# Flat-screen reference in The Fly? (1958) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 24, 2002, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394 "2002-08-24T20:01:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/1 "2002-08-24T20:01:27Z")
I just screened the original version of _The Fly_ the other night, and one line in particular has me a bit puzzled. When Patricia Owens’ character tells Vincent Price that her husband is ready to demonstrate one of his new inventions, he asks, “The flat screen?” What the hell? Has flat-screen television been coveted for that long? This was a full decade before the first simple plasma screens were developed! Was this a Hollywood dig at a perceived flaw in a threatening new technology? Did I hear the line wrong? (I rewound it a couple of times, and I pretty sure that’s what he said.) Mssr. Delambre makes a goofy analogy between his “disintegrator-reintegrator” and broadcast television as well, so maybe it was posited as a parallel development. I guess the general question is “When did flat-screen television become a development goal?” ---
**Author:** ![bbeaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c0e974/32.png) [@bbeaty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bbeaty)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/2 "2002-08-24T23:09:55Z")
During early TV experimentation they were imagining that successful TV would be like an array of marquee lights, but with very small bulbs. I think a few experimenters built flatscreen devices using arrays of tiny neon pilot lights. It was too expensive of course, and the Crystalline Valve hadn’t yet replaced Hollow State Electronics, so successful television ended up being mechanical: Gallery: rotating-disk TV receivers [http://www.earlytelevision.org/mechanical\_gallery.html](http://www.earlytelevision.org/mechanical_gallery.html) I wonder how early it was that SF authors were having their characters observe the image of an approaching alien spacecraft on the “forward viewplate”? ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/3 "2002-08-25T00:32:37Z")
Speaking of arrays of very small bulbs, how small can we make LEDs these days? Could we make a video monitor out of LEDs? I mean, we have red, green, and blue LEDs now, and that’s really all you need to get all the colors… ---
**Author:** ![Wikkit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c0e974/32.png) [@Wikkit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wikkit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/4 "2002-08-25T02:15:38Z")
There are companies that manufacture displays using thin, tiny, flexible sheets of LEDs. There are all kinds of things they could be used for, like window TVs, flexible laptops, heads up displays in cars, and so on. [http://www.universaldisplay.com/](http://www.universaldisplay.com/) among others. ---
**Author:** ![Wikkit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c0e974/32.png) [@Wikkit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wikkit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/5 "2002-08-25T02:22:57Z")
There are companies that manufacture displays using thin, tiny, flexible sheets of LEDs. There are all kinds of things they could be used for, like window TVs, flexible laptops, heads up displays in cars, and so on. [http://www.universaldisplay.com/](http://www.universaldisplay.com/) among others. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/6 "2002-08-25T02:53:57Z")
**bbeaty** , E. E. “Doc” Smith made mention of it in some of his _Skylark_ books which date from the early 1920’s or so. I doubt he was the first, I imagine that honor would go to either Welles or Verne (though one could make the argument that some of the ancient myths had such a device in them that operated through magic instead of technology). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/7 "2002-08-25T11:38:02Z")
The word “television” was actually invented in the novel _Ralph 124C 41+_ by Hugo Gernsback in 1911. I believe there were vague ideas about how something like television might work in the late 19th century (with mechanical components and transmission over wires). I recall seeing several '50’s SF movies with things that we might now call flat-screen television, always faked with bad special effects. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/8 "2002-08-25T13:14:08Z")
I don’t think that Hugo “invented” the word although he probably helped to popularize it. The **OED** cites it first in 1907 in Scientific American. And in another publication in 1909. And actually “televista” meaning the same process was from 1904. It was an exciting technology which was being developed. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/9 "2002-08-25T16:43:45Z")
I forgot to check the OED. Other sources I’ve read claimed that it was Gernsback that first created the word, but clearly they’re wrong. It’s derived in an obvious way from “telephone” and “telegraph,” so it may be an independent creation by Gernsback. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/10 "2002-08-25T18:46:59Z")
Golly, and I thought James Joyce was being prescient when he wrote about a stump speech being “televised and distributed via talk-tapes” in _Finnegans Wake_. At any rate, the word harkens back to the days when new words had obvious meanings because of their simple greek or latinate etymologies- A convention that’s been all but destroyed by hare-brained and subliterate marketing droids. Feh. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/11 "2002-08-25T19:39:01Z")
That’s why it’s called science fiction; you get to imagine things that don’t exist yet. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/12 "2002-08-25T19:53:13Z")
> [@](#): > > That’s why it’s called science fiction; you get to imagine things that don’t exist yet. Of course, you might get your inspiration from something you actually read. ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/13 "2002-08-25T21:22:16Z")
