"An informative, entertaining account of the box, its earliest broadcasts, and the ambitions that drove the people who created it". Booklist

Tube tells the stories behind the invention of television and the intense competition to bring it to market. Devilish character sketches and compelling anecdotes capture the brilliance, vision, and frustration of its colorful inventors.

Amazon.com Review

"Sir Thomas Beecham says he believes that television can do much to improve the musical taste of the nation. " -- The London Times, September 1, 1936

"It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste of the American nation." -- David Sarnoff

"Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of it." -- C.P. Scott, editor, Manchester Guardian, 1928

Having been involved with the Internet since 1981, I have watched discussions about the promise and perils of computer networks with an ever-growing suspicion that this drama had been played out before. In 1992, I began collecting books, articles, and data about the early history of telephony, radio, and television, with an eye toward writing a history of these past technologies that would enlighten current debates. Thankfully, Fisher and Fisher have written the book about the history of television that I would have written--and in a much more expert fashion than I could have hoped.

In the tradition of the Sloan Foundation Technology Series other superb books (such as The Invention That Changed the World (about radar) and Computer: A History of the Information Machine), this is technological history at its best: informed about technology and the institutional and commercial matrices within which it works, and populated by a fully-realized cast of eccentric geniuses, captains of industry, and multinational corporations jockeying for mastery of a jillion-dollar industry. Very Highly Recommended.