Brain Soda Podcast - Episode 32 - Hulkamania: In Technicolor Brother!

Episode Date: September 9, 2023

Join us this week as we discuss one of wrestling's most well known stars, Hulk Hogan, and a brief but interesting history of televisions

Brainsoda Meanwhile, in the halls of justice, it's the Brain Soda Podcast. I, as always, am your host Kyle, joined by my co-host and cohort, Brad. How's it going? Today, we're going to be talking about television, but first, Brad. Yes. When you brought up your topic for this week, I really kind of scrambled to figure out what I was going to do to tie it in.

And, you know, Hanson came to mind and maybe one day we'll go back and look to like the advent of Sesame Street more deeply or something like that. Yeah, for sure. But the one person who I had kind of listed out as someone I wanted to talk about at some point was Hulk Hogan, brother. Just brother. And the reason being is that from the earliest advent of domestic television, broadcast television, different television stations look

to their local wrestling promotions, because this is well before There was anything but territories which we've discussed many times in wrestling. So for a television station Your cameras you live feeds occasionally and things like that. It's a very very low production cost with a pretty high yield, right? So, like, you need like what, a stage and some lights pretty much. There is some of the most well-known professional wrestling from the late 70s, early 80s that is called. And there's companies that model themselves off this now, air quotes studio wrestling.

And that is because they would take the floor space of a small studio in that say Georgia. And the cameras would be in their way. It's set up a ring. They'd let in a few hundred fans and tape television there. Every day. It's crazy. Like a talk show, like talk show size studio. I would say I would say the modern

like if you're thinking about like Jerry and Oprah and Geraldo and like all of those TV talk shows that really broke out in the mid 80s, those sets are probably a third bigger. I would really. I could be wrong. I think so. That's crazy because Because there's that big kind of like arena setting. Well, I mean, I guess it's like, yeah. Because like, well, we went to Ring of Honor, you know, like, right, it was a big area, but we did not need, it didn't need much space. It was like, honestly, like, it was small.

Yeah, it made it look big though. I listened to a podcast that one of the people there was actually working for Ring of Honor and they were talking about being in the office, renting that building, and then getting there and being like, this is like double the size of what we need. And to be honest, when you think about it,

we were only around the curtain for 90% of that show. That is what they did. They cordoned off what they needed and worked with. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like was a huge event center place, I would say, right? That's exactly what it was. So from that, all those territory systems and everything else brought in now, and as television brought in now, into a cable-sindicated national service area, so did Vince McMahon, and the man who's back you could argue he did it on, or the very least the vessel in which that was carried out to countless children and a litany of

wrestling fans was Hulk Hogan. Now the problem is Hulk Hogan is a problem. So today I am going to cover what I call the ultimate lies of Hulk Hogan. Okay. We're gonna start. Hogan actually ironically enough had had a couple runs in other places. He had been in the AWA, he had been in Memphis at different points. He had actually been in the WWF previous to his big as the Hulkster, the big predominant May event. And that ironically enough really does seem to be where the ego or the persona, either overshadows or overlaps the reality of the situation. We're going to pipe in little bits and pieces here and there, but ultimately, when we talked about Kanye, I feel like the ego and the drive sometimes mesh into this really

problematic thing and we're gonna talk a little bit about how bad of a politician. Hulk Hogan was backstage and like unfortunately some politicians yeah my man would bust up Union. Well because he is he really is a politician. Well that's the thing like he really Hulk Hogan to me. I mean he was a great wrestler. Don't get me wrong and at like I don't follow wrestling nearly as closely as you did or have or do. But he was more of like the face of WWF.

You know, he wasn't like, Rick Flair was like the person that went around and like actually did a lot of the wrestling. That was like the big, you know, the draw. You know, he was like, yeah. And whereas Hogan was more like, you know, he was the, the wonder boy. The unseen of the stone cold, the rock or whatever of it.

