Greetings. There is so much that can be said about Gerry Anderson and his "Supermarionation" productions, using puppets (usually actually marionettes) ultimately to create vast hi-tech adventure sagas, the peak of which was the British TV series "Thunderbirds" (1965-66). I loved these as a child and I still think they're great.
Today I'll just relate one story about Anderson's impact.
One day, Gerry was on a tour of the UK facilities where the Franco-British supersonic Concorde airliner was being designed. Along the way, someone asked what he did for a living. He rather sheepishly replied that he made children's TV shows. "Oh, like what?" he was asked.
So he mentioned that he did "Fireball XL5" and "Thunderbirds" and such.
And in no time at all, he was surrounded by Concorde engineers and techs who wanted to say hi and shake his hand, many of whom said it was his shows that had inspired them to enter the engineering field, because they actually wanted to *build* those planes and rockets that were created for his various series!
Much the same happened here in the U.S., with the original "Star Trek" inspiring generations of engineering talent.
So yeah, TV matters! -L
@lauren Yes. Mr. Wizard in the 1950's & 60's inspired many scientists and engineers (including me) some of whom got us to the moon. Movies, too, like Star Wars and iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner. As a child, she was inspired by the vision of robots like R2D2 in the initial 1977 Star Wars movie. R2D2 was just a facade, but Helen and her workmates brought the vision to life, with some robots autonomously cleaning living-room floors and others with human guidance defusing very real, deadly bombs.
@lauren My wife gave me a set of DVDs of those later programs. Some of my grandkids like watching them when they visit. I watched the original early ones as a kid getting up early Sunday morning on a B&W set.
Maybe more recently MythBusters inspired another generation. Now it could be Mark Rober. (Grandkids have been in to his stuff on their own.)
@danb Unfortunately, MythBusters over time degenerated into the "blowing stuff up show" and cannonballs into Dublin suburbs.
@danb Sadly, it would likely be impossible for many reasons to widely broadcast a program like "Watch Mr. Wizard" today. I still have a set of his books from the show.