Sagan's Contact and Vega

[hhEb09'1]

I'm re-reading Contact by Carl Sagan, and it occurred to me that Vega is a summer star, and the Hitler broadcast was from the 1936 summer olympic games. But I checked it out, and Vega does not set for viewers in the latitude of Berlin, just barely. In the middle of the summer night, Vega is sometimes just above the northern horizon.

Is there anywhere (maybe I missed it in the book), that Sagan talks about that visibility? It's necessary to the plot, in that the Vegans must be able to see the original TV broadcast, but a radio observatory at high latitude could have collected the Vegan signal without depending upon the worldwide system of observatories.

[Ronald Brak]

Umm, there is a bigger problem than that. I believe the TV pictures were actually over close circuit television. They may not have actually been broadcast. Of course they made a big deal of it at the time, but that's Nazis for you.

[hhEb09'1]

3x Umm, there is a bigger problem than that. I believe the TV pictures were actually over close circuit television. They may not have actually been broadcast. Of course they made a big deal of it at the time, but that's Nazis for you.I see a lot of webpages supporting that.

One (http://www.artdish.com/ubbcgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000032) suggests that the first broadcasts (1926) had to be closed circuit because there was no such thing as open circuit, but that's not true, right? Radio had been transmitted wireless long before that.

[Ronald Brak]

I think they mean there wasn't open circuit TV at that point when Baird demonstated his televisor in 1926. Baird went on to transmit television, but he produced his images mechanically with a big spinning wheel rather than electronically and his images were of extremely low quality by our standards, but they gave people a thrill back then. Well, the few who had the equipment to receive them. They got terribly excited. "It's a girl bouncing a ball! Incredible!"

[hhEb09'1]

I think they mean there wasn't open circuit TV at that point when Baird demonstated his televisor in 1926. But they mention that it was closed circuit, and then add in parenthesis that there was no such thing as closed circuit. If their remark was intended to be limited to TY then it is redundant--if it was the first and it was closed circuit, of course there would be no open circuit TV, yet.

I just think it's cool that Vega is circumpolar up there.

[Ronald Brak]

But they mention that it was closed circuit, and then add in parenthesis that there was no such thing as closed circuit. If their remark was intended to be limited to TY then it is redundant--if it was the first and it was closed circuit, of course there would be no open circuit TV, yet.

Personally I find it difficult to make sense, so when other people fail to make sense I am rarely surprised.

[hhEb09'1]

Personally I find it difficult to make sense, so when other people fail to make sense I am rarely surprised.That makes sense :)

[Maksutov]

I'm re-reading Contact by Carl Sagan, and it occurred to me that Vega is a summer star, and the Hitler broadcast was from the 1936 summer olympic games. But I checked it out, and Vega does not set for viewers in the latitude of Berlin, just barely. In the middle of the summer night, Vega is sometimes just above the northern horizon.Would that be "in the middle of the summer day"?

Is there anywhere (maybe I missed it in the book), that Sagan talks about that visibility? It's necessary to the plot, in that the Vegans must be able to see the original TV broadcast, but a radio observatory at high latitude could have collected the Vegan signal without depending upon the worldwide system of observatories.I recently reread Contact and I don't recall anything in the book that discusses this, nor in any other books, essays, or TV appearances.

According to this source (http://www.tvhistory.tv/1936%20German%20Olympics%20TV%20Program.htm) it was a broadcast, but this source (http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/G/htmlG/germany/germany.htm) seems to say that broadcast technology was available but not yet implemented. Then came WWII.

[hhEb09'1]

Would that be "in the middle of the summer day"?D'oh. Yeah, that's what I meant. I was hunching that maybe Vega wouldn't have been line-of-sight for the Olympic broadcast.I recently reread Contact and I don't recall anything in the book that discusses this, nor in any other books, essays, or TV appearances.One thing that keeps coming around in the plot is the need for a world-wide effort to collect the signal continuously, for all the countries to work together--but that would seem to be unnecessary for a high latitude observatory.According to this source (http://www.tvhistory.tv/1936%20German%20Olympics%20TV%20Program.htm) it was a broadcast, but this source (http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/G/htmlG/germany/germany.htm) seems to say that broadcast technology was available but not yet implemented. Then came WWII.I wonder if Sagan knew about all this?

I haven't seen any other discussions, nor does the subject appear on the IMDb goofs page for Contact.