Tube: The Invention of Television (Sloan Technology Series)

In the half century since its commercial unveiling, television has become the undisputed master of communications media, revolutionizing the way postwar generations have viewed the world. Yet almost no one in America knows how television was created, who created it, or how it actually works.
The inventors of television were a diverse group of iconoclasts from different corners of the world - including an Idaho farm boy turned college dropout, an eccentric, sickly Scotsman, and two Russian Americans. These men - Philo T. Farnsworth, John Logie Baird, Charles Francis Jenkins, Ernst Alexanderson, Vladimir Zworykin, and the corporate visionary David Sarnoff - each had one eye on the others as they raced for fortune and scientific glory. Tube traces their progress, from the laboratory prototypes that drew public laughter to the vicious courtroom battles for control of what would become an enormous market power. Taking us through the advent of "living color" and beyond, authors David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher conclude with a forecast of the latest digital technologies and their impact.