“The Bedrock of Logical Thought”: Mathematics on the Television in 1957

Ann Arbor will produce a group of educational television programs as a service to the educational television stations of the country … Our purpose is to encourage new interest among young people in the subjects being presented.One of these is mathematics … I hope you will want to participate in this pioneering experiment."Hers was not a hard sell.Three months later, "The Bedrock of Logical Thought"-"starring" Wilder-had been filmed in New York City and had been shown as the seventh in a ten-part series entitled "Mathematics" on the just over two dozen stations affiliated with the ETRC 1, p. 105.On a recent trip to the Archives of American Mathematics, a veritable treasure trove of insights into the history of mathematics in the United States that is part of the Briscoe Center at the University of Texas at Austin, I discovered the script of Wilder's otherwise ephemeral show 13.1This Years Ago column centers on that archival find at the same time that it fleshes out the context of mathematics on the television in the 1950s.