Bright Signals explores an over forty-year history (1928-1970) of the technological, aesthetic, industrial, and cultural development of color television. The governing idea of this book is that color television was an incredibly complex technology of visual culture that disrupted and reframed the very idea of television, while also revealing deep tensions and aspirations about technology’s relationship to and perspective on the “natural” world and, relatedly, our potential to extend human sight and experience.
Bright Signals contains over 100 color images.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. "And Now—Color": Early Color Systems 11
2. Natural Vision Versus "Tele-Vision": Defining and Standardizing Color 34
3. Color Adjustments: Experiments, Calibrations, and Color Training, 1950–1955 86
4. Colortown, USA: Expansion, Stabilization, and Promotion, 1955–1959 127
5. The Wonderful World of Color: Network Programming and the Spectacular Real, 1960–1965 176
6. At the End of the Rainbow: Global Expansion, the Space Race, and the Cold War 217
Conclusion 251
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. "And Now—Color": Early Color Systems 11
2. Natural Vision Versus "Tele-Vision": Defining and Standardizing Color 34
3. Color Adjustments: Experiments, Calibrations, and Color Training, 1950–1955 86
4. Colortown, USA: Expansion, Stabilization, and Promotion, 1955–1959 127
5. The Wonderful World of Color: Network Programming and the Spectacular Real, 1960–1965 176
6. At the End of the Rainbow: Global Expansion, the Space Race, and the Cold War 217
Conclusion 251
One of the primary arguments it makes is that that color television was imagined and sold as a new way of seeing—distinct from both monochrome television and other forms of color media—connected to its presumed emotional and spatial dimensionality and intensity.
Read the introduction here.
Read a review in Journal of Cinema & Media Studies here.
Read a review in Cinema & Cie here.
Read a review in Film Quarterly here.
Read a review in The Times Literary Supplement here.
Read a review in Technology & Culture here.
Full list of reviews: Public Books (January 29, 2020), Technology & Culture (Vol 61, no. 2, January 2020), Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (Vol 40, issue 2, June 2020), Communication Booknotes Quarterly (October/December 2019 vol. 50.4), The Times Literary Supplement (May 17, 2019), Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (Vol 58, No. 4 Summer 2019), Cinema & Cie (Vol. XIX, no. 32, Spring 2019), Critical Studies of Television (Vol 14.2 2019), Film Quarterly (Dec. 1, 2018), Leonardo (Sept. 2018), Choice (Dec. 2018)
Bright Signals was awarded the 2019 Katherine Singer Kovacs book award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies and the 2019 Michael Nelson Book Prize (biennial) presented by the International Association for Media and History.
Click below to watch visitors see themselves on color tv at the RCA pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair.
Read the introduction here.
Read a review in Journal of Cinema & Media Studies here.
Read a review in Cinema & Cie here.
Read a review in Film Quarterly here.
Read a review in The Times Literary Supplement here.
Read a review in Technology & Culture here.
Full list of reviews: Public Books (January 29, 2020), Technology & Culture (Vol 61, no. 2, January 2020), Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (Vol 40, issue 2, June 2020), Communication Booknotes Quarterly (October/December 2019 vol. 50.4), The Times Literary Supplement (May 17, 2019), Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (Vol 58, No. 4 Summer 2019), Cinema & Cie (Vol. XIX, no. 32, Spring 2019), Critical Studies of Television (Vol 14.2 2019), Film Quarterly (Dec. 1, 2018), Leonardo (Sept. 2018), Choice (Dec. 2018)
Bright Signals was awarded the 2019 Katherine Singer Kovacs book award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies and the 2019 Michael Nelson Book Prize (biennial) presented by the International Association for Media and History.
Click below to watch visitors see themselves on color tv at the RCA pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair.
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