I have written a review on each covering why they are here. Most have not been updated for several years. Although I found worse pages due to lack of effort, or bad knowledge of english, I have tried to focus on pages that are run by those who claim to be "experts". These are the pages that are the most misleading and do the most damage. Those who do not read (or write) top-10 lists about the worst websites are doomed to repeat their mistakes.

Your last chance to go back to The 10 Best TV History websites.

1. TUBE: The Invention of Television
By: John Dilks, New Jersey Antique Radio Club (NJARC) editor

Moving all the way up to number one is this page from the New Jersey Antique Radio Club, (NJARC). Dilks raves, "[TUBE] is the best historical book to come out in a long time. I planned to (and still do) write 'A Radioman's Review of a Television Book.'" However, it seems Dilks never read the book, or wrote the review he promised. Tube was published in 1996, making this "news" 10-years-old!

Does any book deserve a decade of praise from someone oblivious to its content? Another is whether anyone at the NJARC ever read this book? Will this page still be there in another 10 years? Probably. Dilks does not answer his email at the address posted on the page.

What TUBE gained in advertising space, it lacks in background research. To a knowledgable reader, it often appears to have been written and researched hurriedly, and comes to misleading conclusions, some that appear to have been fabricated. There are simply too many outstanding errors for TUBE to be a dependable reference for historians. Errors have been carried through to paperback printings. This may seem strong, but the more knowledge you amass about TV History from other (better researched) sources, the more frustrated you will become with TUBE.

For a good review of TUBE, see A. David Wunsch's review from back in 1997.

2. History of Telecommunications
Fachhochschule für Technik Esslingen

It is claimed on their home page that "This is one of the most comprehensive summaries of the History of Telecommunications available on the Web". There are massive omissions and inaccuracies throughout each section. Accomplishments of German origin receive exceptionally strong emphasis to the exclusion of other countries'. Some of this is to be expected, but this site takes nationalism to a ridiculous level. It is really a shame, because the German contributions to television history are huge and require no embellishment to be impressive; the most notable being their intermediate film and cathode ray tube technologies.

The introductory page of the site explains how it ... er...'evolved', "It was created by a team of students of Communications Engineering at FHTE (Fachhochschule für Technik Esslingen, Germany) under the leadership of our lecturer in Technical English, Terry Wynne. We have collected all the information on the background of our studies and want to make it available to anyone who is interested in this field". I suppose it would take more than one person to mess things up this badly!

There is so much wrong with this page, there are too many errors for me to even attempt to make sense of it all in this small space, but then, this is what you should expect from the 'worst of the worst'. One example, is how it states the first commercial TV broadcasts were run by the BBC in 1936. Commercial? Do they know the first thing about the BBC?

Work on this site died at least 7 years ago (2001) and it has not been updated since.

3. The IEEE Virtual Museum (IEEEVM)
IEEE History Center / Rutgers University

Moving from 4. up to 3., IEEEVM was created by a group of students under the banner of the IEEE History Center and Rutgers University. They appear to have lost interest in it. The stated mission of the IEEE History Center was originally "to preserve, research and promote the history of information and electrical technologies". The idea of a "virtual museum" had come about during an IEEE Foundation Retreat back in 1998.

The main objectives were defined as:

* Increased awareness and education of the general public about electro-technology
* Recognition of the IEEE as a premier source of information on electro-technology
* An outreach program for the IEEE History Center

9 years later, despite the heavy institutional credentials and pleasing overall design, the low quality of research on the IEEEVM site is nothing to be proud of, particularly for a project that is meant to be university-level and simultaneously directly under the IEEE banner. I have read some mediocre published and on-line work from faculty based at the IEEE History Center, but it was not this bad!

The IEEEVM web page came from further down the tree of knowledge at Rutgers. It was compiled by over 30 Rutgers University students working under two or three managers/faculty who seem to have shirked their responsibilities as editors? If they did edit this, then that is even scarier. The result is a dazzling variety of historical, analytical, technical, and grammatical errors going straight to print.

This site is not only trying to tackle television's history, but is also trying to introduce visitors to virtually all of the areas of electrical engineering history. The overambitious jack-of-all-trades approach ultimately leads to being a master of none. See: Zworykin, Farnsworth, Baird, Mechanical Television, The Image Dissector, and The Iconoscope. It would have been more sensible to address a realistic fraction of the total subject matter, and introduce it properly, rather than to have undergraduate students hack through vast numbers of topics without adequate research or editing. As it stands, this website has been of limited usefulness because each page lacks depth, and has the distinct feel of a work in progress. An intermediate or advanced reader is left with little confidence in the facts or analysis provided.