Sure. Exactly. Yeah, he was the star, sure. Right, and to be fair, I feel like that is the prototype that any and all of those guys were then modeled around going forward, the flagship. So in 1984, Hogan comes back to the WWF. The WWF at this time is not the WWE. It is at this time a company that had been ran for generations by the

McMahons, originally producing boxing events in the Old Madison Square Garden that eventually more and more so became a wrestling promotion. And by the time that Vincent Kennedy, McMahon, man in charge now, in the late 70s is getting his foot deep, deep into his father's company before he buys it, is only producing wrestling. is only producing wrestling and his territory of the Northeast is I would say kind of far and away one of the biggest in the country right because it's so when the 80s like there was like other bigger ones like then that I mean I know that then like the 70s and all that yeah like in the 70s and all that but like when TV came around, that was really... Yeah, even then, even then. Okay. Because like here, here we would have had like big time, which is the sheeks, but like that was super small, but we definitely would have been in the broadcast range of the AWA,

the company that Hogan was a part of before he went to Vince full time. And that was Minnesota guys. That was Verne Gania and it was aired on ESPN. You know what I mean? Like it was a big deal. You had Dallas, which like that just as a geographical area covering a large part of Texas, Oklahoma and things like that. And then also, Croquet, you had Georgia pretty much all the way to the seaboard up as far as parts of Kentucky

or something like that probably. And then, or at least to the Mississippi River. So, okay, so even in the 80s, that was still going all right. I thought like the 80s. Yeah, just as a frame of reference for where wrestling is as an industry is there. Now we're going to talk about Hulk Hogan the guy. This guy had been garnering a fan base everywhere that the guy went as he developed and grew as a professional wrestler. If for those of you who may not know who Hulk Hogan is somehow, he is literally for a generation of people or more. The name most synonymous with professional. At that time, I would say maybe the rock or John Cena would be now. Yeah, I would

agree with that as well, but like the rock hasn't really wrestled a match in like, well, that's not true. He came back for for two. Yeah, for a's very true yeah like okay John Cena I guess for for people kind of growing up in the zeitgeist now it would be John Cena but again like we were saying at the top he I mean I would say Hulk Hogan is what made you there would be no John Cena if there was no Hulk exactly Hulk Hogan is what made wrestling what What did this today? The icon of professional wrestling. But yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like we were talking about with Kanye, the ego and the drive, I feel like start to coalesce and become one thing that sometimes can be a bit of a monster. So about the time that Hogan is about to start this big 1984 run as the world champion and

thus the face of that company and then the industry overall him and Jesse Ventura apparently are good good friends and Jesse kind of starts barking about a union between all the boys. Yes now I, I will say this, if you're a guy like Hulk Hogan, and they're about to put the rocket on your back, and your big payoffs now might be quartered or thirded, or whatever it may be in your head. Maybe he's totally just out in space not realizing it, but to be the biggest draw. And then well, exactly.

If you're the biggest draw, like a union, exactly. A union is not, yeah. But I feel like the thing is, is it is so contradictory to have an industry that is all about brotherhood and everything else protecting your opponent and things like this and that. And then be like, I know Union going down on that watch. So later, well, hasn't the like the pay has always been kind of cut through it though.

Like yes, it is all about, you know, the in the state or in the cage, just one thing or in the ring, sorry. But we're going to talk about it from the perspective of like, how much should someone get paid as the overwhelming reason is to why people would even purchase a ticket in the first place. Then like, yeah, pays always been cutthroat. But like, see, but not like now they get paid good though. And they actually got paid good before this time. Like, when wrestling was still going on,

but a good, a good thing now, or a similar thing, not a good thing, sorry, would be MMA and like the UFC, like they're getting paid really terribly. That's one thing about Hulk Hogan that I learned about that just makes me really not like the guy because of that But I don't you know, I understand his position I understand why he would do something like that if he was like, you know the top guy

however Yeah, that really that's give him and that's what in the context to that He stooge this off to Vince and he did it against not only the whole crowd of performers that have to go underneath and around him, and sometimes with him, but he also did it to one of his good, good friends who would have been like, likely the steward of it for WWE or whatever else. Jesse Ventura never learned about this until him and Vince McMahon were in a lawsuit, and he looks at his lawyer and he goes, find out who told him about that union. And Vince, on the stand, pretty much just in open deposition or whatever is like,

oh, Hogan told me. And Jesse, like, no, a hogan told me. And Jesse like, no. Just out of the blue man. Well, he like no sold it. And he's like, that was my friend. You know what I mean? Like in the interviews I watch with Jesse Ventura about that specific incident, he goes, I was floored. He goes that, that was a good friend of mine.

And to learn that. And I've seen Hogey, like brush it off. And I was like, oh yeah, Jesse Ventura doesn't like me like oh yeah of course yes I'm like you're right yeah you you kind of betrayed a whole industry and performer at least a whole company of performers for a personal gain and arguably at that point who knows well this would be like if honestly countermer Gregor probably would have done the same thing I'm saying countermer Gregor it'd be like if honestly Conor McGregor probably would have done the same thing. Right. I'm saying Conor McGregor, it'd be like if that happened with like, I don't know.

George St. Pierre, I can see like George St. Pierre or something like that. Come on to him, Conor McGregor, but hey, you need to do this. And then he's like, oh no, I'm going to go run a Dana. Yeah. And Dana White's type piece of shit would stomp out of you, you two. Oh, I'm sure already has many times probably. So I feel like that is our first strike as to like who Terry Baleia is as well as Hokogen. But who is Terry Baleia?

That is Hokogen, that is the real name of the story. Oh, okay. Sorry. For me, it is kind of a pin prick to come through the dark of what we really see this person as going forward. And now looking into this career, like kind of as a whole, it really shows in this early stage I'm doing something like that. But we're gonna move on from that. And we're gonna talk about like the kind of heights that he gets to in short order,

because about like 85, 86 Hogan's coming off WrestleMania two. And apparently he party with John Belushi, like right after, right? Except John Belushi was dead by like two years. Okay. Was it like a weekend at Bernie's thing then or something? No, no, Hogan is a liar. And then that's really what it is. Okay, so was it like a weekend at Bernie's thing then or something? No, no, no,'s like he's made his life into a wrestling story almost. Like exactly, because the whole thing, yeah, exactly.

What is that called, K-Fabe? Yeah. So it's like, okay, well essentially, K-Fabe is real to him, essentially. You know, he's made his whole life his K-Fabe. So at one point, Hogan appears on this television show, he's there on this television show. He's there on stage, or Mr. T. and Richard Belzer.

And like, Belzer had kind of made some sort of equipped towards Hogan and actually kind of like insulted the business in like Hogan's mind, I guess. And he puts Belzer in a legit sleeper hold. And then just like flops him on the stage and apparently like knocked him out yeah and apparently Belzer up until his passing some pretty sure the guys dead now wore tinted lenses like almost everywhere he

went because he was like concuss cuss after that. Man. So like, he legit like, right, like kind of messed up this dude. But from there, we're gonna move forward again. And at this point, we're gonna go past kind of the early stages of Hulkomania. And we're gonna get into the point where Hulk had been on top for a long,

long period of time. He had actually gained and lost that championship a couple of times like his lost to warrior and things like that. But at this point, he's like kind of out the door with WWF. He's had like the better part of a 10 year run and he's going to try to get into acting, which ends up manifesting itself as thunder and paradise. But before he does that, he shows back up at WrestleMania 9 in a match between Brett Hart and Yoko Zunu who he wouldn't put over. He would not lose to Brett Hart and help make a star, which again, I think really really shows

the problem within Hulk Hogan. But I think it's so funny to see how this guy shows up, Brett Hart like, yeah, go get him, go get him. He goes and beats Yoko Zuna. And like he's posing with the belt and everything else. And apparently there were many or many fans within that crowd that weren't all that excited about it. But if you notice, he's got a black eye. Well, because he's probably good old there.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. He's got a black eye during that. But like he hadn't been wrestling on television and things like that. Now, there's been kind of conjecture between two different stories with that. Some people maintain that it was like a jet ski accident and like, Hulk just came out with a lot of fun. Sure, sure, jet skate. Yeah, really. Right. Or what many people possibly believe is that the macho man Randy Savage took a swipe at him because of some sort of jab or a spursion to a thing with Miss Elizabeth.

