Links

There are many websites relevant to the history of the media. Below is a selection that have been found and/or consulted in the course of preparation of Chronomedia and other aspects of this site.
This section is in active preparation and many sites have yet to be added. Please be patient if a site you like or manage is not yet listed. (But send a reminder if you like.)

History by media

Film

The Complete History of the Discovery of Cinematography by Paul T Burns. An excellent survey of the people and their inventions that paved the way for the cinema.
Screenonline is the British Film Institute's 'definitive guide to Britain's film and TV history'. It includes an extensive collection of clips, accessible only in schools, colleges and public libraries.
The American Wide Screen Museum by Martin Hart has sections on the history of colour and sound as well as wide-screen film formats.
Early cinema clips. Clips of films made by several pioneers, including Muybridge, Marey, Demeny, Skladanowsky, Donisthorpe and Crofts, Edison and the Lumières.
National Fairground Archive. Located at the University of Sheffield, includes material about some of the earliest cinema exhibitions, including the Mitchell & Kenyon news archive.
Film formats. Well-illustrated descriptions of large-screen film formats, but keeping to only main formats.
The Warner Bros Cartoon Companion by Eric O Costello is an alphabetical glossary of terms and names.

Radio

United States Early Radio History by Thomas H White. A marvellous collection of contemporary articles from technical and other journals 1898 to 1927, plus a collection of White's own articles.
Radio Gold Index by Dave Goldin is defined as 'the definitive database of old time radio programs', listing over 80,000 programmes.

Television

History of Television. An excellent site by André Lange, particularly strong on early television and on associations between television and other aspects of culture. Mostly in French but now has an English section and other language versions.
The Encyclopedia of Television contains over 1,000 entries, particularly strong on biographies of key personnel and landmark programmes in British as well as American television
The World's Earliest Television Recordings is Don McLean's well illustrated site about recovering pictures from the 78rpm discs that were recorded in the late 1920s and early 1930s by John Logie Baird.
Whirligig: 1950's British Television Nostalgia is an extensive collection of audio-visual memorabilia, including photographs, audio and video clips from a wealth of programmes from the BBC and the earliest years of ITV.
National Listeners' and Viewers' Association Archives, documenting the group's self-appointed campaign to 'clean up television' from 1963 onwards, are held at the University of Essex Library.

Video

Total Rewind by Andy Hain is a virtual museum of mostly videocassette formats.
MCA DiscoVision is commemorated in its own site.
RCA SelectaVision, the CED format, has an exhaustive site.

People

Thomas Alva Edison: Chronology of Edison's Life. Very detailed. In two parts: 1847–1878 and 1879–1931
Charles Urban. A biography and chronology by Luke McKearnan of the American-born film pioneer, with notes on some of his less celebrated contemporaries.
The Farnsworth Chronicles. 'The true and compelling story of the forgotten genius who invented electronic video' may be a debatable statement but the story of Philo T Farnsworth is thoroughly written and illustrated in 11 chapters.

Brighton

South East Film and Video Archive. Based at the University of Brighton, SEFVA is a public sector archive. Its website has some useful and interesting content, including a chronology.

Current media

Screen Digest. The world's leading media news and market research journal (well, the editor would say that!), especially concerned with showing cross-media developments in a range of spheres. Now in its 30th year, it provides a concise history of media developments, fully indexed and cross-referenced.