ABSTRACT
Industrial fairs and international exhibitions were central for the emergence of interwar television. This chapter sets the stage for the following discussions of television displays by outlining their institutional contexts and explaining their raisons d’être. It starts with a brief presentation of the Berlin Funkausstellung, London’s Radiolympia, and the New York Radio World’s Fair. The chapter’s second part shifts the attention from the exhibition to the exhibits. It stresses the role of radio fairs in publicizing technological consumer goods and their signification as commodity-experiences. Doing so, the chapter describes facets of industrial and consumer culture that would determine television’s presentation from 1928 onwards. In conclusion, it discusses television’s fundamental hybridity and flexibility, which contributed to the medium’s attractiveness as an exhibit.