I'm trying to make a move on. Who's Miss Elizabeth? That was Randy Savage, IRL wife at one point. And then like they were no longer together and it's a whole thing, but like either way, there are two different stories that go on between this and Randy Savage's jealousy and, you know, maybe overprotectiveness of misalysibeth. As a character, as a real life thing are things you could talk about and have a good point to make either way, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. His, like, the thing is that he's like involved with so much of wrestling from like the eight, from like 1980 onwards till now. Like, he's still, I mean, I guess now he's like just involved.

So show up on WWE TV. One of the things that I feel really ironic about this situation, even short of the mysterious case of the black eye, is Hulgan, a couple years after this incident, will talk about in a song called Hulkster in Heaven, or maybe it's Hulgan Maniac in Heaven regardless. He puts out now him called Hulk Rules with the Wrestling Boot Band, and in there there's a song in which he's talking about a Make-A-Wish kid that he sees out in the front row while he's wrestling at Wimbley Stadium. Except Hulk Hogan wasn't on that show, he wasn't in the main event and the guy who was in the main event is the guy he wouldn't put over Brad Hart. That I feel is like yes Hulk Hogan made very many Make-a-wish wishes and that is an

Adderable amazing thing that someone in that position can do. Yeah, but tell I about it on record is absolutely terrible Exactly and especially when you're in that lie taking the place of a guy who you actively Melinda held down is even worse. You know what I mean? Like, just lame, not cool, zero points for real. But another thing I find is that like, again, moving on forward from that, Hogan doesn't just stop there. Isn't content with several different movie roles, which ironically enough, like two of the worst films

he's ever been in, Santa with muscles and Mr. Nanny, he says he re-wrote the scripts and- I only remember him at a amusement park, that's the three ninjas sequel he did but- The three ninjas man, three ninjas yes okay. But he said he re-wrote those scripts and then his writing credit was stolen by the writers of America, which like, of course, yes. They probably didn't give you credit because you probably didn't do it. Exactly. Like, I could only imagine what suburban commando would be like if Hulk Hogan wrote it. Yeah, I got to go and match it again.

Right. There's a writer's, you just, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so you get. So, so idiots can't walk in the building and be like, I wrote this, I sent all the words on screen, I wrote it. Exactly. You know, but I want to kind of tie this into a later situation where like we were talking about with Giving Brett Hart the opportunity at this point, there's another guy who's kind of always been the workhorse for the competition who Hogan has now walked into has became the centerpiece of and that would be WCW. So we're going to star K-97 and this really is a good tie in for everything because at this point Hogan has been the head of the NWO for a long time and he's finally gonna get his come-up ins.

Sting is in the ring versus him in a match. Nick Patrick is this kind of embroiled referee who may have had NWO allegiances still. And the day of Nick Patrick, a long time veteran referee of the business, is told by three different people, three different things. He's told by three different people, three different things. He's told by his boss Eric Bischoff, just go in there and give it a regular count. Hogan tells him to come and with a slope. Sting, the guy who's made the most money underneath Hogan throughout like the entirety of wrestling paydays during this era that we're talking about.

Yeah, he was like the undertaker before the undertaker, to me. But originally he was surfers sting, and I would say kind of model surfers. The wait, was he like a blonde, spiky top haircut, he had face paint that was always multi-glued. Really? I grew up with, bro. That's great, that's great.

At this point, this is crow sting, right? Like he looks exactly as if he were the crow. But anyway, so the intention of the match, and you can tell literally because everything breaks down, the way that this is supposed to work is that Nick Patrick is supposed to come in with a fast count as if he's faster than it would come normally. And that doesn't happen,

ironically enough coming off the Montreal screwdriver, which was a thing to take the belt off Brett versus his rivalry with Sean Michaels. Brett Hart comes down to the ring, ironically enough. He beats up Nick Patrick and makes the count for the match itself, but like Just knowing that like this is going to be the angle that Maybe not wraps up the NWL

