Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round they all laughed when Edison recorded sound they all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly they told Marconi wireless was a phony it's the same old cry welcome back
[00:00:22] Speaker B: to 100 Years of Television.
For 100 weeks that started in October 2025, this podcast is going to recall top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television and video.
The countdown will culminate on September 7, 2027, the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.
I'm Paul Schatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode, we spanned the globe with ABC's Wide World of Sports.
Today is countdown number 54, the missiles of October.
As we have endeavored to do for you here, once you have peeled back the curtain of false narratives about television's origins, you can begin to appreciate that its physics emerged from the same well of cosmic knowledge that gave the world nuclear energy and atomic bombs.
The first paper that Albert Einstein published in 1905 was his articulation of the photoelectric effect, the process by which light becomes electricity.
That is the essential principle that Philo T. Farnsworth bottled in the image dissector tube.
Later that year, Einstein published his paper outlining the theory of special relativity.
Then, in 1907, he added a coda to his earlier work that described the theory of energy mass equivalence, which is embodied in what is arguably the most famous mathematical equation of all time, e MC squared. That is the theory that becomes fact in nuclear power plants and atomic bombs.
The thread of scientific logic that Einstein followed does not go straight from converting light into electricity to powering or vaporizing cities.
The point is that all of these ideas formed around a newly emerging understanding of the physical universe.
The wholly electronic form of television that first appeared on Philo Farnsworth's workbench in 1927 emerged from the same intellectual environment as the advances in physics that powers nuclear submarines and flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Two ends of Einstein's seminal work came full circle in the autumn of 1962.
If you were planted before a TV at 7pm Eastern Time on October 22, 1962, you would have most likely been watching one of three programs on CBS. You were tuned into To Tell the Truth. On NBC, you were watching the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and ABC was broadcasting the wartime drama Combat.
But within minutes of the Hour. Instead of Hitchcock, NBC viewers saw an image of the seal of the President of the United States, accompanied by an announcement.
NBC News brings to you from the White House in Washington an address by President Kennedy declared to be officially of the highest national urgency. With no further introduction, Canady's image appeared on the screen from a hastily rigged broadcast facility in the Cabinet Room.
Seated behind an uncluttered desk against a neutral gray background with the American flag on one side and the presidential flag on the other, Kennedy addressed the camera as some 85 to 90 million people watched anxiously from the other side of the lens.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: Good evening, my fellow citizens.
This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba.
Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.
The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Prior to that Monday night, there had been reports of a Soviet military buildup in Cuba.
Most of the coverage took the form of rumor and speculation about surveillance flights and missiles.
But on October 18, several journalists like the New York Times, James Reston and David Halberstam, and Washington insiders like Charles Bartlett and Walter Lippman sensed that something major was unfolding.
What nobody beyond Kennedy's inner circle knew before the President addressed the nation was that the US had photographic proof that the Soviet Union was setting up offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba and that the prospect of a nuclear confrontation was being openly discussed at the highest levels of the administration.
Once Kennedy appeared on television and spoke
[00:05:55] Speaker C: of missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Hemisphere, the national mood shifted dramatically from worrisome to downright apocalyptic.
Before charting a course of action, Kennedy clearly stated the stakes.
[00:06:17] Speaker C: We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the course of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth.
But neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Suddenly, the collective immediacy of television dramatically shifted the consciousness of the nation.
This was the first time a sitting president used live television to announce a confrontation that could plausibly witness the end of the world.
For 18 minutes, the President of the United States detailed the deceptions that the Soviet Union had committed in violation of international laws and treaties and how this
[00:07:01] Speaker C: urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base by the presence of these large, long range and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: The President's calm but grave presence on the screen turned global statecraft into a fact of daily life.
For families gathering in their living rooms, the rhetorical abstraction of the Cold War suddenly mutated into an immediate and personal threat.
In measured terms, Kennedy announced several actions that the United States would take in the days ahead.
The centerpiece of the address was an immediate naval quarantine of Cuba, carefully avoiding the use of the more bellicose term blockade.
That meant that any Russian ships approaching Cuba carrying offensive military equipment would be turned back before reaching the island.
Second, Kennedy assured the nation that the US Would continue intense aerial surveillance of
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Cuba, and I have directed the armed forces to prepare for any eventualities.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Third, and perhaps most ominously, Kennedy made
[00:08:21] Speaker C: it clear that it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launch from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Further measures included reinforcing the base at Guantanamo, calling on the Organization of American States, or oas, to consider the mutual threat, and calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Kennedy's address was both explicit and cautionary. In his closing remarks, he reiterated the stakes and, to the extent that he could, without inciting panic, outline the potential consequences.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: But it is difficult to settle or even discuss these problems in an atmosphere of intimidation.
That is why this latest Soviet threat, or any other threat which is made either independently or in response to our actions this week, must and will be met with determination.
After addressing to the captive people of Cuba to whom this speech is being directly carried by special radio facilities, Kennedy
[00:09:39] Speaker B: set a sober tone for the days ahead.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out.
No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what course or casualties will be incurred.
But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: It didn't take a scholar of international diplomacy to read between the lines.
Attack by the Soviet Union on the United States meant World War 3, and full retaliatory response meant nuclear annihilation.
After Kennedy's address, the networks did not return to their regularly scheduled programming.
Contrived truth or consequences were going to have to wait until the journalists and commentators had their chance to weigh in on the real thing.
In the days that followed, the major networks suspended normal programming for extended periods.
Anchors like Walter Cronkite became a fixture on the screen, translating nuggets of hard information into measured narratives.
Cronkite, in particular, embodied television's evolving authority. Trusted, restrained and conscious of the medium's influence on both public opinion and policy.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved not by a single dramatic act, but through a nerve wracking de escalation that unfolded over a total of 13 days.
Though the world was not aware of the extent of the danger until Kennedy's address on October 22, the tension had actually started with the confirmation of the buildup in Cuba on October 16. It effectively ended on October 28 when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would dismantle and remove its nuclear missiles from Cuba in exchange for a US pledge not to invade the island.
From Kennedy's October 22nd address until Khrushchev's announcement six days later, television was almost continuously tuned into the crisis, turning America's living rooms into windows on the White House Situation Room.
Like armchair military commanders, television viewers could follow the drama not only through words, but through images and maps of the Caribbean, photographs of the missile sites, grainy footage of ships approaching the quarantine line, and the extraordinary spectacle of a Cold War confrontation unfolding in the United Nations.
More than any moment in his brief tenure, the Cuban Missile Crisis sealed John F. Kennedy's legacy as the first true television president.
Youthful and telegenic, the screen framed him simultaneously as both the commander in chief and as an even handed father figure, keeping his head while others around him were losing theirs.
It is hard to say that television played a direct role in the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it's equally misleading to say that it did not.
Television galvanized the nation's consciousness in the face of an existential threat.
It is arguable that the nation's leaders knew they could stand firm because they also knew that a well informed citizenry understood the risks and shared their determination.
In that sense, it seems fair to say that Einstein's first discovery in 1905 did indeed have a hand in staving off the apocalyptic consequences that his further work eventually bestowed upon the world.
This brings us to the end of number 54 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when the tumult of the 1960s begins to find its satirical television voice.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027. For more, just aim your gizmo to 100 Years.tv.com this podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Shatzkin, and is a production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:14:22] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy they laughed at us and how, but how, how, how good got the last.