Another problem is that this "virtual museum" has none of its own artifacts. How then does IEEEVM fit with the commonly accepted definition of a museum, virtual or otherwise? Is not IEEEVM more accurately described as a website created for the purpose of posting Rutgers history students' past projects, essays, course content, etc.? IEEEVM is virtual yes, but not a museum if we are being honest. Funnily enough, over on the IEEE History Center home page someone had agreed with me, their site used to have the following text: Kindly note that the History Center is not a Museum, further insisting We do not maintain artifacts and exhibits! We are solely a research facility! Apparently, the IEEE History Center and the IEEEVM did not see eye-to-eye on this back then. About a year after I pointed this out, the IEEE History Center removed the embarassing self-contradictory disclaimer.

The introductions and credits at IEEEVM misrepresent how crudely researched the content is on this site. "The IEEE Virtual Museum is the result of a true team effort. It is with our sincerest gratitude that we thank the following people and organizations for being a part of the team that built this educational resource that will help us reach out and educate our world about the importance of technology".

It is ironic they claimed they are "educating" us because their site is one of the last places to go on-line for correct information on most of the subjects that they tried to cover. Thanks but no thanks IEEE and Rutgers! This could have been a great site with proper supervision. Hopefully some members from IEEE will complain loudly enough so that the overall standards will be improved, but this site has been stagnant for years, and the feedback email on their website does not work.

4.Videouniversity: The Birth of Television
Hal Landen

Landen has contributed very little to the content himself, instead 'adapting' the worst bits of another page. The impression a reader is left with: Philo Farnsworth invented everything to do with television technology single-handedly, not to mention 'the coffee grinder'.

A straight line is not a picture, nor is it television; Landen seems to think it is.

Landen avoids confronting the true reason for the rejection of Farnsworth's camera in the Alexandra Palace television trials in London in 1935. Although Baird engineers were able to increase the resolution to 700 lines, Farnsworth's Image Dissector camera simply did not have sufficient light sensitvity to outperform the Emitron (Iconoscope) camera in the offical BBC trials at Alexandra Palace. Farnsworth's camera was therefore not used.

Sorry Hal, Farnsworth's patents were licensed only by the Baird Television company, not by the BBC. The BBC had no use for the Farnsworth camera, although they did keep the Baird camera for announcements. Landen's article implies twice that the BBC helped to keep Farnsworth afloat, and that's false. His article seems to go very far out of the way to avoid using the names of any television scientists other than Farnsworth or Zworykin, even when this comes at the expense of telling Farnsworth's story.

"In the summer of 1935, the first public demonstration of television took place at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia". Again, this is wrong. It was Farnsworth's first public television demonstration perhaps, but several broadcasters had been running regularly scheduled television broadcasts to thousands of receivers for several years by that time.

If he must call it a video university, he should try at least to do some of the scholarly research that universities are commonly known for instead of creating a bad clone of another not-much-better Farnsworth page.

5. Who is the inventor of television?
By Stephen Portz, Technology Teacher, Space Coast Middle School, FL

This page botches the question of 'who invented television'. The order in which Portz introduces the various technical discoveries is very disorganized. There is an overemphasis on Belin's facsimilie system for some reason. And Belin invented radar??? I can't find this claim anywhere else, can you?

Farnsworth's September 7, 1927 'pictures' were not pictures, these were simply a line, or a 'blob of light'. This early apparatus behaved more like an oscilloscope than a television. The images were certainly not the detailed moving television picture Portz indicates. A.A. Campbell-Swinton's earlier theories on electronic television, and the U.K. developments with the Emitron camera through the thirties are not mentioned. I would be surprised if Portz is aware of these developments.

Portz fails to address the January 26, 1926 demonstration which was the first demonstration of true television pictures in history, instead emphasizing Baird's March 25th Selfridge's demonstration which was a less significant event, (and strictly using silhouette images to drum up money for more equipment).

The article has a very limited reference list; all secondary, all on-line. Amazingly, half of the websites given as references appear elsewhere on this 'worst website list'.

The biggest flaw is how Portz 'politicizes' the history of television. TV history is not nearly as contentious as Portz (and others) would have you believe. Like most histories, TV history is a collection of heavily documented historical and scientific facts, and rarely is it a continuing debate. If Portz had studied properly for this article, the facts would hopefully have become clear to him and the story would have fallen into place, however he prefers to conceal the lack of homework by immediately hiding behind a veil of controversy .... so that he can get on to writing his next article.

Authors on www.physlink.com are rated according to the quantity of articles they produce, not the quality, so perhaps Physlink are as much to blame as Portz himself for this stinker. There are a growing number of sites similar to Physlink often giving rubbish answers to television history questions, such as about.com and answers.com.

