presentation about the history of television

History Cooperative

The First TV: A Complete History of Television

From the Moon Landing to M*A*S*H, from the Olympics to “The Office,” some of the most critical moments in history and culture have been experienced worldwide thanks to the wondrous invention of television.

The evolution of television has been one full of slow, steady progress. However, there have been definitive moments that have changed technology forever. The first TV, the first “broadcast” of live events to screen, the introduction of “the television show,” and the Streaming Internet have all been significant leaps forward in how television works. 

Today, television technology is an integral part of telecommunications and computing. Without it, we would be lost.  

Table of Contents

What Is a Television System?

It’s a simple question with a surprisingly complex answer. At its core, a “television” is a device that takes electrical input to produce moving images and sound for us to view. A “television system” would be both what we now call television and the camera/producing equipment that captured the original images.

The Etymology of “Television”

The word “television” first appeared in 1907 in the discussion of a theoretical device that transported images across telegraph or telephone wires. Ironically, this prediction was behind the times, as some of the first experiments into television used radio waves from the beginning. 

“Tele-” is a prefix that means “far off” or “operating at a distance.” The word “television” was agreed upon quite rapidly, and while other terms like “iconoscope” and “emitron” referred to patented devices that were used in some electronic television systems, television is the one that stuck.

Today, the word “television” takes a slightly more fluid meaning. A “television show” is often considered a series of small entertainment pieces with a throughline or overarching plot. The difference between television and movies is found in the length and serialization of the media, rather than the technology used to broadcast it.

“Television” is now as often watched on phones, computers, and home projectors as it is on the independent devices we call “television sets.” In 2017, only 9 percent of American adults watched television using an antenna , and 61 percent watched it directly from the internet.

The Mechanical Television System

The first device you could call a “television system” under these definitions was created by John Logie Baird. A Scottish engineer, his mechanical television used a spinning “Nipkow disk,” a mechanical device to capture images and convert them to electrical signals. These signals, sent by radio waves, were picked up by a receiving device. Its own disks would spin similarly, illuminated by a neon light to produce a replica of the original images.

Baird’s first public demonstration of his mechanical television system was somewhat prophetically held at a London Department store way back in 1925 . Little did he know that television systems would be carefully intertwined with consumerism throughout history.

The evolution of the mechanical television system progressed rapidly and, within three years, Baird’s invention was able to broadcast from London to New York. By 1928, the world’s first television station opened under the name W2XCW. It transmitted 24 vertical lines at 20 frames a second.

Of course, the first device that we today would recognize as television involved the use of Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs). These convex glass-in-box devices shared images captured live on camera, and the resolution was, for its time, incredible.

This modern, electronic television had two fathers working simultaneously and often against each other. They were Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin.

Who Invented the First TV?

Traditionally, a self-taught boy from Idaho named Philo Farnsworth is credited for having invented the first TV. But another man, Vladimir Zworykin, also deserves some of the credit. In fact, Farnsworth could not have completed his invention without the help of Zworykin.

How the First Electronic Television Camera Came to Be

Philo Farnsworth claimed to have designed the first electronic television receiver at only 14 . Regardless of those personal claims, history records that Farnsworth, at only 21, designed and created a functioning “image dissector” in his small city apartment.

The image dissector “captured images” in a manner not too dissimilar to how our modern digital cameras work today. His tube, which captured 8,000 individual points, could convert the image to electrical waves with no mechanical device required. This miraculous invention led to Farnsworth creating the first all-electronic television system.

Zworykin’s Role in the Developing the First Television

Having escaped to America during the Russian Civil War, Vladimir Zworykin found himself immediately employed by Westinghouse’s electrical engineering firm. He then set to work patenting work he had already produced in showing television images via a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). He had not, at that point, been able to capture images as well as he could show them.

By 1929, Zworykin worked for the Radio Corporation of America (owned by General Electric and soon to form the National Broadcasting Company). He had already created a simple color television system. Zworykin was convinced that the best camera would also use CRT but never seemed to make it work.

When Was TV Invented?

Despite protestations from both men and multiple drawn-out legal battles over their patents, RCA eventually paid royalties to use Farnsworth’s technology to transmit to Zorykin’s receivers. In 1927, the first TV was invented. For decades after, these electronic televisions changed very little.

