16 April 2018

“It makes no sense!” versus history

There’s no channel 1 on televisions in North America.

It makes no sense.

That is, it makes no sense from the point of view of an engineer that had to design a channel system today, starting from scratch.

It makes sense from the point of view of a historian examining how broadcasting developed in North America.

Sometimes, discussions about academic systems of various sorts feel like people complaining mightily about how stupid it is that there is no channel 1, and proposing fix after fix after fix to correct it. And they do so in an environment where lots of people aren’t bothered by the lack of channel 1. And they do so even if the proposed fixes will mean some people’s televisions won’t work any more.

“Sure, but they’ll be better televisions!” Maybe, but it misses that a consistent channel numbering system is not what most people want out of a television.

1 comment:

practiCal fMRI said...

There's presently no First Fleet in the US Navy, either. (Or Second, Eight, or Ninth, but there is a Tenth Fleet.) Cuz history.