A History of Claremont in 100 Objects: Philco Television-Mary Garner Hirsch Collection
A History of Claremont in 100 Objects: Philco Television-Mary Garner Hirsch Collection
#3 "Philco Television Cabinet"
Artifact Description: Philco Model 50-T1478 Television and cabinet with record player and radio set, part of the Mary Garner Hirsch Collection
This Philco TV cabinet from 1950 is an icon of the Mid-Century American home. As early as the 1960s, most American households had at least one television. The advent of television represented new and evolving forms of entertainment, and of the dissemination of information. In the Garner House, this TV is set in the living room, as it may have been in the late 40s or early 50s. Sitting across from a radio cabinet and below the Garner’s music balcony, three separate eras of entertainment and leisure come together visually to show both technological and cultural progression.
The Garner family's Philco 50-T1478 television cabinet
Like the Viewmaster discussed in our previous blog, the television was a new mode for the transmission of ideas and many of its early proponents envisioned the television as a means to bring the world closer to viewers’ homes. Claremont Heritage’s Philco television set is also a combination radio and record player; this cabinet reflects many of the new forms of technological convenience that would emerge post Second World War. Part of the Mary Garner Hirsch collection, the TV is a model 50-T1478 Philco television set, complete with a twelve-inch cathode ray tube analog television, AM and FM radio and turntable.
The invention of the television is generally attributed to American inventor Philo Farnsworth. Although Farnsworth was not the first inventor to come up with the idea, several others including Scottish inventor John Baird and Russian-American Vladimir Zworykin had created their own television displays, Farnsworth was the first to create a fully electronic television without relying on mechanical components. Farnsworth himself worked for Philco (it should be noted the company was named for the city of Philadelphia, not Philo Farnsworth) where he spent most of the time proving the concept. By the 1938 World’s Fair, selling a patent license to RCA, Philo’s design had matured and was displayed with the intent of selling consumer television cameras for the first time.
Attendees of the 1939 World's Fair spectate a demonstration of RCA's new TV.
This TV is an example of a CRT or cathode ray tube television. An analog device, the display would beam electrons through a magnetic coil that would collide with a phosphorous screen to display an image. As an analog device, the screen and frequency would need to be calibrated manually using the dials below the screen, which also were used to control the radio set. Television and radio both were new forms of entertainment which could be accessed on demand. The television took previous entertainment venues, like clubs, dance halls and theaters, and allowed American families to bring their performances for the first time to the comfort of their own home. Television therefore radically changed the ways in which Americans engaged in leisure and created new forms of media.
But television would also come to play a dominant role in American news and in the distribution of information. News media, including news expos and regular evening news broadcasts would come to shape public perceptions of major events to an extent that written press had previously not. Television for example played a significant role in the change in public opinion about integration during the Civil Rights Movement. Viewers were shown the violence from both white supremacists and police against civil rights advocates in Birmingham, which nationally became known as “Bombingham” for the extremity of the violence and the several cases of bombing attacks in the city. National news broadcasters like CBS, ABC, and NBC also dramatically recorded the standoff between Martin Luther King Jr. and Dallas County Sheriff, Jim Clark, in the famous march from Selma to Montgomery.
King and his fellow civil rights activists set off from the Edmund Pettus Bridge spanning the Alabama River. The bridge, named for Confederate brigadier general and state level leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Edmund Pettus, was named as an explicit act of intimidation against Southern African Americans. TV cameras dramatically recorded as King stood off with Clark’s police forces who barricaded the bridge and then attacked the marchers in an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. President Johnson would pass the Voting Rights Act as a direct result of these events, covered widely across all TV networks in America at the time.
Later, television would also play a major role in the Vietnam War, the first war with regular journalistic coverage. The images from war reporters and regular reports of its destruction lent strong support for the anti-war movement. For many Americans, it was one thing to read about the kinds of stories of violence being reported; it was a very different thing to be able to see it instead. By 1962, eighty percent of American households owned televisions. The role of broadcast journalists and reporters in these broadcasts was therefore incredibly influential in shaping public opinion. Reporters like Walter Cronkite of CBS, who was known as the “most trusted man in America” became trusted household figures who came to be depended upon as informants about vast world events. Cronkite’s own career straddled numerous significant historic events, from the Nuremberg trials, to the assassination of President Kennedy, and the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
Our television set has more of a connection to Apollo than just in its transmission of their extraordinary voyage. Philco, which by the 1960s had been absorbed by Ford, who intended to use their radios for cars, had also been involved in the production of some of the first digital computers. Philco’s experience in electronics which began with transistors gave them opportunities for early computer contracts with the US Navy during the Second World War. By the time of the space program, Philco built the integrated circuits for the computer control chips for Apollo mission guidance computers. It also built the mission control computer at the Johnson Space center in Houston Texas which remained in service until the 1990s.
