While the emergence of motion pictures and television is typically linked to the rise of commercial culture and mass entertainment, the extent of industry growth cannot be adequately explained without acknowleging the extensive benefits that came from technical standardization. Incorporated in July 1916, the Society for Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) sought to act as a professional forum for its members, and to publish technical findings "deemed worthy of permanent record." The impact of the society, however, extended far beyond the research reports published in SMPE's Journal and Transactions. With film pioneer Francis Jenkins installed as its charter president, the society took as its first task the development of a 35mm format--the standard upon which the the motion picture and telefilm industries were built. Subsequent SMPE interventions codified two-color cinematography (November 1918), three-color technicolor (August 1935), and optical sound recording technologies (September 1938, October 1930). Although the organization began as a professional association for technical specialists, its public actions worked as an antidote to the high-risk economic and methodological instabilities that accompanied the introduction of each new film/television technology.

Research interests in television predated by decades the formal addition of "Television" to the society's name in 1950 (SMPTE). Groundbreaking work was published on alternative delivery systems ("Radio Photographs, Radio Movies and Radio Vision" by C.F. Jenkins, May 1923), on vacuum tube imaging devices ("Iconoscopes and Kinescopes" by V.K.Zworykin, May 1937), and on RCA's field test of a comprehensive broadcasting system in New York (R.R.Beal, August 1937). While this pre-war flurry of engineering interest in television may suggest a proactive and determining influence, subsequent actions demonstrate just how provisional SMPE's recommendations were. For example, although the Journal published standards for CBS's new high-resolution color television system in April 1942, the subsequent combination of coercion and economic clout lead the government to opt for an inferior system in 1947. The FCC favored RCA/NBC's less developed alternative, thereby forcing engineers to impose color information onto the limited black-and-white bandwidth of NTSC--a system that had itself been hastily (and some would say prematurely) adopted in 1941. Or again, despite the open-ended, forward-thinking proposals put forth by Jenkins for theatrical television, pay per view, and set-licencing subsidies in 1923, the harsh regulatory realities of the FCC licensing freeze from 1948-52 effectively deferred development of alternative delivery technologies for decades. A three network oligopoly would dominate for almost thirty years as a result of the freeze; enabled by economic and regulatory collusion rather than engineering wisdom.

While such actions demonstrate the provisional nature of the society's recommendations--SMPTE is not a government regulatory body like the FCC, but an association of professionals representing a wide range of proprietary corporations--subsequent breakthroughs mark key points in the history of television technology. Standards for the eventual victor in the color television race (NTSC) were finally published in April 1953. Engineers from Ampex disseminated information on the first commercially successful videotape recorder in April 1957--an event that led to the precipitous death of the kinescope, initiated intense competition among VTR developers in the years that followed, and altered forever the way viewers see liveness (live-on-tape). Although American industry lagged behind foreign competitors in the race for viable "digital" video systems, SMPTE began to disseminate engineering standards for a spate of new digital television recording formats developed in Europe and Japan starting in December 1986.

The international battle over high-definition television (HDTV) demonstrates the strategic role a standardizing organization can take in the international arena. NHK in Japan had produced and begun marketing an HDTV system in the early 1980s--long before American corporations entered the fray with working prototypes. European corprations soon offered a competing system. U.S. broadcasters, however, resisted HDTV development given the tremendous costs involved in changing-over from current transmission systems. Eventually, however, SMPTE worked on and proposed a third HDTV system. Unlike the analog systems from NHK and Europe, SMPTE's late start allowed them to propose an all digital sytem. When the FCC started competitive trials between three American-centered consortia--and then cancelled the trial before rendering a verdict on the winner--the implications were clear. Government intervention meant that the U.S. would produce a single "consensus" HDTV system. The resulting "grand alliance" minimized the risk of losing an expensive R and D race, and affirmed SMPTE's all digital lead. The foreign trade journalists howled at the prospect of what many now considered--given America's late HDTV entry and government muscle--the odds-on international favorite. Engineering standards, then, can be political footballs used for economic leverage and technological nationalism. They also frequently provide a demilitarized zone for manufacturers; especially for those corporations that wait on the sidelines to apply the lessons of the proprietary risk-takers; that wait, in short, until the corporations that are first off the technological runway go down in flames. Japanese equipment manufacturers--Sony and Matsushita--stood on the sidelines and watched pioneers Ampex and RCA in the 1960s. Computerized video and HDTV now show that the process works in other directions as well.

Courtesy of SMPTE

SMPTE's future influence will depend upon how well it comes to grips with several substantive changes. It must respond to the technological "convergence" blurring boundaries between film and electronic media; it must continue to demonstrate the value of common technical ground within the proprietary world of mulitnational corporations; and it must engage a membership that increasingly lies outside of the confines of engineering. As studios are reduced to computerized desktops, and practitioners with technical backgrounds cross-over into creative capacities (and vice versa), technological discourses will become no less important or problematic. Given the inevitable capital-intensive nature of electronic media--and the public shift to paradigms of decentralization, entrepeneurial imperative, and market volatility--issues of standardization and technological "order" will be more crucial to the future of television than ever.

-John Thornton Caldwell

FURTHER READING

Boddy, William. Fifties Television. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Bordwell, David, Kristin Thompson and Janet Staiger. Classical Hollywood Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Gilder, George. Life After Television. (New York: Norton, 1992.

Milestones in Motion Picture and Television Technology. White Plains,New York: SMPTE, 1991.

Winston, Brian. Misunderstanding Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986.

See also Jenkins, Charles Francis; Standards; Television Technology; Zworykin, Vladimir