6. Pagewise: Who invented the first television?
By: Pagewise, Inc.

This seems to be the second-poorest account of the invention of television and Farnsworth stories. Even with the extreme (and unjustified) focus solely on Farnsworth, it misses most of the major points in Farnsworth's life. The biggest error is where it alludes that the Farnsworth Image Dissector camera tube and the Westinghouse/RCA Iconoscope camera tube are identical technologies.

The biggest omission of this page is where it fails to mention Vladimir Zworykin's personal visit to Farnsworth's laboratory. This is an inexcusably key point to miss in the story, as that fateful visit had a massive effect.

And who is "Pagewise" ... what kind of name is that? The real author's name please.

Can anyone out there write a decent page about Farnsworth? Anyone?

7. It didn't happen overnight
Canada Science and Technology Museum

The funding to Canada's museums has been grossly cut back over recent years. 2006-2007 is no exception, with a 4.6 million dollar cut to the Museums Assistance Plan, and a federal heritage minister who has accomplished virtually nothing. The continuing neglect and cutbacks are leading Canadian museums towards a situation where they are increasingly unable to fulfill their mandates. Canada's National Museum of Science and Technology apparently suffers from this phenomenon. Problems are mostly there in 'It didn’t happen overnight', although there are similar difficulties in the later articles.

They claim television 'evolved over decades' which is too vague to be meaningful. Television simply did not exist in 1924, and by 1929 it was being broadcast regularly by the BBC in England. Is five years a decade? No. They should have written, television "as we know it today" evolved over decades.

They write "These television pioneers struck out in two different directions: mechanical and electronic". The fact is, virtually all television pioneers used both electro-mechanical and fully electronic techniques. Neither was to the exclusion of the other except in the case of Charles Francis Jenkins, who died in 1934. Had he lived longer he would have likely been using cathode-ray tubes sooner or later. This generalization doesn't hold, although several historians have made the same mistake.

Again they are a little presumptuous where they conclude, "Electronic would ultimately win", as the semi-mechanical DLP receivers are currently out-performing and out-selling similar cathode-ray sets in today's projection TV market. An increasing number of formerly cathode-ray television systems are being replaced by computer chips, etc. These chip-based and laser-based sets work more like the old mechanical system of light bulbs and commutators than anything of the CRT era.

These Canadians seem to be really into Nipkow. The article leads the reader to believe that Nipkow invented television. Although Nipkow did patent the scanning disk, he was never able to build a working model of his proposed apparatus. This page tries to make the reader believe that Nipkow built working television cameras and receivers, which he did not.

The page overlooks the beginning of regular TV broadcasting in the U.K. on 30 lines, which was late 1929, instead opting for 1932 which was actually when the BBC reluctantly took over the broadcasting role from Baird Television’s studio. It also omits the first public demonstrations of television and colour television.

Their web page cannot even get Canada's own TV history right. They do not describe the lens disk in the CTL receiver correctly, but instead describe a "perforated Nipkow disk". This receiver obviously has a lens disk, that is the only way it can back-project pictures onto the translucent glass screen. A conventional scanning disk could never pass enough light to create pictures on the TV in their collection. The picture shows it clearly, why can't they describe it correctly?

This page contradicts itself regarding the timing of the first TV signals broadcast in Canada. They write "In 1931 radio station CKAC in Montreal broadcast the very first TV signals to go on the air in Canada", but then a year later they make the same claim, "In July of that year [1932], with Leonard Spencer, Chief Engineer of CKAC, West produced Canada’s first live TV broadcast". Are we to believe that the 1931 was not live? Perhaps it was on intermediate film?? If this is true, then they should tell the reader to avoid confusion.

They need to clarify the existence and nature of these "twenty receiver sets" because it is well-documented in the literature that Alphonse Ouimet only built one prototype television receiver for CTL, then the company folded. Many mechanical sets were not compatible with each other, and therefore any other sets in the Montreal area may indeed have been sitting idle. 45 line receiver sets cannot receive 60 line broadcasts unless modifications are made, including substituting a different scanning disc.

Errors continue when the site gets into the electronic television history. Regularly scheduled American television broadcasting started in 1939, (not 1947 which was when broadcasting was re-initiated after WWII). Campbell-Swinton was Scottish, (not British). The most blatant error is where this site calls Marconi-EMI and RCA "competitors". This is like describing Chevrolet and General Motors (their parent company) as competitors. A Canadian myself, it is disgraceful that our national museum cannot get these basic historical facts straight.

8. The Farnsworth Chronicles
By Paul Schatzkin

Although Farnsworth worked with vacuum tubes, he did not work in a vacuum!

