9/19/17

Pay TV, 1955 - How will this work?

As early as 1955, Americans were trying to figure out how to get people to pay for television. You maybe didn't know that till just now, but can you really be surprised? As soon as there was a TV in every living room in the country, of course someone was trying to figure out how to put a coin box on it.

This article is from the October 1955 issue of Popular Science, and people were understandably pissed at the idea of paying for TV. Please enjoy this outline of the proposed janky and complicated methods to deliver programming to the consumer for money, using 1955 technology (wires, gears, magnets, and levers, pretty much).

These images are the Maximum-allowed-by-Blogger 1600 px tall. Click it to big it, baby.



Posted by PhilAreGo@gmail.com at 6:53 AM
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1 comments:

[lrf] said...

Guess these are basically over-the-air pay TV schemes? As I recall from history class, cable TV dates back to 1948 or so. Would have caught on faster if they'd have told people there would be boobies.

9/19/17, 6:15 PM

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