In California, TV became a new part of the Hollywood mythos, but also became part of industry conflict. Industry experts and television producers recognized the form and function of the new medium and adapted to create new media that was specially adapted to the television screen. This meant smaller scale productions with smaller budgets, and quick filming schedules. Actors used to film schedules sometimes had difficulties adapting to the new demand of television, but television briefly became one of the most lucrative gigs in Hollywood. Despite these developments, some filmmakers and cinemas protested against TV, with arguments ranging from purely opposed to the medium’s expression itself: TV being “low brow” and “derivative”, to others seeing TV as an existential threat to cinema in general. Nevertheless, TV was here to remain, and it would continue to evolve as its own medium of cinematic expression with a visual language distinct from feature-films.
California’s dominance over the American film industry was enabled by its excellent environment for filming. The state’s weather and climate are fair and over a variety of ecologies for shooting. From Los Angeles one is less than an hour away from the beach, from the desert, or from the mountains. Virtually any scene a director could imagine could be filmed. With television, smaller productions broke this monopoly and enabled other kinds of shows. Game shows and so-called “soap operas,” so called because they frequently were funded by advertising agreements with detergent brands, including General Hospital, one of the longest running television shows in American History focused on locations that could be virtually anywhere in the country. The dramatic change in the logistics and audiences offered by television allowed programing targeted to specific demographics. Soap operas themselves were targeted toward housewives, and it was assumed that they would watch these productions in the background while doing housework. TV continues to be created for and catered to specific audiences along gendered lines, but now also extends to sexuality, class, age, and even political and social ideologies.
Today, television competes in an even more crowded space in the entertainment realm. Mobile devices, the internet and other forms of on-demand media now mean people have other options to spend their time. Network television fights for viewership against network streaming services like Netflix. Disney, owners of ABC have two streaming platforms of their own now, Hulu and Disney+. NBC and Paramount, owners of CBS, launched Peacock and Paramount+ in the early 2020s. While the television continues to stay relevant as a viewing platform, as TV screens have gotten larger and displays more powerful in the level of detail they can show, streaming services and major TV studios have returned to the principles of cinema with “prestige television.” As the matter of choice becomes increasingly central to the decisions of consumers about where they chose to spend their money and time, broadcasts have diversified now more than ever.
Television viewers now have their choice in the kind of content they watch, the kind of messages they provide, and even the politics of their programing. News programming can now be selected for its political bias, channels like Fox News on the political right, and NBC on the political left. In an era where written press and traditional reporting has become increasingly rare, this creates many questions about the kinds of facts and the quality of the information that the public receives. In closing this look at television, I bring up these words from Farnsworth himself: “If we were able to see people in other countries and learn about our differences, why would there be any misunderstandings?” What would television’s inventor think about the state of his creation today?
Acknowledgements:
A History of Claremont in 100 Objects is a blog series presented by Claremont Heritage and written and contributed to by its members. Based on the podcast A History of the World in 100 objects by the BBC and the British Museum, presented by former British Museum director Neil MacGregor. A History of Claremont in 100 Objects explores Claremont history through its material cultural legacies, placing objects important to the history and development of Claremont in larger relation to US and World History.
About the author:
My name is Cooper Crane. I am an archival intern with Claremont Heritage. I study history and anthropology with an emphasis on archaeology and the history of empire and environmental history at Pomona College in Claremont. I was born in Anaheim and have lived my whole life in Corona California, a city with a similar shared history to Claremont. I have degrees in history, anthropology and political science from Norco College California and am a certified California Climate Steward through the University of California Department of Natural and Agricultural Resources. I write to explore history through the material objects of history, and by exploring the elements of history that are unwritten. My current work at Claremont Heritage includes the curation of artifacts on display at the Garner House and the Claremont Packing House, the creation of artifact descriptions for our archives and contributing to A History of Claremont in 100 Objects.
Citations:
Bellis, M. “Mechanical Television History and John Baird.” ThoughtCo. Jul. 2019.
Ceruzzi, Paul. “Apollo Guidance Computer and the First Silicon Chips.” National Air and Space Museum. Oct. 2015.
Clark, Leslie. “Walter Cronkite: Witness to History.” American Masters. PBS. Jul. 2006.
Eschner, Kat. “The Farmboy who Invented Television.” Smithsonian Magazine. Aug. 2017.
Ford Motor Co. “Ford Philco and the Mission Control Center.” Ford. 2014.
Kennedy, Liam. “Photojournalism and the Vietnam War.” Photography and International Conflict. University of Dublin Clinton Institute for American Studies. 2008.
The Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute, “Selma to Montgomery March,” Stanford University. Accessed Oct 21, 2023
Mitchell Stephens, “History of Television,” in Grolier Encyclopedia.
Stephens, A History of News, 3rd edition, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007)
James Billington et al, Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture, Library of Congress, Accessed Oct 21, 2023
Samuel Burleigh, “The Battle Between Cinema and Television in the 1950s and its Legacy today during an Uncertain Time for Moviegoing,” Medium, Jul. 2020.
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