When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

There was also extensive crossover from the radio world into the television world. One could only see images from the other coast’s shows only if someone took a camera and recorded a screen broadcasting the show, which made them very low quality and sometimes shaky. A lot of early television shows could only be broadcast in one side of the country, so the studios in New York would broadcast for the East Coast and the Los Angeles studios for the West Coast. There’s some really interesting nuggets of knowledge scattered throughout the book. They had it tougher back then and they still made it. Television today still is very much a boy’s game in America, so to learn about these pioneering women is inspiring. It covers four equally remarkable women, some of whom were competing against each other for airtime, and the struggles that they faced trying to break into the industry.

If you haven’t caught on by now, this is a nonfiction book split into four parts. The first women to break into the television world were magnificent. It seems only fitting to come back and write this review. Learning about these women’s stories was quite inspiring, and as I sit to write this, Betty White, one of the women discussed in this book, recently has died. It would teach us, especially minorities and women, to realize that the world wasn’t as diverse and great as it is now, even though we still have major problems. I think most Americans should pick up books like these. And so I checked this little book out and devoured it in less than two days. I come from a background of knowing about the movie systems and the cinema world in the 1900s, but I knew that television was an entirely different ball game. You can look a lot about a country and its history by delving into what was on television and how it was reacted to.

I don’t watch much television, but as a historian person, I understand how important television is to American society. I randomly found this book in the new section of my library on a cold, rainy Saturday morning and was immediately intrigued.

When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong