I spoke to Archimedes J. Selby, inventor of the six-sided television. I visited him in his loft in Dumbo.
Sparrow: So this is your six-sided television.
Selby: One of them, yes.
Sparrow: It’s a cube. When I heard ‘six-sided television,’ I didn’t picture a box.
Selby: It’s perfectly cubical. I call it ‘Total TV.’
Sparrow: It must have taken you a long time to perfect.
Selby: Actually, it’s not that difficult to distribute the television signal to six screens simultaneously. All you need is a dual-sided polarity catheter, really.
Sparrow: The problem is watching six screens simultaneously.
Selby: Yes. On the other hand, it makes TV much more sculptural.
Sparrow: What about the bottom of the cube? How do you see that?
Selby: Of course, you don’t have to watch it. But if you want to, you can suspend the TV from a wire, or place it on a glass table.
Sparrow: Have you encountered any surprises yet, in your inventing ?
Selby: I’ve built three Total TVs so far, and everyone seems to like the black-and-white one! Particularly when I show movies from the ’30s. Watching Ronald Colman wander around six sides of a cube pleases everyone.
Sparrow: Is your real name Archimedes?
Selby: Yes, my father named me that. Perhaps that’s why I became an inventor.
Sparrow: What did Archimedes do?
Selby: He was born in approximately 287 B.C.E. in Syracuse, Sicily. Archimedes invented compound pulley systems, war machines and the planetarium. He began the study of hydrostatics and pycnometry (the measurement of volume or density of an object).
Sparrow: Well, you’ve certainly lived up to your name!
Selby: Thanks.
