26 The Television-Chocolate Room
The Teavee family, together with Charlie and Grandpa Joe, stepped out of the lift into a
room so dazzlingly bright and dazzlingly white that they screwed up their eyes in pain
and stopped walking. Mr Wonka handed each of them a pair of dark glasses and said,
‘Put these on quick! And don’t take them off in here whatever you do! This light could
blind you!’
As soon as Charlie had his dark glasses on, he was able to look around him in comfort.
He saw a long narrow room. The room was painted white all over. Even the floor was
white, and there wasn’t a speck¹ of dust anywhere. From the ceiling, huge lamps hung
down and bathed the room in a brilliant blue-white light. The room was completely bare
except at the far ends. At one of these ends there was an enormous camera on wheels,
and a whole army of Oompa-Loompas was clustering around it, oiling its joints² and
adjusting its knobs and polishing its great glass lens. The Oompa- Loompas were all
dressed in the most extraordinary way. They were wearing bright- red space suits,
complete with helmets and goggles³ – at least they looked like space suits – and they
were working in complete silence. Watching them, Charlie experienced a queer sense of
danger. There was something dangerous about this whole business, and the Oompa-
Loompas knew it. There was no chattering⁴ or singing among them here, and they moved
about over the huge black camera slowly and carefully in their scarlet⁵ space suits.
At the other end of the room, about fifty paces away from the camera, a single
Oompa-Loompa (also wearing a space suit) was sitting at a black table gazing at the
screen of a very large television set.
‘Here we go!’ cried Mr Wonka, hopping⁶ up and down with excitement. ‘This is the
Testing Room for my very latest and greatest invention – Television Chocolate!’
‘But what is Television Chocolate?’ asked Mike Teavee.

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