A bit of an oddball choice this week, where the plot has a little bit of its roots in real life.
In the early days of television there were two main systems, electronic, similar to the modern way we make and view video images today and an electro-mechanical system. Although this is not the storyline of Trapped by Television which was made in 1936, it does touch on the fact that there were lots of different people and companies involved in early television research. A variety of competing companies undertook a lot of different research some of it, such as electro-mechanical television turned out to be a commercial and technical dead end but still added to the body of knowledge about the reproduction of images electronically.
Trapped by Television is about an impoverished inventor who has almost completed his prototype television camera and receiver when he runs out of money. A debt collection agency sends a heavy to the inventor to collect either the cash or the valuable components of the television system. Unfortunately for the debt collection agency, and the creditors, the heavy that they send also happens to be someone who is interested in science. The heavy, Rocky O’Neil, recognises that this invention has potential and decides not to take either the cash or the equipment and goes into partnership with the inventor.
The inventor, Fred Dennis, is not the only person working on television and there is another problem in that various other television inventors and engineers are mysteriously disappearing before they can bring their televisions to market. Who is removing the television engineers from their workshops and why? I don’t want to give too much away and you’ll have to watch the film to find out.
I found this not only to be an entertaining film but one which was a little bit of a window into the technology of long past and also the society that created it.
I hope you enjoy this one as I know I did.
Footnote: There is a pretty fascinating history of television technolgy on Wikipedia that people might like to read.
