Henry_Edward_Hardy@UB.CC.UMICH.EDU (02/07/89)
On 31 Dec 88 06:02:52 GMT, portal!cup.portal.com!mmm@uunet.uu.net - (Mark Robert Thorson) said, in passing reference to another topic, namely: - Subject: Re: Spaceplane project - that he had run across some interesting information regarding FAX: - "Here is quote from The Soviets Expected It by Anna Louise Strong (1941): - 'I stopped at the Moscow Central Telegraph and saw some twenty people drawing up their "phototelegrams" to send to their friends. This is something that Western Union does not yet offer to ordinary Americans. Yet it occurs in a country which has periodic shortages of clothing and shoes.' - Imagine that! From the description, it sounds like the Soviets had national FAX service before WW2!" - I thought I might add the following sobering observations about the history of fax at this same time in the U.S., as recounted by Douglas Kellner in, "Network Television and Society," from the "Mass Communication Review Yearbook," originally published in "Theory and Society 10", Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., 1981, pp. 31-62, and encountered by me in the readings for Communications 773 with Prof. Vincent Price at the University of Michigan: - "With the invention of television, the struggle for hegemony in the telecommunications industry reached a fever pitch in the 1930's. In their remarkable book, "Television, A Struggle for Power, Frank Waldrop and Joseph Borkin recount how AT&T and RCA battled for supremacy in the telecommunications industry.AT&T wanted to use telephone lines to broadcast television into homes, whereas RCA wanted to use wireless, over-the-air broadcasting so as to maintain control of radio and to secure control of television. During this period, RCA considered developing facsimile electronic reproduction which would deliver newspaper and other print material into the home, as well as two way televisual phone communication via broadcast waves, which would have given them almost total control of the communications industry. In the 1930's and 1940's, these two giants compromised, establishing the basis for the present system of American television. AT&T retained control of telephone lines and RCA dropped development of over the air two-way televisual communication. The introduction of facsimile reproduction was postponed and publishing interests retained control of print material. For these concessions, RCA was allowed to remain foremost in broadcasting. As a counter-tendency, however, to increasing monopolization, of the American economy, there were government efforts to regulate and in some cases break up monopoly. Government uproar over monopoly of the broadcast industry forced RCA to divest itself of one of its two networks (which became ABC). In the heyday of radio in the 1940's, then, the three networks were the oligopolistic kingpins of broadcasting." - For further information one might look for the following: "Television, A Struggle for Power," by Frank C. Waldrop and Joseph Borkin (New York, 1938, reprint Arno Press, 1972) and "Facsimile and its Future Uses," by John V. L. Hogan, in "The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, January, 1941. - And now, a question of my own: what would it cost in current dollars to build say, five Saturn V heavy launch vehicles as opposed to building and maintaining the same launch capacity through the shuttle program? I have heard that some of the dies and plans for the Saturn series launch vehicles are no longer in existence, and wonder if anyone can confirm or disconfirm this as well. - 'The power of radio can be compared only with the power of the atomic bomb' -- "Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action" by Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, 1948 ;-) - * Henry Edward Hardy * * Public Affairs Director, * * Campus Broadcasting Network/WCBN-FM * * University of Michigan * * Ann Arbor *