When Was The First Television Broadcast?

The first television broadcast was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. However, this was the broadcast of a single line. The first broadcast that general audiences would have been wowed by was on March 25, 1925. That is the date John Logie Baird presented his mechanical television.

When television began to change its identity from the engineer’s invention to the new toy for the rich, broadcasts were few and far between. The first television broadcasts were of King  George VI’s coronation. The coronation was one of the first television broadcasts to be filmed outside.

In 1939, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) broadcasted the opening of New York’s World’s Fair. This event included a speech from Franklin D. Roosevelt and an appearance by Albert Einstein. By this point, NBC had a regular broadcast of two hours every afternoon and was watched by approximately nineteen thousand people around New York City. 

The First Television Networks

The First Television Network was The National Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of The Radio Corporation of America (or RCA). It started in 1926 as a series of Radio stations in New York and Washington.  NBC’s first official broadcast was on November 15, 1926.

NBC started to regularly broadcast television after the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It had approximately one thousand viewers. From this point on, the network would broadcast every day and continues to do so now.

The National Broadcasting Company kept a dominant position among television networks in the United States for decades but always had competition. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), which had also previously broadcast in radio and mechanical television, turned to all-electronic television systems in 1939. In 1940, it became the first television network to broadcast in color, albeit in a one-off experiment.

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) was forced to break off from NBC to form its own television network in 1943. This was due to the FCC being concerned that a monopoly was occurring in television.

The three television networks would rule television broadcasting for forty years without competition.

In England , the publicly-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (or BBC) was the only television station available. It started broadcasting television signals in 1929, with John Logie Baird’s experiments, but the official Television Service did not exist until 1936. The BBC would remain the only network in England until 1955.

The First Television Productions

The first made-for-television drama would arguably be a 1928 drama called “The Queen’s Messenger,” written by J. Harley Manners. This live drama presentation included two cameras and was lauded more for the technological marvel than anything else.

The first news broadcasts on television involved news readers repeating what they just had broadcast on radio. 

On December 7, 1941, Ray Forrest, one of the first full-time news announcers for television, presented the first news bulletin. The first time that “regularly scheduled programs” were interrupted, his bulletin announced the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

This special report for CBS ran for hours, with experts coming into the studio to discuss everything from geography to geopolitics. According to a report CBS gave to the FCC, this unscheduled broadcast “was unquestionably the most stimulating challenge and marked the greatest advance of any single problem faced up to that time.”

After the war, Forrest went on to host one of the first cooking shows on television, “In the Kelvinator Kitchen.”

When Was the First TV Sold?

The first television sets available for anyone were manufactured in 1934 by Telefunken , a subsidiary of the electronics company Siemens. RCA began manufacturing American sets in 1939. They cost around $445 dollars at the time (the American average salary was $35 per month). 

TV Becomes Mainstream: The Post-War Boom 

After the Second World War, a newly invigorated middle class caused a boom in sales of television sets, and television stations began to broadcast around the clock worldwide.

By the end of the 1940s, audiences were looking to get more from television programming. While news broadcasts would always be important, audiences looked for entertainment that was more than a play that happened to be caught on camera. Experiments from major networks led to significant changes in the type of television programs in existence. Many of these experiments can be seen in the shows of today.

What Was the First TV Show?

The first regularly broadcast TV show was a visual version of the popular radio series, “Texaco Star Theatre.” It began tv broadcasts on June 8, 1948. By this time, there were nearly two hundred thousand television sets in America. 

The Rise of The Sitcom

In 1947, DuMont Television Network (partnered with Paramount Pictures) began to air a series of teledramas starring real-life couple Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns. “Mary Kay and Johnny” featured a middle-class American couple facing real-life problems. It was the first show on television to show a couple in bed, as well as a pregnant woman. It was not only the first “sitcom” but the model for all the great sitcoms since.

Three years later, CBS hired a young female actor called Lucille, who had previously been known in Hollywood as “The Queen of the B (movies).” Initially trying her out in other sitcoms, she eventually convinced them that their best show would include her partner, just as Mary Kay and Johnny had. 

