THOMAS HUTCHINSO - Early Television Foundation

PREFACEThe author of this book has helped to shape the beginnings oftelevision, the newest of the instruments available to those in thefuture who seek to inform the minds of men, or to win their sympathy and understanding. It takes imagination and daring toleave the security of a known medium, to explore, throughtrialand error, with tools which are often anachronisms as soon asused, a new medium which has a limited audience, no traditions,no certainties of technique. It was in part this same imaginationwhich led the author to teach what was perhaps the first University class in Television Programming. Offered by the WashingtonSquare Writing Center of New York University in the fall of1940, this course has been conducted each semester since thattime, with the exception of a brief period during the war, andthis volume is an expansion of these lectures, discussions, anddemonstrations.It is of special interest that this book grows out of teachingand will be widely purchased and used as a textbook. With television admittedly in its infancy as an industry and as an art form,why, it may be asked, should we presume to teach the techniquesof television programming?The answer is that we have a tradition of demanding that ourbest doctors, artists, and scientists shall teach us who seek to follow in their steps. Happily, most creative people are genuinelyinterested in helping us to share whatever secrets of technique orknowledge they possess. Moreover, the wisest of them realize thatteaching benefits both him who learns and him who teaches. Thetask of communicating what one knows or has done is in itselfclarifying. We do not have knowledge in its fullest realizationuntil we have attempted to express it, to communicate it toothers. Thus it is fortunate that when we as students seek tobenefit from what pioneers in any field have learned, knowledgeitself is perfected in the very process of teaching.