Steven Rife

Prof. Linder

Understanding Media

6 November 2018

Books and Television

Have you ever read a book and then watched the movie or TV series after? There are many books, movies, and TV series that are based off of each other. Books came way before television, dating back to 2400BCE when the Egyptians recorded things on Papyrus paper that were made from plant reeds found along the Nile river. The first actual book was produced by the Romans in the fourteenth century. It was called a codex which was a book made from sheets of parchment paper that were sown together around the edge then bound with thin pieces of wood and covered with leather. During the middles ages monks and priests along with scribes  would transfer old philosophy into newer books but they were very expansive because there was no way to mass print these books until the idea of block printing came along in the third century. Block printing is the process of blocks of wood that had hand carved letters in them being covered in ink then pressed onto paper. This process was still time consuming but allowed multiple copies to be printed at once.

In Germany between 1453 and 1456 Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. This sped up the printing process, and by the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century the printing press had spread all over Europe. In the late 1630 an English locksmith, Stephen Daye set up a print shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was the first time the printing press that made an appearance in the United States. By the 1830s machine made paper replaced more expansive handmade options. Paperback books and dime novels were created shortly after which reduced the price of books drastically. In the 1880s the introduction of the linotype mechanics saved time by allowing printers to use typewriter style keyboards, and in the 1990s the offset lithography allowed books to be printed from photographic plates reducing the cost of color illustrations and increasing printing speeds. That’s when the production of books took off. There are many different types of books ranging from professional books, text books, religious books, trade books, and university press books. The start of comic books prevailed around this time as well. Once the digital age started to take over books went along for the ride. In 1971 Michael Hart developed the first e-book. In the 1990s RCA and Sony came out with portable reading devices but they were too big and too expensive for the everyday person. In 2007 Amazon developed the kindle which was a portable reading device that was small and affordable. This dominated the online market because they were able to bring the price of their audio books to around $10 each which no other online audio book seller could match.

Television is an important medium around the world. From 1897 to 1907 the idea of TV picture tube was invented which was the process of combining camera and electricity. In the 1880s Paul Nipkow invented the scanning disk which basically had a series of organized patterns, as the dick spun it separated pictures into pinpoints of light that could be transmitted as a series of electronic lines that could then be televised. In 1923 Vladimir Zworykin invented the iconoscope which was the first camera tube to convert light rays into electrical signals. Then in 1930 Philo Faensworth received a patent for the first electronic television.

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) adopted an analog standard for the U.S. The U.S. continued to use analog signals in 2009 when they were replaced by digital signals. This improved the image quality and sound quality allowing high definition to be introduced. In the beginning of the TV age the number of TV stations a city could have was limited because the airwave frequencies interfered with each other. This problem was fixed by sending channels through cable wires that did not interfere with each other. To puts things in perspective today, a frequency that could carry one analog channel and carry up to eight digital channels. The FCC approved an experiment on CBS with a color system but many TVs could not get color because their TVs were incompatible. In 1954 RCA’s color system sent TV images in color but allowed older sets to receive the images in black and white, this is when the CBS color system became the standard for America and CBS, NBC, and ABC all broadcasted in color. Shortly after TV became a popular mass medium around the globe.

Both TV and Books have similarities. There are two major relationships between the two First, how books can help sell TV and how TV can help sell books. Second is how books serve as ideas for TV shows and movies. For example, a book series like Harry Potter became a movies series or how the book series of breaking bad was turned into a TV series. Books and TV can both be for learning purposes as well. There are applications out there for the TV for learning like Rosetta Stone which helps people learn different languages through the TV, this is the same concept as picking up a textbook and trying to learn a different language.  There are also some differences between books and TV for starters the obvious reason being that books for sit down and read or listen along usually with the physical book in your hand, as in TV actually watch a moving picture. There are also studies out there that say reading a book gets the reader more engaged than watching TV. In some studies, it was found that the readers experienced similar sensations in their brans to the characters in the books. There are other studies that show the difference in neuro pathways after reading a book compared to watching a TV show. Another big difference between TV and books is that TV brought a sense of a cultural norm. What I mean by that Is when people turn on the news generally the same breaking stories are being played on each news channel across America which informs people with the same type of news.

Both books and TV are going to continue to open new doors in the media culture as time goes on. In the future I think books are going to continue to grow in popularity. Giving people the opportunity to learn new things or if you are simply reading for pleasure, the same thing goes for TV. Who knows maybe one day someone will combine TV and books into one. The future is endless with these two types of mediums.

Framing Statement

I think my strengths in this paper was how i had a clear thesis statement and how that helped me from the rest of my paper to get my point across in a clear manor. Another strength I had in this paper was that I used both side of the topic in my paper. meaning i didn’t only talk abut one side of the topic I explored all aspects of the topic. the weaknesses I thought I had in this paper was that sometimes I found myself talking about stuff that does not fit the topic of the paper, sometimes it feels like my train of thought just shifts completely and i end up talking about nonsense.