Television Under the Swastika, from Netflix.
A recent documentary about the German television network which operated from 1935 to 1944, ten or fifteen years ahead of US I guess. Originally pushed by the Nazi leaders to show Germany's edge in technology, TV was later cast aside as not best way to get the word out to the folk. 1935 TV was pretty limited, with mechanical scanners (spinning disks with holes) but by the 1936 Olympics German TV was ready for quality live broadcasts. Of course almost no one owned a TV receiver so many "TV parlors" were set up and were wildly popular. One very interesting detail to me was the use of "almost live" broadcasts. They had a large van with a 35mm movie camera mounted on the roof and perched on a tube. The camera had just one very large reel, for the unexposed film. The cameraman filmed the scene and the exposed film traveled straight down the tube into the van where it was processed in a minute, then a video camera viewed the film and broadcast it. This process was used apparently for a few years for news and sport events and some of that film still exists. Otherwise we would have nothing of "live" events because video recording was still in the future. So we can still watch some old German TV shows. Broadcasting, which was several hours a day (they had a TV guide), then was not too unlike what we have today once you take away all the "heil hitlers" of which there are many. News, sports, exercise and cooking shows, gardening, kids shows, TV dramas, etc. And there were reruns. Working with film like that allowed even slow motion and stop motion sports! The documentary presents clips of many of these so you get a bit of slice of life for Germans in the Nazi era. The TV crews did not go into combat.
By 1940 the quality of the reception was said to be very good although only 500 private TV sets were in Berlin. The leadership was not keen to keep the system going but the TV producers found a somewhat secure niche by putting TV parlors in veterans hospitals and broadcasting what were essentially USO shows. One clip shows soldier amputees being prepared for return to combat, chilling.
In the fall of 1944 they pulled the plug.
Interesting.
JImksi
A recent documentary about the German television network which operated from 1935 to 1944, ten or fifteen years ahead of US I guess. Originally pushed by the Nazi leaders to show Germany's edge in technology, TV was later cast aside as not best way to get the word out to the folk. 1935 TV was pretty limited, with mechanical scanners (spinning disks with holes) but by the 1936 Olympics German TV was ready for quality live broadcasts. Of course almost no one owned a TV receiver so many "TV parlors" were set up and were wildly popular. One very interesting detail to me was the use of "almost live" broadcasts. They had a large van with a 35mm movie camera mounted on the roof and perched on a tube. The camera had just one very large reel, for the unexposed film. The cameraman filmed the scene and the exposed film traveled straight down the tube into the van where it was processed in a minute, then a video camera viewed the film and broadcast it. This process was used apparently for a few years for news and sport events and some of that film still exists. Otherwise we would have nothing of "live" events because video recording was still in the future. So we can still watch some old German TV shows. Broadcasting, which was several hours a day (they had a TV guide), then was not too unlike what we have today once you take away all the "heil hitlers" of which there are many. News, sports, exercise and cooking shows, gardening, kids shows, TV dramas, etc. And there were reruns. Working with film like that allowed even slow motion and stop motion sports! The documentary presents clips of many of these so you get a bit of slice of life for Germans in the Nazi era. The TV crews did not go into combat.
By 1940 the quality of the reception was said to be very good although only 500 private TV sets were in Berlin. The leadership was not keen to keep the system going but the TV producers found a somewhat secure niche by putting TV parlors in veterans hospitals and broadcasting what were essentially USO shows. One clip shows soldier amputees being prepared for return to combat, chilling.
In the fall of 1944 they pulled the plug.
Interesting.
JImksi