But puts Hogan in this place and makes things go the way that they're kind of supposed to go narratively Yeah, it's marred with all of this polyticking and You know, well, I'm the bigger than Wife Star here. He's like, he still does not want to like, like go being the top star. Like, he really does it. Like, I can just see it when I hear him

like an interview and stuff like that. It's, yeah. Over the years, man, I don't know if Hulk Hogan, he probably was on black and white at some point. Maybe like, like, some people probably definitely still have black and white when he first up here. Right. And like, going through television, you know,

which is kind of what I'm going to talk about today. It's like, you picked a good subject for that because like, he has kind of went from, you know, the basics of like, black and white TV more than likely to some, for some people, to color, to, you know, HDTV and now some people to color, to, you know, HDTV and now modern streaming and everything. Like, you know, now he's like, yeah,

and now he's like, you watch all this old stuff on streaming services and stuff like that. But so yeah, so to bring it out into the basics, like Kyle, when I say television, what do you think of? I would say I usually probably think of like, domestic broadcast television, right, terrestrial television. What do you think of? I would say I usually probably think of like domestic broadcast television, right, terrestrial television, but mainly I would say a cathode ray tube TV. It's what we grew up with. It's what predates the digital televisions of today. And I mean, I feel like it's still synonymous with

television. It really is. Like, I mean, you know the thing is, is that like, I didn't do too much on digital television. I didn't do too much research on it because like, it's kind of like everything. It's a pretty modern event. Exactly. It is a modern event and like, it really revolutionized TV like really,

like it's what brought all the streaming services and all that to bring it down to a simplest form. Television is a type of media that goes through an electronic that shows moving images and sound from a receiver. If you break it down to a simplest thing, that's what a TV is. It was developed in the early 20th century. It replaced radio as the dominant form of media consumption. And, you know, like, what is it? Video killed the radio star, right? Yeah, yeah, but you did kill the radio star.

It really did, because like, it really brought to life, though, like a whole new way of communicating and sharing information and spreading ideas and everything. Like, it's not just like, it's not a way of consuming media. It brings life to you. You know, like, we haven't had a way of doing that until TV. You know, like, yes, there was film and stuff like that.

And I mean, I guess that came in like the same kind of the same time. But like, to have like a TV in your house is just crazy. Well, see, and I feel like one of the things when I was in college for broadcast and stuff like that, there always was this story that stuck with me where in the early, early advent of film, at one point they showed a theater full of people, a film reel of a train barreling towards a camera. And people believed it so much that they evacuated the feed, like, fleed and fear of this train that was imaged by film.

Yeah. And I feel like World War II and all these different things, like kind of coalesce in a time frame where you're paying to go see Bugs Bunny shorts and steamboat willy and things like that and like films its own thing. Exactly. And we get to domestic television, black and white TV's, the honeymooners and things like that. Like watching a family live their life even if it's a totally scripted narrative is

something that someone who has a real-life family sitting there watching it with them every night like coitates with it almost. You know what I mean? Like, you know, the screen is doing what I'm doing too, almost, you know. Exactly. That is one thing, like when TV first came out, there was like, you know, most of the media at that time, like newspapers and stuff,

like, ah, this isn't gonna be nothing. This is just, you know, some gimmick. Classic fat. Exactly. This isn't gonna be anything cool. Like, just, you know, some gimmick. Exactly. This isn't going to be anything cool. Like, put it like just completely transformed human society. Like completely transformed it. It's true. Yeah. To bring it back to like the beginning, right? Like, it wasn't until the 1800s until we started being able to actually like document real life things with like photography and stuff like that.

Right? Yeah. That was when like photography was invented. And with that, like, videography kind of was invented in the same realm, but like about a hundred years later, like in the early 1900s, it was when actual, you know, videos were able to... Much like film for cameras it had to develop into being videography instead of just photography, right? Exactly exactly, but it was actually like I mean at least electronic delivery was Figured out way back in 1872 by an English telegraph worker named Joseph May when he discovered that a Selenium wire Like a Selenium is a type of metal. Okay, okay.

