# Black & White Television **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 9, 2013, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872 "2013-05-09T06:37:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/21 "2013-05-10T04:10:46Z")
Screw it, every time I watch the old _Outer Limits_ I have to adjust my TV. ---
**Author:** ![john\_b\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@john\_b\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/john_b_2)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/22 "2013-05-10T12:51:12Z")
I do hope you’re joking, Bryan Ekers :dubious:: The original **Outer Limits** , the one that ran from 1963-65, is famous for its extraordinary feature film quality _black and white_ photography, courtesy of Conrad Hall and Kenneth Peach. Awesome. I can watch it for viewing pleasure even with the sound turned off. 🙂 There are, seriously, on-line sites, groups (Yahoo has one) dedicated to the _original_ **Outer Limits**. It has a large cult following, not at the **Star Trek- Twilight Zone** level, but good sized. The production values are outstanding; and the scripts, many written by Joseph Stefano, are awesome, often off the wall surreal (_Don’t Open Till Doomsday, The Invisibles, Fun and Games, The Guests, The Forms Of Things Unknown_). But I digress (somewhat)… ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/23 "2013-05-10T13:23:11Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > I’d like to see some modern shows shot in B&W. Even something like L&O:SVU might have a completely different feel. While it wasn’t shot in B&W, the first season of The Walking Dead was recently broadcast in B&W on AMC. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/24 "2013-05-10T21:14:48Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Around the mid-1960’s some bright boy realized that with color, all you had to do was show a bright, colorful image and everybody would go: “Wow!” Once they realized that style trumped substance in ratings, it became a struggle to have any kind of actual thought go into the scripts. This reminds of a comment my brother once made: he didn’t enjoy watching late '60s shows like _ **Name of the Game** _ or the last season of _ **It Takes a Thief** _ because there were very long scenes with nothing but pretty color photography (e.g., shots of Robert Wagner strolling through the plazas of Venice) and music playing in the background. ---
**Author:** ![john\_b\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@john\_b\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/john_b_2)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/25 "2013-05-11T02:54:01Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Screw it, every time I watch the old _Outer Limits_ I have to adjust my TV. OMG! :eek: Bryan: the control voice specifically warned you to not even _attempt_ to adjust your television set! :o If you’d just stop fiddling around with it I think you’d really enjoy the show…😃 ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/26 "2013-05-11T02:56:33Z")
I can answer the OP with two words: Styles Change. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/27 "2013-05-11T03:03:34Z")
> [@john\_b\_2](#): > > OMG! :eek: > > Bryan: the control voice specifically warned you to not even _attempt_ to adjust your television set! :o > …D No, it _orders_ you not to. This is America! We don’t take orders from TV shows! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/28 "2013-05-11T04:37:38Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > OK, this is seemingly difficult to grasp but… > > There doesn’t seem any lack of the needed materials a half or full century before the invention; and scientists back then were fully as clever as those of today who stand on their shoulders, so let’s say the loon and genius Newton studying optics invented photography in 1720 instead of the Frenchman in 1822 \> > > Photography preceded motion pictures by about 70 years in actuality ( Lumiere = 1895 ). Thus 70 years after 1720 and we’d have moving pictures by 1790; and colour movies by 1840. > They might be rather tame for modern-day tastes. The magic lantern was already old, and the Argand lamp that provided a brighter and steadier illumination came in 1780. I have used a clockwork movie camera and hand-cranked cameras and projectors are no problem. However, there is one little fly in the ointment: a medium that was transparent, cheap, and strong enough to work. Y’see, without flexible nitro-cellulose film (celluloid ca 1855, successful photographic film 1889) you would need a leather belt many meters long inset with small, glass plates you had to be careful not to break when you rolled up the belt, a scroll being the most-efficient way to store sequential data mechanically, from papyrus in Egypt to video tape today. And whereas nitro-cellulose film is a fraction of a millimeter thick so lots can be stored on a single, easy to handle reel, a glass and leather belt would be much thicker and could not be rolled nearly as tight, severely limiting the length of a movie at 24fps. And though Euclid and Newton both played with persistence of vision, and Ting Huan built his _chao hua chich kuan_ around 180AD, the first modern mechanisms that used persistence of vision to create the illusion of motion weren’t invented until the 1830s and 40s and then were limited to what images could be fit on round plates or cylinders. Not much plot in a second or two of screen time. And even flipbooks are a surprisingly recent invention, from the 1860s. One guy did something like what I described. Reynaud, in his [Theatre Optique](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6awj6b9aQ8U), produced animated shorts that were fairly long. They were hand-painted on glass plates, with the plates mounted in a leather belt and projected onto a fixed background. All of this was technology available many years, even centuries, before Reynaud tied them together, and didn’t even require photography, but note the date on that link: 1892 was only _three years_ before the Lumieres’ first public screenings. Obviously, we needed something more than photography before the movie could be invented. We needed a conceptual leap that didn’t occur until the late 19th century. As for the OP, the beautiful, rich shadings of the early B&W shows were lost on us because the broadcast, reception, and viewing technologies were, how can I put this? Primitive? Not up to the task? Pathetic? I’ll go with “for shit.” In a lot of places we were lucky to know what show we were watching. The new, cleaned-up versions are gorgeous, but we didn’t get to see that fifty-sixty years ago. And what luxury of time? Most shows were in half-hour slots so Paladin needed to get the telegram in his hotel, go to the site of the action, assess and solve the situation, and get back to Frisco in under 30 minutes. Tough in a kid show, but _Have Gun Will Travel_ was a show written for adults on the more-sophisticated end of the western shoot 'em up bell curve. And succeeded. Pretty impressive stuff. ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872/29 "2013-05-11T05:32:17Z")
Sturgeon’s law and time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-white-television/657872.md?page=1)