| Tube: The Invention of Television |  | Authors: David E. Fisher, Marshall Jon Fisher
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 325,662
Media: Paperback
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0156005360
Dewey Decimal Number: 621.388009
EAN: 9780156005364
ASIN: 0156005360
Publication Date: October 15, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Telling the tale of the corporate revolution that forever changed the nature of the individual is no easy task. Authors David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher have hidden their sociohistory between the lines of the exciting story of the race to invent television. Eccentric geniuses John Logie Baird (whose only other invention was stay-dry socks) and teenaged Utah farm boy Philo T. Farnsworth struggled with limited resources to produce the first television systems, but their greatest challenge was coming up against the giant corporations that had nearly infinite money and resources. Pitting these lone romantics against the collective will of RCA, Tube turns a history of science into a thrilling page-turner.
Product Description
In the half century since its commercial unveiling, television has changed our lives dramatically, yet few of us know how it was invented, who invented it, or how it actually works. TUBE tells a riveting tale of technological and commercial adventure--and of a group of brilliant minds, each distrustful of the other, as they raced for fortune and scientific glory photo insert .
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
 Cigars all around for a first-rate book January 8, 1997
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Lively, intelligent, thoroughly researched, Tube is the best history of its kind available. The grousings of certain Farnsworth zealots notwithstanding, the countrified genius of television finally gets his due in this volume. A great read
A fascinating history, beautifully told December 15, 1996
First-rate storytelling and science writing by the father-son team of David Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher. The eccentric geniuses who invented television come alive in these pages
A surprisingly likeable and interesting book. November 3, 1998
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This fine work has many of the qualities of a suspense novel, and is probably one of the best books of its kind ever written. It is written with a heart, and the reader easily feels what some of its subjects endured in this fascinating tale of the development and evolution of television, and later, color television. After this read, the reader will want to immediately order the equally excellent book about the development of HDTV by Joel Brinkley.
An accessible history of television technology May 2, 1997
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Tube is easily the most accessible history of television's early years (its "prehistory"), and a good read to boot. The great Zworykin/Farnsworth technology battle is pretty well presented, and the men themselves come alive in the text. Color television's development gets easily the best treatment I've seen anywhere in the non-technical press. However, the final chapter on the future of television was mostly worthless; historians (along with most of the rest of us) do not do well in predicting the future. In a few years that chapter probably will be seen as an embarassment which the rest of the book does not deserve
the human stories in the race to create TV January 3, 2010
C. Brown (Evanston, IL United States)
What a find! Most books that deal with the history of a technology are pretty dry and boring, even if you are a geek, but Tube is an exciting account of the history of television that emphasizes the human lives that shaped it. I don't think I've ever raced through a book as fast as I did with this one. So much is going on with so many racing to be first that you can't wait to see what happens next.
David Fisher provides just the right amount of technical information with very simple graphics to allow the reader to understand the importance of different discoveries to the advancement television. If you can understand an ordinary light-bulb, you can keep up with this book.
Did you know that the FCC first approved a color TV system that would have required a spinning disk in every home set? But no company produced any sets for the home so it went nowhere until the relentless David Sarnoff succeeded in driving RCA, the company he headed, to produce a color system that was compatible with black and white TV.
The personal story of Philo T. Farnsworth, a self-taught Iowa farm-boy who was the first to come up with an all-electronic (instead of mechanical) television system would make this book worthwhile if that were the only story told, but there are a host of colorful characters that will keep you reading.
I'm not sure if this book is still in print; I found it in a used book store but if you find a copy, grab it! There's even a chapter at the end to fill you in on the early development of digital TV, though that is a story of committees rather than personalities.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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