Post · bonfire.cafe

internetarchive

@internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org 56 min. ago

🕳️ What happens when an entire TV network nearly disappears from history?

📺 The DuMont Network pioneered television with firsts that shaped the medium, yet much of its legacy is gone forever.

Taylor Cole Miller explores how one of America's most innovative TV networks became one of its greatest preservation tragedies, and why archives matter. 🗄️

📚 Read or download "The DuMont Network: America’s Vanishing Television History" in VANISHING CULTURE:
https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/85/
🧵

3 media files

Teal graphic for the Vanishing Culture series asking "How much of America's early television history is gone for good?" and quoting Taylor Cole Miller, Media Historian, with the quote "Television culture is inextricably linked with American culture, but most early television is lost forever, a vanishing era of our culture with few traces."

Orange graphic quoting Taylor Cole Miller, Media Historian, for the Vanishing Culture series, with the quote "DuMont's television archive was intentionally destroyed as a result of the negotiations of a sale in the 1970s...dumped in the Upper New York Bay. Very neat. No problem."

Light green-gray graphic quoting Taylor Cole Miller, Media Historian, for the Vanishing Culture series, with the quote "But while its kinescopes may have submitted to a watery grave, the efforts of open-access archives like the Internet Archive...offer glimmers of hope."

Internet Archive

Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record (2026) : Luca Messarra : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

DOWNLOAD THE FREE EBOOK:PDFEPUBPURCHASE A PRINT COPY:Buy the book from Better World Books or any online bookstore.Order a copy through your local...

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internetarchive

@internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org 56 min. ago

🛒 Need a physical media fix? Purchase Vanishing Culture in print:
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record-9798995425014/new

#Bookstodon #VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive

Book cover titled “Vanishing Culture” on a teal background. Pixel-art style graphics show a VHS tape, open book, film reel, chain link, and vinyl record dissolving into digital fragments. At the bottom, a cursor icon points to the word “SAVE,” alongside an archive-style building icon, evoking digital preservation.

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record-9798995425014/new

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