CRAZE. Surprisingly, mechanical sets weren't all that hard to assemble. Many high school students went downstairs for the afternoon and slapped together the family television. The little, amateur TV market actually kept a tiny industry going. With so many unemployed people, hobbies like television building and entertainment became popular. Yet the craze couldn't last. Despite the interest, not everyone who enjoyed televised entertainment could build a set. The early television market saturated. Eventually the demand dried up. Small set manufacturers didn't earn enough capital to support stations, programmers and talent. At least, not for the long haul. Besides, manufacturers could sell radios, but again, few television sets sold.

THE INDUSTRY hung together for about six years. During that time, television's technical and programming aspects developed markedly. A few years later, electronic television benefited from mechanical television's lessons. By that time, the last mechanical TV stations had moved to the VHF band. For example, VHF station VE9AK in Montreal, QC and transmitted 180-line TV signals. William Peck's home receivers for this 1935 system included bright, sharp, ten-inch screens. Peck sets could project much larger images on the wall. French and German manufacturers also offered 180-line mechanical systems. Such elegant technology was a prototype for the electronic TV that soon followed.

RCA STRATEGY. Meanwhile, despite the Depression, RCA aggressively pursued worldwide television research and acquisition programs. RCA bought up cash-strapped competitors and shut them down. RCA also purchased the assets of bankrupt companies such as DeForest and Jenkins, including television patents.

ALLEGED LIMITATIONS. Make no mistake. What wrecked mechanical television was a pincer with many jaws. Again, here are three of the most important cutting edges: The Great Depression, trade restrictions and crushing competition from RCA . Neither low definition, nor low "entertainment value" had much to do with mechanical television's demise. By the late 1930s, mechanical receivers from Scophony and TeKade could produce large, 405-line pictures. So-called "entertainment value" is a meaningless and relative term. Certainly, early television couldn't compete with movies. Yet mechanical television provided pictures suitable for many tasks. Today's computer icons are low-resolution video. Still, these icons serve us just fine. Consider the millions of people who bought and played early video games despite low resolution. Watch any football game on today's TV. You'll enjoy low-definition long shots of players.

COLOR RESOLUTION. Speaking of color sports coverage brings up another fact: The horizontal definition of today's analog television is only about 40 lines. In the 1930s, some mechanical TV systems had considerably better horizontal resolution.