In presenting the exhibition Watching TV: Historic Televisions and Memorabilia from the MZTV Museum, the Cinémathèque quèbècoise wishes to pay tribute to the humble television set, a screen that we sit in front of each day without even thinking about it. However, there was a day when the transmission of televised images was beyond most people's imagination.

In Canada, the history of television goes back to 1952. Older generations still recall their very first encounter with television: with the entire family, sitting for several hours in front of the test pattern waiting for the images to materialize on the screen. But, in actual fact, the history of television goes back to the end of the last century. Scientists, amateurs and entrepreneurs first conceived of the idea; once the telephone and the radio had been fully realized, the development of television became a specific objective, not a discovery stumbled across by accident.

As early as 1884, Paul Nipkow invented a process to deconstruct an image line by line by using a rotating disk with a spiral motif pierced in it. This was the beginning of mechanical television. Visionaries such as the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird perfected the mechanical system for transmitting images, and from 1929 onwards, regular broadcasts of television programs were available to the British public.The first mechanical television in Montreal was publicly presented in 1932.

However, the future of television would not be a mechanical one. The electronics industry, which had already played a key role in the invention of radio, would play a major role in the technical evolution of television. As early as 1907, the Russian Boris Rosing conceived a hybrid system in which the camera used a mechanical process to capture the shot and a cathode screen to reproduce the image. Was the next step to have fully electronic television?

Philo T. Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin share the credit for the invention of all-electronic television in the United States. Supported by Philco, during the 1930s Farnsworth developed a complete system of television which included over 50 patents. Zworykin, a Russian immigrant, invented the Iconoscope, a camera tube which electronically captures the image. It was David Sarnoff, another Russian immigrant, who financially backed this research in the name of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

During the 1939 New York World's Fair, RCA presented fully electronic television to the American public, coinciding with the debut of regular television broadcasts from NBC. The specific Phantom TRK-12 set which was used for this demonstration was constructed out of transparent Lucite in order to have the electronic components fully visible and reassure the public that no trickery was involved.

The breakout of the Second World War brought an end to the on-going development of television. However, the electronics explosion, due in large part to research on radar, led the way for post-war television. As soon as the war ended, television was launched in the US and re-introduced in England.

Canada took its first steps in this domain in the 1950s. During the next twenty years, television went from the status of a scientific marvel to an everyday household appliance.

The television set is now a part of everyone's daily life. Through its screen, we witness news events as they are happening; it lets us into the corridors of power; be a part of historic sports events, political debates and participate in those events in society which at another time were restricted to the very few.

Through the print media, we became accustomed to a compartmentalised existence, where each group led a relatively isolated existence: literature specifically for children, books related to women's issues, scholarly publications, academic texts on sociology, political science, etc. Television is essentially oral communication designed to allow full participation in the issues of today. Television has changed our world. In breaking down the discrete spaces of a text-based world, television has broken apart the distinctions of the old way of doing things, bringing about changes which have been identified with the 60s but which, in reality, are due to television becoming a fully developed medium.

A medium for everyone. One of inclusion, and of images as much as of words, television has transformed our world for the better. This is why Watching TV is an important exhibition, because it reminds us that television was first a technical experiment, then a cultural industry and finally a major catalyst for change.

At a point in time when society is once again experiencing profound change, it is both useful and important to reflect on the history of television. Its technical evolution and the social revolutions which TV played a large part in may help us to learn a few lessons and to further expand on our understanding of the continuing changes in new technology.

Watching TV is Moses Znaimer's collection, and it is unique. Unique because it has been brought together by an individual who is interested not only in the history of television programming but also in the history of the technology which gave us television. The history of the technical development of television is the history of the post-war electronics industry. Purchased at a point when it was brand new, the television set evolved so rapidly that the first sets were replaced by newer models with higher performance standards, which introduced colour, remote control and all the recent improvements in the industry.

Forgotten in a corner, these historic television sets happily caught the eye of Moses Znaimer who, in bringing them together as a collection in a focused museum, has without a doubt saved an important part of our history.