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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester
 |
| Parlor Wall (TV Parlor) | ||
| The original "big screen TV" takes up an entire wall of a room. |
The wall TV had various features to engage the viewer. Scripts for shows were available, allowing the viewer to actually act as a part of the TV story. They had overwhelming sound systems built-in. The parlour, though, was not for everyone; Montag's friend Faber does not use them.
| "My wife says books aren't 'real.'" "Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlors. As you see, my parlour is nothing but four plaster walls. And here " He held out two small rubber plugs. "For my ears when I ride the subway-jets." |
| From Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
People who do not remember television from the 1950's may not appreciate what an incredible insight this is. The first public demonstrations of color TV had occurred only three years earlier. Here's some ad copy from one of the hottest sellers in 1950 - the Philco:
The characters on the screen were modified slightly at each location to correctly appear to call the home viewer by name (see spot-wavex converter).
For the old-fashioned alternative to parlour walls, see what Bradbury had to say about books:
Do you know why books such as this are so important? ...The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
So now do you see why books are hated and feared, they show the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon phases, or less, hairless, expressionless. We're living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.
Eye-level consolette is rich-grained mahogany veneer. 12 1/2 in. screen with huge 97 sq. in. picture and the new super-powered Philco circuits.
It's a remarkable jump from this tiny screen (imagine the picture and sound quality) to a wall-sized screen that dominated the room.
Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us...
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Fahrenheit 451
More Ideas
and Technology by Ray Bradbury
Tech news articles related to Fahrenheit 451
Tech news articles related to works by Ray Bradbury
Parlor Wall (TV Parlor)-related
news articles:
- 9X Media Video Wall: Bradbury's Parlour Walls Come To Life
- Philips 100-Inch TV Parlor
- HIPerWall Highly Interactive Parallelized Display Wall
- World's Largest Tablet PC From Sharp
- Ray Bradbury: Your Parlor TV Walls Are Almost Ready
- LG 84-inch Ultra HD TV
- Mr. Bradbury, Your TV Parlor (Reality Deck) Is Ready
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