The origin of the television set was heavily shrouded in both spiritualism and the occult, writes author Stefan Andriopoulos in his new book Ghostly Apparitions. In fact, as its very name implies, the television was first conceived as a technical device for seeing at a distance: like the telephone (speaking at a distance) and telescope (viewing at a distance), the television was intended as an almost magical box through which we could watch distant events unfold, a kind of technological crystal ball.
Andriopoulos's book puts the TV into a long line of other "optical media" that go back at least as far as weird Renaissance experiments involving technologically-induced illusions, such as concave mirrors, magic lanterns, disorienting walls of smoke, and other "ghostly apparitions" and "phantasmagoric projections" created by speciality devices. These were conjuring tricks, sure, but they relied on sophisticated understandings of such basic things as light, shadow, and acoustics, making an audience see—and believe in—an illusion.
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