while
running off to the woods or scuba diving with their televisions.
As the price for the TV dropped, the placement of sets also changed.
People could afford to put another TV in their bedroom, man cave, or she-shed (not that that
phrase had been invented yet, but you get the picture).
The 80s, 90s, and 21st Century
In the 1980s and 1990s, the TV adopted this more modern, seemingly higher-tech black box
aesthetic.
Before this time, people might have been trying to hide them, but all of a sudden, they were
these kinds of futuristic techno black box things that we wanted to put everywhere we
had free space.
TVs were popping up in all sorts of places that they hadn't before such as bathrooms
and kitchens.
Then suddenly everyone was slapping all of these fancy, new devices to their sets.
You had VCRs, Betamax, Laser Disc players, cable boxes, and video game consoles.
And with all of that new tech, you also had a tangled mess of wires going every which
way.
So, almost as if nothing had changed, the TV suddenly got shoved back into big furniture-like
cabinets again.
It's funny how things go full circle like that.
That is, however, until right about 1997 when the first flat screen came along.
And the rest is, as they say history!
Today, the TV doesn't seem to match anything in your house – that is unless you're aesthetic
is ultra-futuristic postmodern or something.
TVs just look like thin sheets of glass accented with a thin penciling of plastic.
Perhaps, the biggest design innovation in recent years is using your TV as a faux picture
frame or as an extension of your wallpaper.
So, yeah, once again, we're actively trying to hide things!
Nothing's changed.
Anyway, we're just about out of time for this video, but before you go, drop us a line or
two in the comments.
Which one of the classic TV sets from yesteryear seen in this video do you remember?
And do you recall how everyone used to try desperately to conceal their TVs by pretending
that it was a piece of furniture?