The past is not the past if it is not past. One cannot look back at something he hasn’t walked past, literally. So when we look back in retrospect, what do we often find? Fond memories? Maybe.
The truth is, our memories sometimes are so distorted that even bad memories are shrouded in good ones so when we look back, we just smile.
Similarly, as the world looks back in remembrance of the day television was invented, it doesn’t remember the days it lived without the ‘idiot box’, rather it calls to mind the joy and thrill television brought the whole world.
From the very day Eadweard Muybridge won a bet against the former governor of California, Leland Stanford, a widespread hunger to see motion picture on a device other than what was simply projected on the screen, was born.
Indeed, the world lived in such high expectations, but it wasn’t about 56 years later, in the early 1920s, that the first mechanical television was demonstrably used to depict films.
The whole world was happy and mad at the same time. Television was the new gold. They wanted it, they prayed for it, but once it arrived, they could not own it. It was too expensive and only the rich could afford one.
That was in the past. Now, all that is gone. Television is now so cheap even those widely perceived as poor can afford to have two sets in their homes. No one could have possibly seen this at the time.
But late Chief Obafemi Awolowo saw it. He was, for a certainty, a seer – a seer of some sorts. He looked and saw beyond the accusation that television was a major cause of indolence. He saw the massive potential that the device had in informing, educating and transmitting cultural heritage.
Little wonder he wasted no time in helping to usher in the first television station in Nigeria, nay, the first in Tropical Africa. Nigerians started buying the device. Western Nigerian Television ( WNTV ) began broadcasting in the Nigerian South-west region in 1959.
This was extended to the eastern and northern regions within four years. The result today is the multi television channels we now have.
We can watch a documentary of the damages done in World War I and II, as well as some important events in the Nigerian history because of television. We can learn how to speak good English and know which behaviour is acceptable and which is not in our locality because of television.
We learn how to dress well and behave ourselves in social settings because depictions on television tell us so.
We sit in the comfort of our homes and watch live events in other continents. This forms in part, the basis by which Marshall McLuhan, the communication scholar, was inspired to assert that the whole world has been retribalized.
In his words, the world is a global village. He was not amiss. TV had shrunk our world and has become to man, an indispensable companion.
When people come back from work nowadays and are looking for something to relieve them of the day’s stress, most turn to their television sets. Oh, how Integral TV has become in our daily lives! Some people don’t even feel like their day is complete without latching on to one or two programs they follow everyday.
Yes, TV has become a very important part of our society. What is more important, however, is that television has undergone several changes from what it used to be in the 1920s. First, it went from the black and white version to the coloured version.
Then it slowly went from analog to digital. It is now slowly undergoing a more profound change in form of little portable gadgets. We now have a ‘TV’ of some sort in our palms and pockets.
Our smart mobile phones are not only redefining the traditional TV as we know it, but are also serving as a prototype for what future television devices will look like.
Of course, future television devices will be mind blowing just as we would consider what we have now fifty years ago to be equally mind blowing. Television holds yet, massive potentials. But as we await more mini versions of TV, let us take a peek at the past and appreciate the journey television has made to the present.