A selenium wire, like it would vary in its electrical kind of activity based on like how much sunlight it received. And that's kind of like how all modern TVs are, function, like if you think about like how you capture an image, there's a picture, which is just light coming into, you know, a receiver. And then that's converting that to electrical signals. Like, so like, that

was like way back in 1872 was when that was first discovered. Wow. Yeah. In 1880, a French engineer named Maurice Leblanc published a research paper that showed like, like a scanning mechanism that was able to like essentially take a picture, you know, with electrical. You know, it would scan it and like a photoelectric cell would record a picture by like scanning it from like top to bottom, left to right, you know, like a top down. But like he wasn't able to make that, you know, it was just like theoretical at that point. Right, right. Yeah. But that's like how early TV work though. Like, you know, most are kind of even now. Like I think if not mistaken, like modern TVs still like tops

it down left to right. That's how like they receive images. Yeah, I mean, that would make sense still. I mean, but like that's just how it reads data and everything. But like so still 1800s, right? 1885, a German engineer named Paul Nipkow, made a machine that involved like the spinning disc with like a bunch of slits in it. And when it rotated, he was able to make like a moving image. And I didn't look this up, but it might be the one with the horse, because I've seen this like a million times.

Like there's this like this horse that like jumps, you know. And I think that might be what it was but that was in 1885 so that's like that's like a video you know that's really what you need right a bunch of pictures of movement that's what of yeah sequential art right exactly and like one revolution would be like a scan of it you know so that concept though was eventually used this spinning know, like a bunch of pictures and everything was used by Charles Francis Jenkins in the US and also John Logie Baird, I think his name is from the UK, to make the first TVs. Okay.

One thing I just want to point out, I did a little bit of my research like with the Encyclopedia Britannica, right? And yeah, I just like it. I like it the way they write and everything. And it's in the encyclopedia. I'm always like the encyclopedia. But they just kept putting it like,

all this happened in the US, but in the UK and stuff, we did this thing too, right around the same time. It was a wrap, yeah. But it's so like, because there was like, who invented the verse TV It you know like it all depends on what the definition of is is right all right with the definition of TV is And the zeitgeist for a lot of that stuff within those fields is probably so similar because like People went to America and you know what I mean like

like people would come to America and you know what I mean like coverse or correspond with each other over the channel. Yep that exact thing happened but yeah for sure like in the future like that that exact thing happened and led to like a bunch of lawsuits and everything. Yeah absolutely. Yeah so like in 1922 though Jenkins he successfully sent a still picture by radio waves to a receiver So like he was the first person to like essentially make a TV with a broadcast, right? He was the first person to like do a live motion thing because like there was already video like you yeah live picture correspondence Yeah exactly like there's a big difference between video versus receiving a broadcast at home, or even anywhere, wherever. Receiving a broadcast, a video broadcast.

And he was the first person to do that. Baird at 1925 made a human face. But it was still a gimmick. This wasn't something that even basic broadcasting, they weren't even able to like, you know, send like, you know, a video of something, you know, it was just like a recorded thing that they were gonna send out one time. Yeah, and it probably took heaven and earth to get across, yeah. Yeah, but like, I guess like they can't continue developing it though. Like, obviously, like

this is like, we need to like people, people like, obviously saw like, this is, this is like, we need to, like people, like obviously saw, like this is really big, we need to be able to do this. So formative blocks, yeah, I need to be expanded upon absolutely. Yes, and like, so like by 1927, a company known as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, you might know them as AT&T. Yeah, they give a public demonstration of this technology.

And in 1928, and GE, also General Electric, began to sell like little kits to like pick up simple motion pictures and stuff like that. So like, yeah, so this is the 1920s, you know, like the Roran 20s. Like, it's crazy to think that like TVs were around at that time. You don't really think of that, like, and this is again, this is like these spinning discs, right, with slits. This is in the cathode ray tubes, like you were talking about somehow,

they're able to pick up, like, it's just crazy to me to think about this. Like, they're like picking up a radio signal, which it was able to transmit the light. Like, I guess a flashlight or something is going through it or something? I don't know. I didn't look it up enough because there's like, a lot of history the light. Like I guess a flashlight or something is going through it or something? I don't know.