I admire Farnsworth's genius, perseverance, and his invention of the first all-electronic black-and-white television camera system. Farnsworth was not given the attention, funding and patent protection he deserved in the U.S., nor were his accomplishments properly recognized or celebrated after the fact. He was ahead of Zworykin and RCA at the beginning, but soon lost ground due to the millions of dollars (and pounds) invested by RCA in the United States, (and Marconi-EMI in Britain) towards the development of electronic television. This huge trans-atlantic cartel was gradually amassing all the key TV patents they could find, using teams of research scientists in the process, not to mention lawyers!

I admire Schatzkin's goal to get this lone inventor recognized, but his method is unethical and misleading. Schatzkin does not take the objective approach of a professional historian. His role on the web page lies somewhere between 'groupie' and 'super fan'. The Farnsworth Chronicles takes one inventor's biography and uses it as a means to tell the entire history of television as if nothing else was happening. Schatzkin's agenda is solely to promote Farnsworth, facts and context be damned. This tabloid reporting comes at a high price, sometimes it is at the expense of telling Farnsworth's own story accurately. Schatzkin includes facts very selectively, and important background or context is dismissed in a single paragraph and then strategically ignored. Farnsworth deserves a more professional on-line advocate than Schatzkin.

There is ample biographical content in the Farnsworth chronicles, making it relatively reliable for finding out something personal about Farnsworth, however the technical content on the site is limited (and for good reason, Schatzkin understands surprisingly little of television technology himself considering he has been interested in it since 1973). There are obviously some books that Schatzkin does not want to open that might contaminate his perfect vision of the classic struggle of a lone inventor. Therefore, a reading of his work requires more than a pinch of salt. One needs a heavy background in the subject matter prior to engrossing oneself in his articles, to avoid being misled by his conclusions.

The worst thing about The Farnsworth Chronicles is the continuing damage it does to the historical record. Those with no previous background in television's technical history can easily fall into Schatzkin's trap, believing they now have a comprehensive grasp of the entire history.

The recent crop of Farnsworth books are all unwitting victims of Schatzkin to various degrees, and even a PBS documentary "Big Dream Small Screen" was led astray. For those seeking a good place to start, the best book on Farnsworth continues to be "The story of television, the life of Philo T. Farnsworth", by George Everson. Everson was Farnsworth's business partner from the beginning.

9. The Televisionary: Big business and the myth of the lone inventor
By Malcolm Gladwell

This was actually published in The New Yorker. A self-righteous article with too much opinion and insufficient background in the subject matter to back it up. Aside from mis-spelling names he should know well, such as Kolomon Tihany (should be Kalman Tihanyi), François Henrouteau (Henroteau) Gladwell writes judging the past from the perspective of the present, the first rule of what not to do in historical analysis. Even with ample hindsight on hand, Gladwell nonetheless draws wrong conclusions. For example it claimed that "John Logie Baird and Charles Francis Jenkins" "had tried and failed to produce mechanical television".

Gladwell puts too much stock in currently available light source material, such as "Tube", by David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher, and the often inaccurate Evan I. Schwartz book on Farnsworth "Last Lone Inventor". These books are far from being a primary source of information, and have earned a poor reputation amongst historians due to errors, omissions and fictional embellishments.

Someone should tell Gladwell that the 'unworkable' metal discs found their way to the Apollo 11 capsule in 1969. I would think NASA scientists might know a little more about evaluating this technology than a critic for the New Yorker.

10. Television History: The Beginning of a New Medium
by: Beth Ann Wilt

Still here? Welcome to number 10. This, the "least worst" page is a 1998 term paper by a high school student. It has not been improved since then of course, otherwise it probably wouldn't be here.

Her "major primary sources consisted of papers and essays by David Sarnoff, proceedings from the National Television System Committee television standards and practices submission, and several newspaper articles from the 1930's". In other words, a limited amount of material was consulted. She does not take this into account in her approach whatsoever, and writes as if she has read everything ever written on television history, rather than just a few articles.

It is either tragic or amusing is how she mis-spells Farnsworth "Farnesworth", throughout the entire article though! How did this happen?

Unfortunately she scheduled an "email interview with Paul Schatzkin, author of The Farnesworth Chronicles". So we know where this is all heading now...

She wrote, "Some of my findings were conflicting". This should come as no surprise to her. When you have inaccurate source material, conflicting findings are to be expected. Unfortunately she never figured this out, and fails to verify, evaluate or prioritize her sources.

The article is extremely Amerocentric. She missed everything that happened in the development of television outside of the U.S., and all we got on the entire international scale was a little blurb. She didn't think to consider that there might have been some other countries that were also working on television.

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