SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF TV

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29367, 21 November 1960, Page 21

SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF TV

Indoctrination rather than education was the description given to the sociological effect of television by Mr B. T. Withers in an address to the mathematics and physics section of the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society oi ; New Zealand. A senior lecturer in electrical ; engineering at the University ol • Canterbury. Mr Withers said ; people today were subjected to ’ a tremendous amount of indoc- : trination through the radio. “We 1 are told how to vote, what to ' eat, read and buy. In fact we ■ are virtually told how to live,” 1 he said. : “It is difficult to argue with a person on the radio. It is even ■ more difficult to argue with a J person on television.” ’ In the economic field there were ’ also many factors that had to be ; considered. “Can we afford to have ‘ television?” he asked. ' The cost to the Government ; would only be a small amount ol , the actual cost of introducing ’ television in New Zealand. Radio manufacturers had said 200,00(1 : television sets should be sold in the Dominion. That would mean J a cost of between £2sm and ' £4Bm, he said. 1 Mr Withers said it had been ’ suggested it would be better if that money could be used to build an aluminium industry in New Zealand and the ensuing profits ' used to reduce the costs of teleI vision sets. Great Advantages If there were sociological and ■ economic disadvantages there was j one great advantage—the tremendous technological advance that

- would be made when television n was introduced. There was no doubt secondary industries, parn ticularly those connected with d electronics, would be stimulated. y Another aspect of this was the '*■ part that television would play , in matters of defence, he said. ‘ '! In part, the training in electronics received in television could in a 1 young country such as New Zea--3 land be invaluable in matters " connected with defence. " “In World War I it was a mat- 1 o ter of who could shoot the 1 straightest. In World War II it was who could fly an aeroplane a best. Now it is the country which n can achieve the best training in a electronics.” Aided by a closed circuit telee vision set, Mr Withers explained e to the meeting the basic prine ciples of television. As’ well as demonstrating through diagrams it and slides he described the prin>f ciples .of what he termed an “exg citing theory on television.” o This was the communication 0 theory which was now the sub- ' i ject of research overseas, he said, n If perfected it could mean a ' i world-wide television communication service. There were two pos- ’ n sibilities for a world service. One , f was to use a satellite as a point ; ti for receiving and transmitting v tnessages. The other was the use s of under-sea cables. , The communications theory aimed at cutting down the number of images that a television d receiver transmitted on to the s screen. This was done by a i- memory machine which rejected t images which were the same and

only transmitted those in which a new action happened. “As at present the ordinary television camera took a photograph every second which had 10,000,000 parts, the saving of photographs would be a great step forward. “At present the idea is at the stage of exercising the minds of scientists, although already some significant advances have been made,” said Mr Withers.