I didn't look it up enough because there's like a lot of history to it, you know, so I do like, yeah. Oh, I'm sure. And to be fair, you know, you would probably take the length of your segment to explain just the simple inner workings of that product. Exactly. It's crazy.

Yeah. And like, you know, so it kept going, right? You know, like so in 1928, Jenkins started selling the kits too. Right. He invented it, but he didn't have a kit yet. Back in 1922. And then in 1929, BBC started selling kits through Baird. TV's like, man, they were taking, I was like, there was a boom in sales, right? Like, the bunch of people were buying it. But they were really like, it was 30 lines of picture. A bunch of people were buying it. They were really like, it was 30 lines of picture and that came in 12 times per second

and it caused it to flicker a bunch of times. And it was like basic things, but it was just a novelty. Like imagine having that. Like, it almost be like, it's like the VR. That's what like today's, it's like modern day VR. That's kind of like what it would be like to have this TV. But while I got this TV, you know,

come check out this cool technology and screw around with it like oh look There's like a fire. Oh horse this horse is jumping around. Yeah horse is jumping. Exactly. So like yeah Like thing does that like that was like what they showed it wasn't like again. It's not like news Like they didn't know what to do it like Jenkins I think did do like some cartoons and stuff like that though, you know know so like it wasn't like it was the analog nature of it though that really like kind of you can't really get past that like you can't do like so the idea of cathode retops was initially theorized by the Scottish electrical engineer by the name of AA Campbell-Switten. And he thought that it could be employed by these two beams of cathode rays, which are actually like electrons in a vacuum tube.

So like these electrons are like hitting this glass screen that has these phosphorescent material. And it lights up. So as the electrons hit the glass it makes an image okay so like these phosphorescent material which it changes but because these electrons move at the like essentially at the speed of light like it eliminates the flicker of the spinning disc that we would see in the old ones right exactly he He never actually made a working model. Again, with some of the earlier stuff,

they theorize it, they can show that it works, but to actually make that, to mass produce it is really hard. Right, I was going to say, yeah, to make one let alone a litany of them for sale and distribution is two completely different things, both of which are kind of out of reach of like a simple electrical engineer. Exactly. Yeah. In Russia, there was this guy named Boris Rosing that tried to make one,

and he did like successfully make a cathode ray tube. But he was enabled, again, it was like very unstable and everything. It wasn't something that he could actually like mass produce or even like commercialize it all. Right, let me ask you a question. If let's just say theoretically outside of the vacuum tube, you were shot with a cathode ray. What happens to you? Nothing, right?

You just hit with light. Yeah, okay. I think it's just charged particles. So like, it's just Iod's. Like, that itself wouldn't be bad. Right. It's the actual phosphorescent material. Yeah, if you were to breathe in the contents of a whole year. Exactly.

I don't know why I didn't look that up. Because yeah, like exactly. But that was something when we were kids, you know, they're like, oh, you know, don't open up TVs because that's the cathode ray tube. Yeah. Yeah, because like, like, we don't have that now. It's all digital.

You know, it's all LEDs and everything. But cathode rays lasted a long time. Yeah, they did. So anyways, the Russian scientist, they actually made a cathode rate. A student of his named Vladimir Zirikin later filed the patent in America in 1923. So this is kind of early though, but he filed the patent

exactly for an electronic TV system, but it didn't really work out. Like he didn't develop a commercial thing. He worked out and worked on it until 1931. And by then he met this guy named Phil Farnsworth. They actually worked with RCA and he kind of took a couple things, stole a couple of ideas from him. And so like there was like a big lawsuit and everything against the tube. Or like this happened like throughout the years, like for decades they had a lawsuit.

Like RCA and this guy, yeah. But eventually Farron's worth won the lawsuit. And he was able to take the majority credit for creating modern television, you know, like modern broadcasting, like where it actually is sent through radio waves and whatnot. But standards for it really weren't made until the 1950s. Actually in 1951, standards were set for how much, you know, like the radio waves and everything, like how the picture would be set.

