Test Tubes
Via Wired, a history of television sets in pictures, quite steampunk and menacing.
Notice how the first set creators tried to incorporate the television into furniture, sublimating entertainment into the traditional home setting. This was, of course, before entertainment became one of the world's biggest industries, and before the television was awarded the privileged (and central) position in our homes. After taking over furniture in the mid-twentieth century, plasma TVs are now so huge they take over entire walls -- a situation not unfamiliar to readers of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
It may be an historical irony that we are currently trying to shoehorn online video into the television set, attempting to force a new(ish) media experience into the familiar furniture of our lives.