In a “Radio in the Future” article for the March, 1938 _Radio-Craft_, Hugo Gernsback wrote: > [@](#): > > …every radio set, whether pocket or otherwise, will be television equipped, but this is no longer news. You may ask, how will I be able to see a television program by means of a vest-pocket set? The answer to this is found in another prediction, not as yet realized, which I made in the October, 1936, issue of _Short Wave Craft_. This has to do with an instrument which I term television “spectacles.” In other words, you wear a pair of “spectacles” which have a twin television receiver built right on the eye-glass frame. This means, of course, that the television images received are small, but they need not be large, because they are right up close to your eye; indeed they will be sharper in this manner. Therefore, all you require is to put on “television eyeglasses” and you will see and hear at the same time, because the frame of the television set on the bony part of your nose will also, by molecular vibration, transmit the sound to your ear-drums in a most realistic fashion. I also recently came across another, somewhat spooky, look into the future from 80 years ago: > [@](#): > > **Dare We Use This Power?** May, 1920 _Popular Science Monthly_ > > SIR OLIVER LODGE thinks that man is not yet civilized enough to use the energy hidden in ordinary matter. >     “The time will come when atomic energy will take the place of coal as a source of power.” >     The man who spoke thus before the Royal Society of Arts in London was Sir Oliver Lodge–one of the towering figures in modern science, a man who has devoted the better part of his life to the study and interpretation of the atom. This new form of energy, which our great-grandchildren may utilize instead of oil and coal, has possibilities so appalling that Sir Oliver almost rejoices that we do not know how to release it. “I hope that the human race will not discover how to use this energy,” he says, “until it has brains and morality enough to use it properly, _because if the discovery is made by the wrong people this planet would be unsafe_. A force utterly disproportionate to the present sources of power would be placed at the disposal of the world.” >     Sir J. J. Thomson, England’s great authority on the atom, gives a picture of this terrible form of energy that wins one over to Sir Oliver Lodge’s view. He tells us that the atomic energy stored in an ounce of chlorine “is about the amount of work required to keep the _Mauretania_ going at full speed for a week,” and that the splitting up of the atoms in any substance would involve enormous transformations of energy. “In fact, the explosion of the atoms in a few pounds of material might be sufficient to shatter a continent.” ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/14 "2002-08-25T22:32:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Larry Mudd \* > \*\*Golly, and I thought James Joyce was being prescient when he wrote about a stump speech being “televised and distributed via talk-tapes” in _Finnegans Wake_. > \*\* BBC Television had gone on the air in November 1936, three years before _Finnegan’s Wake_ was published. The BBC and the German radio authority RRG had been using magnetic tape recordings for its radio broadcasts since the mid-1930s. So these were existing technologies for Joyce. Sources: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/thenandnow/history/1930sn.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/thenandnow/history/1930sn.shtml) [http://www.bassboy.com.au/getreel/articles/history.htm](http://www.bassboy.com.au/getreel/articles/history.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/15 "2002-08-25T22:47:03Z")
The problem with early fictional illustrations of television is that it was usually shown as a large screen embedded in a wall. Whether it was truely a flat screen, or whether there was a giant orthicon tube behind it, we can’t tell. Charlie Chaplin’s **Modern Times** (1936) has a giant screen TV in the factory washroom that the boss appears on to berate Chaplin for dwadling. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/16 "2002-08-25T23:17:39Z")
> [@](#): > > I also recently came across another, somewhat spooky, look into the future from 80 years ago:Dare We Use This Power? May, 1920 Popular Science Monthly > > SIR OLIVER LODGE thinks that man is not yet civilized enough to use the energy hidden in ordinary matter. > “The time will come when atomic energy will take the place of coal as a source of power.” Unfortunately for Sir Oliver, he also believed in life after death and psychic ability. FLUSH!! ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2002, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/17 "2002-08-26T00:03:54Z")
Lodge also believed in ether, long after Einstein’s theories had disproved it. However, in this particular case his predictions were quite accurate, and no doubt he would have been happy that the U.S., rather than Germany, would be the first to developed atomic weapons. I also forgot to mention that the Gernsback quote on TV glasses included an illustration that said the TV pictures would be in 3D. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2002, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/18 "2002-08-26T00:20:01Z")
Now you have me wondering if one of Jean Dixon’s predictions ever came true. Monkeys and typewriters anyone? ---
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2002, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/19 "2002-08-26T00:59:58Z")
Doesn’t Orwell’s 1984 have apartments where one whole wall is taken up by flat screens? And they’re two-way, right? ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/20 "2002-08-28T02:12:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \* > **E. E. “Doc” Smith made mention of it in some of his _Skylark_ books which date from the early 1920’s or so.** Ah, yes. In the first book, _The Skylark of Space_, E. E. “Doc” Smith conceived of:[ul][li] **Arenak** , a transparent metal 500 times harder and stronger than the hardest and strongest steel;[/li][li] **Mind reading devices** that could scan the neurons of a living brain and thereby acquire all knowledge stored in said brain in a matter of minutes;[/li][li] **Metal X** , a mystery metal which, when exposed to an X-ray source, could turn any copper it was in contact with directly and totally into energy at the staggering rate of E = mc[sup]2[/sup];[/li][li] **Faster-than-light space ships** that could simply ignore Einstein’s laws of relativity; … and …[/li][li]… **FLAT-SCREEN TV?!** [/ul][/li]\ One of these things is not like the others… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394.md?page=2)