Last night Matt and I saw The Farnsworth Invention, the new Aaron Sorkin play about the invention of television. It got me thinking about the history of broadcasting, which then got me thinking about the opening scene of the movie Contact, which is one of the coolest movie openings ever — as we pull away from Earth, we come into contact with older and older radio waves, umtil we reach the silent infinite void that existed before anything was ever broadcast.
I looked for it on YouTube, and of course it’s there.
There is a book on the invention of the television called “Tube”, that I thought was interesting. There were machines with mechanical rotating disks invented to broadcast a motion picutre, before the fully electronic method of sending a picture was invented… The beginning of each chapter had a quote. A quote I remember, but not who said it is: “This invention will be great!!! Now we can broadcast physics lectures to the public!!!”
Heya, TM…What’d you think of Farnsworth? I’m friends with (& music-directed some years ago) one of the cast members, but haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet…Of course, the same was true of The Drowsy Chaperone until last night — I nearly wet myself and have to send an e-mail to my acquaintance on THAT show about how much fun it was…