Webbie

I just saw the first Xmas advert on telly....

I am actually not looking forward to Xmas because of the crass commercialisation of it over here.
(First timers - if you though it was too commercial in the UK, you ain't seen nothing yet !)

This is not a thread starter to discuss Xmas, etc.
It is just a personal rant.

Mind out when you step over me.

Patrick

If it was the visa card one then its not really a christmas advert, it just uses the fact you can't fly at christmas with other peoples air miles but you can on theres. I really doubt you will see fully fledged christmas adverts until next month.

Patrick

tony_2003

It's nothing compared to Halloween, the whole place is turning orange and not many people know what it's all about...was talking to a young chap today about Halloween.

Lad "Do they celebrate Halloween in Scotland?"
me "eh yeah, it's a Celtic country"
Lad "huh?"
me "Halloween is thought to be a Celtic tradition that originated in Ireland, Scotland and probably Wales"
Lad "oh...I thought it was invented here in the states"

Patrick

Americans beleive everything was invented in the states! They almost have a heart attack when you tell them tv was invented by a Scot and lightbulbs by a geordie

Patrick

Jan Alaska

LOL Patrick ! We've been through the "but it was an American who invented the TV" thing recently.
I started work on t'farm early in the year and when we needed more help I suggested that my computer geek son would do so. He wer'nt too happy but he came along and worked, mainly on the odd jobs no-one else wanted to do, lots of moaning but his summers work did pay for a nice new PC. Anways he and one of the kiddie hicks (summer help) were given the job of painting the managers house, the kid did the whole "God bless America" we make all the best stuff blah blah blah .. and Shaun exploded !!! Gave the child a history lesson on where the first TV came from and several other basics ...
The child came to lunch and declared Shaun was full of sh*t hmmmyeahhh so I very politely explained that Shaun had been educated in Helensburgh, Scotland ... at the John Logie Baird School .... and that if he didnt know the history of the TV then there was no help for the rest of us !! Now you woulda thought the child would have shut up ... Ooooo nooooo he started on about how America invented the car and on and on .. by the time we were done he got to do afternoon chores at the stables and Shaun went back to painting !
*sigh* it seems you just cant educate some people !!!

Jan

tony_2003

You'd be amazed how many Americans have no idea who John Logie Baird is. Look on any American website about inventions and it will give you sketchy details about him. American schools will tell you the TV was invented by a guy called Philo Farnsworth...even though Logie Baird had a working prototype and had demonstrated it in a department store to the BBC years before the American guy.

Edit: Correction, he demonstrated the TV in his London lab in 1926 and later did the public demonstration...Philo Farnsworth demonstrated his version in 1929!

Pimpbot

They probably get confused on the TV thingy, because I believe it was a Russian living in the U.S. who evented the TV that is more closely linked to what we all have in our living rooms today.

Pimpbot

The Russian in question...

Zworykin, a Russian, developed a rudimentary electronic receiver using a cold cathode tube, and first received a picture in 1911 - four luminous horizontal bands. Zworykin was put into the Russian army as a radio specialist, and defected to Germany during the revolution. He eventually found himself in New York, working for Westinghouse. He left the company, and was hired back in 1923 when Westinghouse realized they wanted in on the TV market. Zworykin, by 1925, had developed an electronic method of scanning an image, which consisted of drops of photoelectric potassium hydride on a plate of aluminum foil, which was oxidized so that each drop of potassium hydride was insulated from each other. When exposed to a bright picture, individual pixels of potassium hydride would retain a charge, and thus a visual scene was transformed into an electronic one. Zworykin then devised a scanning electron beam, which would read the back of this screen line-by-line, and then could transmit the information to the cathode tube receiver he had invented 14 years before. The images were coarse, had a dismaying amount of flicker, and would fade in and out without reason. However they were there, and the first TV setup that resembled the ones we use now was emerging. He called his design the kinescope, and TV historian Albert Abramson claims "Zworykin's tube was the most important single technical advancement ever made in the history of television."

Manc

someone also needs to inform Bill Clinton that Manchester University students invented the first computer (with a memory of 1k) in the 60's.

Pimpbot

Why Bill Clinton

Manc

He made a speech once extolling the virtues of US achievements and he mentioned the invention of computers as one of them.

NC Penguin

Just curious why Christmas reminds you of your birthday. Is it 'cos it's on 25 December?

I'd be a bit worried too that you can't remember your own birthday!! :




NC Penguin

Webbie

Birthday is on Oct 28th and I always see the cards shops and the tv ads starting.
Even the shopping malls get in too early (in Oxford they put up the decorations Nov 1st)

Anyway I don't want to talk about it !
(And yes I realise the irony by starting a new discussion!)

Pimpbot

Paddock pools just down the road, put their Santa up two nights ago

I was forced into Robinsons May two weeks ago to buy discounted christmas decorations!! Madness I tells ya.

tony_2003

Yeah but that's not really TV is it? Still images? It's more like an elaborate version of Photography. Baird was the first to project moving pictures.