
Chronomedia 1926
Predictions from 1926
Harry Carr
Journalist, Los Angeles Times
It is quite possible that some new kind of talking picture might be developed. But the present [style of filmmaking] will never become talkative. Instead of making the movies more real, it makes them less real. The voice accentuates the fact that we sometimes forget—that movie characters are flat shadows on a wall. ...
Another reason why the present pictures will never successfully talk is the danger of disillusion. The public has seen many lovely girls ont he screen; and handsome sheiks. In real life some of them talk like sick peacocks. Many fires of movie fame would be doused forever were they suddenly to talk.The cards would have to be reshuffled. ...
The question is not what are we going to do with it; but what is it going to do to us?
• source unknown but probably Los Angeles Times, 1926, quoted in Scott Eyman: The Speed of Sound 0025
Professor A M Low
Pioneer electronics expert (notably of radio-controlled flight), President of
the British Interplanetary Society (1936- ), author and science fiction
novelist, putative pioneer of television invention.
There may come a time when we shall have 'smellyvision' and tastyvision'. When
we are able to broadcast so that all the senses are catered for, we shall live
in a world which no one has yet dreamt about.'
• quoted in 'Radio Mirror' in Daily News, 30 December 1926
A Dr Low was reported by the Daily News to have invented a distance
viewing system called Televista in 1904. It is believed to be the same.
An
eyewitness report of seeing a crude picture transmitted from one room to another
early in 1914 in a demonstration by Professor A M Low is given by A C Armstrong
AIMechE in Television Viewers' Handbook (London: English Universities
Press, 1954).

Chronomedia 1926