From Science Theatre to Science on the air in Hungary
Gabor Pallo (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary)
1. Urania scientific theater
- Multimedia character: visual elements overwhelm
Knowledge type: historical and natural description
- Enthusiasm to modernity
- Moving toward film
2. The Telephone Broadcaster 1893
- Special Hungarian invention, speaking newspaper
- Technology: broadcast a program from one center to many listeners
- Legal and commercial position: private company
- Clock workshop. Indicating the right time
- The character of programs,
News, music, theater, lack of natural science
Special genre: lecture reading
3. Radio as knowledge transmitter: 1925-1935
- Nationalization of the telephone broadcaster and connection with the experimental radio
- Dual character of the radio: commercial and political context
i. commercialism requires amusement
ii. political: no direct intervention, ideological commitment through the personnel
iii. sociology of the listeners
- Program: continuity with the telephone broadcaster
i. lecture reading, pedagogical context
- Type of transmitted knowledge: practical, non-theoretical approach
i. Pedagogical goals
ii. Humanistic character: history, literature, arts
iii. Practical character: Medical advices, cooking advices, agricultural advices, language courses, exercises, shorthand writing
iv. No sign of Curie, Darwin, Einstein, and other media star scientists
4. Interpretation framework: literacy and orality
- Toronto school of communication in 1980s
- Features of oral and written texts
- Radio as archetype of secondary orality
Further Reading
- Gabor Pallo: Genres of popular science: Urania and the scientific theater. In: Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery 1800–2000, edited by Faidra Papanelopoulou, Agustí Nieto-Galan and Enrique Perdriguero, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009, p. 157-174.