Shot 18 / 4:40–4:57Select a shot, or shift-click to select multipleSelect a shot, or double-tap to select multiple

Magic in the Air (1941)

19417 min 58 sec24 shots

A football game demonstrates television’s ability to let people watch a distant event from a theater or their homes. Cameras follow the action from the sidelines, cables carry the pictures to mobile units, and the units relay them to a main transmitter. Studio scenes show performers, camera operators, lights, sets, and a director coordinating a continuous broadcast, with prerecorded motion-picture footage used during costume and set changes.

The film explains that moving images consist of rapidly displayed still pictures and that each television picture is assembled from tiny points of light. Diagrams and equipment views show how an iconoscope camera tube turns light into electrical impulses, which are transmitted and reconstructed as light on a kinescope receiver screen through 525 scanning lines at 30 pictures per second. Early television images are compared with sharper contemporary pictures, and the closing scenes anticipate television bringing a combination of radio, motion pictures, and stage entertainment into the home, followed by a humorous fantasy about what the technology might someday do.

Provenance and rights

Original producer: Handy (Jam) Organization
Collection: Prelinger Archives
Original title: Magic in the Air (1941)
Date: 1941
Original link: Open on Internet Archive
Rights: public_domain