Hi! You're looking at a BRAND NEW and UNREAD condition book which is OUT OF PRINT and a fascinating early history of Television during the period between its invention in 1920 and the beginning of the "Golden Age" in 1948 written by film director MICHAEL RITCHIE--the book is a collectible STATED FIRST EDITION and a HARDCOVER with the ORIGINAL DUSTJACKET and is NOT  price-clipped, with the original $23.95 price in the upper corner of the front inner flap--the book has a small black remainder mark on the lower page edge near the spine end and the dustjacket is protected by a mylar plastic sleeve, which is NOT attached to the boards. The book is titled Please Stand By: A Prehistory of Television and it was written by MICHAEL RITCHIE; it was published by The Overlook Press in 1994 and is a 1st EDITION copy.

Written by the director of such movies as "The Candidate", "Downhill Racer", and "The Bad News Bears", this interesting and readable book is about the "prehistoric" days when television was in its birth and infancy. Included are all sorts of firsts from the 1920s to 1940s, such as the first TV systems and their inventors, the first TV shows (even before shows were scheduled to appear regularly), the first TV celebrities, the first commercial, and the first TV networks. Chapters on the race to build a workable TV system and difficulties producing the early TV shows in the minuscule, hot studios are especially interesting. Ritchie writes in an entertaining manner and bases his book largely on personal interviews with a number of men and women who were there. 

A fantastic find, and a beautiful copy of this book!