It was set to 30 frames per second and 525 lines per picture. So like it's different in Europe and everything like that, but like that's what the USM. Now that's because of the FCC as well, right? Because it controls broadcast bands. Yeah, I don't know if it was called the FCC at the time, but yeah, definitely the FCC,

like early in the precursor or whatever to it. But color TV though was like, like that didn't come about until the 60s, but like it was thought of way back from the beginning, you know, like they didn't, like monochrome was just the easiest way to get pictures out, you know, like color was harder. And the way they initially developed it was like through different slits. Again, with these wheels, they would have like a red, a green, and a blue filter. Your primary colors, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They would arrange it different ways to be able to produce colors. But it was way out of its time, right? Like, they weren't able to produce like, again, a moving picture.

It's like hundreds or thousands of pictures at a second, you know? Or I guess, like, I guess, nine or a hundred. But dozens. It's still a lot. You know, it's a lot of pictures a second. Brains. Yeah. RCA wanted to keep like this filter thing like in the earlier, like, they's still a lot. You know, it's a lot of pictures of seconds. Brains. Yeah. RCA wanted to keep like this filter thing like in the earlier, like they were too adapted. But only like a couple dozen, I don't like the millions of TVs used it.

And they're like, you know, they're trying to push this like, this antiquated thing. But it eventually was the Columbia broadcast system, which is CBS, that was able to produce good color images. And they were able to use three cathode retubes, one green, one red, one blue, and then shot it at these, a triangle of pixels.

Right, all angled together into the screen. Yeah, and we're able to vary that. And that's kind of how color TV came. So like you had your pixels, right? What people call pixels nowadays. Or like, you know, it was the three. If you look at the old cathode ray, like TVs, you'd have the three colors, right?

You would see the triangle of the three colors. The first RCA TV though, that one that like really didn't produce much came off in like 1954. So that was early, but it cost like $1,000. It was 12-inch screen, like $1,000 at the time, which yeah. Right. But exactly.

For money isn't safe. Yeah, you see, yeah. I mean, it was the 60s when really that took a whole kind of speed things up. And to go into the digital stuff, again, I kind of looked at cathode retubes and like the early beginnings of TV because like I just want to know like how it was developed.

But in the 1990s, general instrument corporation was able to figure out like how to send a digital signal. Because like the whole thing was like analog signal was like, that's how it was sent, right? It was radio waves, but like a digital signal like has a lot more data. Like you would have to take up a ton of air waves, I guess, what it is. You know, I was like, you would have to take up air waves, you know, like a bunch of data, I guess, in the sky. What other people are broadcasting? To broadcast modern HD stuff. What GI was able to figure out

was that you could compress the image into like 1% of its original space by just transmitting the change in the picture. Instead of constantly transmitting the picture, you know, they would just change like, oh, so like that's kind of what led to like modern day streaming and all that, you know, like in paper views and streaming services and all this things, like, you know, now it's all digital. You're like, yeah, there's LEDs. Like it's not even cathode rays went away with like what early, I guess, 2000s, I would say. I mean, before that, I would say mid to late 90s.

It was different technology. It wasn't cathode rays anymore. It was like, it was a digital output. And that separated TV from like a broadcast thing to like kind of just like a part of like a multiverse of your you know of your digital output you know yeah and like that's a completely different thing like the streaming services episode like that's kind of what it led to honestly just looking to at the other things that advanced probably adjacent but not connected with that

video games within that time became a bigger cultural element for society then. Yeah. Ever been watching television to the extent that I would say people do regularly probably shifted significantly. The advent of cable and satellite TV and then all that. Yeah, it is crazy. Yeah, like those things have changed significantly within that time. And even the packages and services they had offered.

Like it's just crazy. Like TV has changed society completely. And like for good or bad, I don't really know. I think for good overall because like you get information. I think that's like, you know, that's a whole other conversation. But yeah, that to me, I think is a good note to leave out on. So with that, we're going to thank you for joining us here each and every week. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and

on Patreon. You can become a patron and have early access to these episodes by one week. For Brad, I'm Kyle and we will see you again here soon. So... See ya! Blame me, Blame. Ah! Brain soda! Brainsoda.