Ellis Cashmore - Screen Society

Ellis Cashmore
Jamie Cleland
Kevin Dixon

Screen Society

Ellis Cashmore

School of Languages and Social Sciences Aston University

Birmingham, UK

Jamie Cleland

UniSA Business School University of South Australia Adelaide, Australia

Kevin Dixon

School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law

Teesside University Middlesbrough, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-68163-4 ISBN 978-3-319-68164-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68164-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937875

The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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1696

Demonstration in England of a device that will become known as a magic lantern, a primitive form of image projector used for showing images on a screen.

1839

Louis-Jacques-Mand Daguerre presents the first practical photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences, establishing the technology that will yield practical photography. In the same period, magic lantern shows are commonplace in Europe and America.

1850s

Theatrical entertainment grows in popularity, principally through a music hall, which offers a mix of songs, comedy, conjuring and speciality acts. Audiences sit in spacious theatres with seats and a stage on the understanding that they respect others comfort. GAMECHANGER

1895

In Paris, Auguste and Louis Lumire exhibit their kinetoscope, which lets viewers view moving images through a peephole. This starts a period of rapid experimentation, leading to the development of the cinematograph, which allows simultaneous viewing by multiple people.

1910s

The popularity of the cinematograph encourages the production of silent films to entertain paying audiences. By the end of the decade, there will be a fledgling film industry. GAMECHANGER

1921

The Kid , a silent black and white film featuring Charlie Chaplin is released.

1922

BBC Radio launches. Radio will become the dominant broadcast medium of the period.

1927

The Jazz Singer is released. This is the most successful film with sound to date.

1930

Film is established as a mainstream entertainment, supplanting theatre.

1936

BBC launches Britains first regular tv service at 3 p.m. on November 2, but only for two hours per day and to London audiences only.

1937

Walt Disney Studios (later to become Disney) release their first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ; an animated production that offers a new type of family entertainment.

1939

Gone with the Wind , the 221-minute epic film based on Margaret Mitchells novel, sets new standards in cinema and will go on to become one of the highest grossing films (when adjusted for price inflation).

1941

Konrad Zuse creates the first functional electro-mechanical binary programmable computer, a forerunner of todays devices.

1949

BBC televises beyond London.

1950s

Sales of domestic television rise dramatically.

1952

Cinema responds to the challenge to its popularity with colour stereoscopic 3D and CinemaScope.

Bell Labs, the American research and scientific development organization, invent the modem, a device that converts digital signals back to electrical signals and back again, enabling communication between computers.

1951

I Love Lucy , which started as a radio comedy, is turned into a television sitcom and airs on American network CBS. The series will run till 1957 and will be screened internationally. Such is the popularity of the show that it will greatly assist the rise of television as a genuine challenger to cinema.

1960

The first universal standard for computers ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange) is developed and permits machines from different manufacturers to exchange data.

1963

Abraham Zapruder films the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy on his Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series camera. The 26.6 seconds of footage is the only film of the shooting and will assume iconic status in the years that follow. Zapruders camera is one of the home movie cameras that are popular in the early 1960s. The films are developed and shown on portable screens years before video (see below, 1978).

1965

Polaroids Swinger camera allows users to see photographs without sending them off to the chemist for development.

1967

Decca introduce colour television with its model CTV 25.

1969

An estimated 600 million people watch the Apollo 11 landing on the moon live on television, a world record until 1981, when 750 million people watch the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

A computer-to-computer link is established on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, which is funded by the US government. The first transmission is sent by a UCLA student programmer to Stanford Research Institutes host computer. Fifteen years later, the first email will be sent. GAMECHANGER

1970

The first IMAX screen is unveiled in Osaka, Japan.

1971

Ray Tomlinson implements the first email programme on the ARPANET system, a precursor to the internet.

1973

Flexible removable, magnetic disks, popularly known as floppy disks enable users to save and transport documents, though a whole disk cant store a whole song.

CEEFAX, a text information system is integrated into television sets.

1975

Sony introduces the Betamax machine: this records and plays back television programmes on plastic cassettes (about as big as hardback books), enabling viewers to tape and watch programmes at their own convenience.

1976

JVC release the first video home system, or VHS, machines in Japan (then in the UK and USA in early 1977). This rivals Sonys Betamax (see above, 1975).

1980

The Sony Walkman cassette tape player is launched. Sales will reach 200 million worldwide.

1981

The Acorn BBC Micro Computer is used in schools.

1982

Kilnam Chon, a professor at Keio University in Japan, develops the first internet connection in Asia.