(Roughly) Daily

One newspaper article complained of boys walking into walls while looking through kaleidoscopes; another kvetched about scope users running into cyclists on the street. (The draisienne, or “dandy horse,” a pedal-free precursor to the modern bicycle, had recently been introduced.) Large kaleidoscopes were set up on street corners, where passersby could pay a penny for a peek, and parlor scopes became themust-have accessory for the middle and upper classes…

The extraordinary story of a the kaleidoscope, a technological fad that was, in many ways, a precursors of hot devices of today (and of their effects): “Long before iPhones, this 19th-century gadget made everyone a mobile addict.”

* Rebecca McNutt

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As we watch shapes shift, we might recall that it was on this date in 1951 that the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) televised the one-hour premiere of commercial color television with a program appropriately titled Premiere.

In 1950, there were two companies vying to be the first to create color TVs — CBS and RCA. When the FCC tested the two systems, the CBS system was approved, while the RCA system failed to pass because of low picture quality.  But CBS’s technology had some pretty serious flaws:  it was very expensive, it tended to flicker, and probably most fatally, it was not compatible with the black and white TV set already in American households.  RCA continued to tweak its approach, and ultimately overtook CBS to become the standard setter for color TV in the U.S.

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