Does anyone know of a resource that lists/describes other similar cases where innovations (in whatever field) were held back or completely shut out of the market because other market players (like David Sarnoff and RCA) were threatened by said innovation? I’m thinking of Beta vs. VHS, the Tucker automobile (remember the movie from 10 or so years ago?), perhaps Napster and other online sharing systems more recently, Mac OS vs. early versions of Windows, etc. Is there a book accounting for these kinds of “market failures”? If not, we need one!

I refuse to take a position in the religious war about who invented television. ( The answer is “lots and lots of people working at more or less the same time.” )

But I can recommend The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961. It’s not an encyclopedic book (Baird, for example, is not mentioned) and it’s not technical, but it has lots of hilarious anecdotes. (My favorites are about live television. Before videotape, the TV studio was such a stress-filled environment that, according to legend, a director once had a heart attack during a show and didn’t realize it until the next day.)

Normally the argument made about Baird (typically by the champions of other suggested television inventors) is that his invention was electromechanical, not electronic. And it was fairly primitive, apparently achieving something like 120 line resolution only. There’s a picture here:

http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/BAIRD_DEVICE_1.html

and some (rather detail-free) description, here

http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/DEAD_MEDIA_MECH_TV.html

The article in Time, referenced above, appears to neglect the public demonstration of television by John Logie Baird in London on 26 January 1926 (a working prototype transmitted an image of a Maltese cross in 1924).

I’m reminded of the story of Philo Farnsworth and the invention of television. See:

http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/farnsworth.html

About PBS “dumbing down” shows: Scientific American Frontiers covers some interesting topics, but it does so in a superficial, half-assed manner. The show is of a much lower quality than the magazine. Nova is a better show than Sci Am Frontiers, but it seems to be declining in quality over the years. Or maybe it just seems that way to me.