goodness, the stock footage being used here was already 5 - 10 years old! Some of those cameras pre-dated the 1939 World's Fair cameras being used. I have a book about television published in '44 and they already had large screen projection television in theaters! Dumont was growing by leaps and bounds already on the west coast. The advancements being made already, prior to war's end were monumental.I'm surprised they weren't showcased in this short film. Thanks for posting!
There were "experimental" stations in various cities [including New York] on the air before July 1941, when the FCC issued the first commercial licenses- in New York- to "W2XBS" (which became WNBT, then WRCA, now WNBC) and "W2XAB" (WCBW, now WCBS). However, World War II delayed the expansion of commercial television, and programming was restricted, from 1942 through late '44, to a few hours a week, mostly involving civil defense and other "wartime" programming, and sporadic entertaiment shows.
Commercial television was starting to become active {albeit slowly} at the time this was released to our armed forces in mid-1945; one of the nine "studios" mentioned by Dr. Caldwell at 1:56 was General Electric's WRGB in Schnectady, New York, of which footage is seen at 1:59....
YES, the Highways started as a response to the question, "If we were invaded, how long would it take to mobilize our troops in a country as geographically massive as the USA. The real building started under the Eisenhower administration, which is why you'll see "Eisenhower Highway" signs along the older US Interstates. Germany had them too.The whole "Autobahn" Concept was one of the few benefits coming out of the Nazi era.Hitler took credit. but the dream was really older than the NAZIs
it is amazing how things were changed..... but you cannot say that the new technology is bad, we just got to understand it and since not to many people wants to understand it..., that is the problem in our days because everything is made just for money, they do not care about the consumers....but anyway thanks for sharing with us this wonderful clip!
