DUH. This 1939 article was written by a wise old sage who probably hadn't spent much time with a "television set" but recognized fully the tremor that it was likely to cause in the world of pop-culture:
"Of all the brats, legitimate and otherwise, sired of the entertainment business, the youngest, television, looks as if it would be the hardest to raise and to housebreak..."
Click here to read about the early Christian broadcasts of televangelist Oral Roberts...
Technology blogs on the net have users who frequently post the question "When will T.V. be able to 'broadcast' smells?": the ability existed as early as 1946 - but there was no interest - or so this article has lead us to believe:
"Optimistic scientists visualized the day when television sets would come equipped with 200 to 300 different smells. (Aromas are automatically concocted by chemicals in the set, mixed by radio-remote-control from the studio.) Faint nostrils quavered at the thought of several odors on the same program..." We were surprised to learn that the earliest television mavens recognized that television programming could be enhanced and customized when the signal is carried through telephone lines of individual subscribers - a perk that wasn't made widespread for a few decades. The early concept was called "Phonevision". There wasn't a single soul in 1939 would have imagined that television would be the sort of venue that would allow millions of strangers to see Tyra Banks get a breast exam, but that is the kind of institution it has become.
STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Alan Rinehart was astonished that so much dough was being invested in such a young industry, yet he recognized that T.V. was capable of much good, but was also capable of generating the kind of banality that we're used to. "What then, will be the entertainment value of television?...What's to be the entertainment? Why should we tune in? Will we get more than we will on the radio?...The revolutionary idea about television is that the medium has been developed before the art. It's as if the piano had been invented before music, or paint and canvas before drawing." | 
