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An anonymous review shortlisted in Astral Codex Ten’s 2026 book review contest considers We Present Television, a 1940 collection about early American broadcasting. The review highlights how the book combines practical accounts of an experimental medium with predictions about television’s future, while stressing how little early programming survives.
Astral Codex Ten has published an anonymous finalist review of We Present Television, a collection of essays about early American television broadcasting first published in 1940. The review presents the book as a record of television while it was still an experimental technology, rather than the familiar household medium associated with later programs such as I Love Lucy.
The review is part of Astral Codex Ten’s 2026 book review contest. The site says the finalists’ authors will remain anonymous until voting is complete and that it plans to publish about one review a week for several months. Readers will be asked to vote for a favorite after they have read the entries. No voting date or contest winner is given in the supplied report.
The reviewer describes We Present Television as a collection of essays by people involved in the earliest American broadcast systems. Its contributors include engineers and other figures associated with television’s development, while the introduction is by Waldemar Kaempffert, then a science editor at The New York Times. The review says the book covers the technology and production process from multiple angles, mixing technical explanations with speculation about television’s social effects.
According to the reviewer, the collection’s account of television’s beginnings complicates the popular tendency to start the medium’s history with the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy. The review says experimental broadcasts predated that familiar era, but much early programming was not preserved. It compares the medium’s early artistic development to film in the 1900s and 1910s, when the technology and its forms were still changing rapidly.
Television Before the Familiar Era
The review matters as a reminder that television’s history began before its best-preserved programs. For many readers, early TV may be represented by shows that entered the archive and later popular memory. The account of We Present Television points to a less visible period: broadcasts made when sets were rare, the technology was developing, and programming was not routinely preserved.
That gap affects how the medium’s origins are understood. When early broadcasts cannot be watched today, a contemporary collection of essays can serve as evidence of how television was explained and imagined at the time. The book offers a record of both its technical workings and the expectations attached to it, though the review does not establish that its descriptions capture every broadcaster’s experience or audience response.
The review also draws attention to the difference between a technology’s engineering history and its cultural history. The collection appears to address the systems that made broadcasting possible as well as predictions about what television might become. Those predictions are historically revealing, but they should be read as contemporary opinions rather than proof that the future unfolded as their authors expected.
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An Experimental Medium in 1940
The review opens with the Empire State Building as a symbol of television’s arrival. It says the building carried an early NBC transmitter broadcasting audio and video signals in 1940. That detail places the collection in a period when television could reach a large urban area by radio transmission, even though receiving equipment remained unusual and costly. The reviewer characterizes ownership as an experimental luxury available to very few households.
In the introduction, Kaempffert offers a history of television that resists crediting a single inventor. As quoted in the review, he traces the technology’s roots to earlier forms of image transmission and argues that its development involved a long succession of experimenters and organized research. The reviewer notes that Kaempffert presents television as the product of accumulated work, rather than a single breakthrough attributable only to one person, such as inventor Philo Farnsworth.
The review’s film comparison helps explain why the book is unusual: it describes television before broadcast formats and preservation practices became familiar. Unlike surviving later shows, many early programs left little record that can be viewed now. The reviewer says the collection therefore offers a textual window onto a formative period, not a substitute for a complete archive of its broadcasts.
““The early facsimile telegraphers, cinematographers, phototelegraphers, and television empiricists all belonged to what may be called the laissez-faire school of invention.””
— Waldemar Kaempffert, quoted in the review’s account of his introduction
What the Early Record Leaves Out
The supplied report does not identify the review’s author, in keeping with the contest’s anonymity rule, or provide a voting schedule. It also does not give the full contents, publication history, or current availability of We Present Television. Details of the early broadcast system are presented through the review rather than independently documented in the supplied material.
The review says much early television was not preserved, but it does not quantify how many programs survive or identify specific archives. Its account therefore supports a broad point about the limits of the record, not a complete inventory of surviving broadcasts. Nor does the material establish how representative the essays are of all early broadcasters, television owners, or viewers.
Kaempffert’s statements about the development and future of television are historical claims and predictions from the period. The review quotes only part of one passage and does not provide the full introduction, so the wording and argument cannot be assessed beyond the excerpts supplied.
Contest Reviews and Reader Voting
Astral Codex Ten says it will continue publishing finalist reviews at a pace of about one per week for several months. Once all the reviews have appeared, the site plans to invite readers to vote for their favorite. The supplied announcement does not give a calendar date for the end of publication or voting.
Until voting is complete, the finalist’s identity is expected to remain undisclosed. The next clear development is the release of further reviews, followed by the contest vote; no winner or result has yet been reported in the source material.
Key Questions
What is the news about We Present Television?
An anonymous review of the 1940 essay collection We Present Television has been published as a finalist in Astral Codex Ten’s 2026 book review contest.
What does the collection cover?
As described in the review, it brings together essays by people involved in early American television and discusses the technology, broadcasting systems, and expectations surrounding the medium in 1940.
Why does the review focus on television before I Love Lucy?
The reviewer argues that popular memory often starts television history with later, familiar programs. The collection instead records a period when broadcasting was experimental and much programming was not preserved.
Who wrote the finalist review?
The author’s name has not been disclosed. Astral Codex Ten says finalist identities will remain anonymous until voting is finished.
When will readers vote?
The site says voting will follow publication of the finalist reviews, which it plans to post about once a week for several months. The supplied report does not specify a voting date.
Source: rss
