The Broadcasted Operating Room Early Medical Television as a Telemedicine Device in the United States, 1939–1960

This article examines the role of medical television in surgical procedures in the United States from 1939 to 1960. It reads medical television within the history of telemedicine and its infrastructure in an attempt to understand how it shaped and was shaped by the changing location and knowledge context of surgical practice in the 20th century. With the history of telemedicine having seen increased research in recent years, this reading of telemedical devices and infrastructures as forms of mediatized knowledge transfer becomes increasingly important. Telemedical broadcasts here are therefore discussed in their turn from broadcasting systems to media systems as part of a changing surgical education and practice and a fragmented knowledge landscape in modern hospitals.