What did F. Scott Fitzgerald mean when...

[Stephen]

he termed Rosemary "Miss Television" in a novel set in Paris in the 1920's.

I've found that I LOVE F. Scott Fitzgerald's way with words in excerpted quotes so I've finally decided to read Tender Is the Nightcover to cover instead of the bum's rush that I gave it back in school.

I'm STILL in love with his prose when he refers to a view of North America's wilderness as being "commensurate with man's capacity for wonder"

So when I came across something that puzzled me, I thought I'd ask about it here in hopes that someone could shed some light and historical perspective.

In 1920's Paris in chapter 24 Dick Diver thinks of starlett Rosemary as "Miss Television." Given that the book was published in 1933 and set in the early 20's I'm wondering what was meant by that appellation. TV was not as ubiquitous as it is today and was really just in the laboratory stages, no?

Any ideas?

[Stephen]

Thanks for the quick reply but RADIO didn't really get widespread usage until the 1920's. A book set in the early 1920's really shouldn't have mentioned TV and yet, the television reference was there.

I'm wondering if the word had any meaning prior to being adopted for usage for describing electronic broadcasting of pictures and sound.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

These are some references I found to the etymology of 'television'. It seems the term was coined around 1907 by the man who would eventually invent it. It seems also that the word was in usage as early as 1928.

The inventor, John Baird, coined the name by combining the Greek tele, distant, with the Latin vision, seeing.
television
1907, "the action of seeing by means of Hertzian waves or otherwise, what is existing or happening at a place concealed or distant from the observer's eyes" [OED:]; in theoretical discussions about sending images by radio transmission, formed in English or borrowed from Fr. télévision, from tele- + vision. Other proposals for the name of this then-hypothetical technology were telephote (1880) and televista (1904). The technology was developed in the 1920s and '30s. Nativized in Ger. as Fernsehen.
Television is the first truly democratic culture -- the first culture available to everyone and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want. [Clive Barnes, "New York Times," Dec. 30, 1969:]
Meaning "a television set" is from 1955. Shortened form TV is from 1948.
When the editor of the Manchester Guardian first heard the neologism in 1928, he exclaimed: "The word is half Greek and half Latin - no good will come of it"; what device-name is it? Answer: television

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Google and cut and paste are wonderful things!!;-)

[Stephen]

Sorry to be persnickity but, while Debbie's information is interesting, it doesn't really satisfy me as to why a 1920's character would think of someone as "Miss Television"

Thinking more about it in context, I think that Dick Diver might have heard of some of the early experiments in television and was thinking of the wet footprint that she left on the bathroom rug as being a fuzzy image of something real but not seen. Sort of like the pantelegraph images.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

"the action of seeing by means of Hertzian waves or otherwise, what is existing or happening at a place concealed or distant from the observer's eyes"

I should imagine she was called 'Miss Television' because she had some sort of ability to know ('see') what what happening elsewhere??

[Ken, Moderator]

I thought TV was invented by a dude named Farnsworth in 1927. If so, Zelda (and thus Francis) would've been all over it.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

John Logie Baird (13 August 1888 – 14 June 1946)[1:] was a Scottish[2:] engineer and inventor of the world's first working television system, also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube. Although Baird's electromechanical system was eventually displaced by purely electronic systems (such as those of Philo Farnsworth), his early successes demonstrating working television broadcasts and his colour and cinema television work earn him a prominent place in television's invention.

[Ken, Moderator]

Oh. I Miss(ed) that Television.

Tender Is the Rabbit Ear

[Stephen]

Yep, Francis was F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda was his wife. "Tender is the Night" has some autobiographical elements to the plot. He was a bit of a dipsomaniac and she had mental health issues, not unlike Dick Diver and Nicole.

[R.a.]

Here's a possibility . . .

Fitzgerald, at one point commented that "'a writer' must write not for [his] own generation but for the generation that follows . . ."

So, there may be some quality to the word (as previously mentioned) added to this outlook.

? Again, I can only offer a possibility.

Also, please excuse the paraphrase; Tender Is the Night was quite awhile ago now—as was my "Fizgeraldian reading period." A favorite, though. And, he and his work always will be, I think.

Also, if frustration sets in regarding Hemingway's horrendous behaviour towards this F. Scott novel, you can relax a bit as Billy Faulkner was able to provide a like "turn" for "Papa." ". . . And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." (TN, V,i)

If you want a 'riotous good time' with some F. Scott pieces, check out his Pat Hobby Stories. At one point, I thought I would wet myself! The reaction he incited in me was achieved wholly through his style of writing, too.

Good Reading!

[Jim]

My Wordsworth Classics edition of Tender is the Night from 1995 has notes "intended to expedite the reader's understanding of the novel".
Note 139 states:
(p.90) 'Miss Television' the word was in use by 1909, before the invention of television; Dick uses the word here in the sense of 'televisual' or 'photogenic'. See, also, the story 'Outside the Cabinet-Maker's'.

A search of that story reveals this line from that story:
""No, that's a girl called Miss Television." He yawned. He began to think of something pleasant that had happened yesterday. He went into a trance. Then he looked at the little girl and saw that she was quite happy. She was six and lovely to look at. He kissed her."

[Doug]

Television was invented as a possible mechanical technology about 1884. The word was used in a paper in the 1900 Paris Fair. Fitzgerald could have read it.