The show, entitled “I Love Lucy,” became a runaway success and is now considered a cornerstone of television. 

Today, “I Love Lucy” has been described as “legitimately the most influential in TV history.” The popularity of reruns led to the concept of “syndication,” an arrangement in which other television stations could purchase the rights to screen reruns of the show.  

According to CBS, “I Love Lucy” still makes the company $20 Million a year . Lucille Ball is now considered one of the most important names in the history of the medium.

The “sitcom,” derived from the phrase “situational comedy,” is still one of the most popular forms of television programming. 

In 1983, the final episode of the popular sitcom “M*A*S*H” had over one hundred million viewers glued to their screens, a number not beaten for nearly thirty years. 

In 1997, Jerry Seinfeld would become the first sit-com star to earn a million dollars per episode. “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, a sitcom about the immoral and crazy owners of a bar, is the longest-running live sitcom ever, now into its 15th season.

When Did Color TV Come Out?

The ability of television systems to broadcast and receive color occurred relatively early in the evolution of electronic television. Patents for color television existed from the late nineteenth century, and John Baird regularly broadcast from a color television system in the thirties.

The National Television System Committee (NTSC) met in 1941 to develop a standardized system for television broadcasts, ensuring that all television stations used similar systems to ensure that all television systems could receive them. The committee, created by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would meet again only twelve years later to agree upon a standard for color television.

However, a problem faced by television networks was that color broadcasting required extra radio bandwidth. This bandwidth, the FCC decided, needed to be separate from that which sent black and white television in order for all audiences to receive a broadcast. This NTSC standard was first used for the “Tournament of Roses Parade” in 1954. The color viewing was available to so few systems as a particular receiver was required.

The First TV Remote Control

While the first remote controls were intended for military use, controlling boats and artillery from a distance, entertainment providers soon considered how radio and television systems might use the technology. 

What Was The First TV Remote?

The first remote control for television was developed by Zenith in 1950 and was called “Lazy Bones.” It had a wired system and only a single button, which allowed for the changing of channels.

By 1955, however, Zenith had produced a wireless remote that worked by shining light at a receiver on the television. This remote could change channels, turn the tv on and off, and even change the sound. However, being activated by light, ordinary lamps, and sunlight could unintentionally act on the television.

While future remote controls would use ultrasonic frequencies, the use of infra-red light ended up being the standard. The information sent from these devices was often unique to the television system but could offer complex instructions. 

Today, all television sets are sold with remote controls as standard, and an inexpensive “universal remote” can be purchased easily online. 

The Tonight Show and Late Night Television

After starring in the first American sitcom, Johnny Stearns continued on television by being one of the producers behind “Tonight, Starring Steve Allen,” now known as “The Tonight Show.” This late-night broadcast is the longest-running television talk show still running today.

Prior to “The Tonight Show,” talk shows were already growing popular. “The Ed Sullivan Show” opened in 1948 with a premier that included Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and a sneak preview of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific.” The show featured serious interviews with its stars and Sullivan was known to have little respect for the young musicians that performed on his show. “The Ed Sullivan Show” lasted until 1971 and is now most remembered for being the show that introduced the United States to “ Beatlemania “.

“The Tonight Show” was a more low-brow affair compared to Sullivan, and popularized a number of elements found today in late-night television; opening monolog, live bands, sketch moments with guest stars, and audience participation all found their start in this program. 

While popular under Allen, “The Tonight Show” really became a part of history during its epic three-decade run under Johnny Carson. From 1962 to 1992, Carson’s program was less about the intellectual conversation with guests than it was about promotion and spectacle. Carson, to some , “define[d] in a single word what made television different from theater or cinema.”

The Tonight Show still runs today, hosted by Jimmy Fallon, while contemporary competitors include “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert and “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah.  

Digital Television Systems

Starting with the first TV, television broadcasts were always analog, which means the radio wave itself contains the information the set needs to create a picture and sound. Image and sound would be directly translated into waves via “modulation” and then reverted back by the receiver through “demodulation”.

A digital radio wave doesn’t contain such complex information, but alternates between two forms, which can be interpreted as zeros and ones. However, this information needs to be “encoded” and “recoded.”

With the rise of low-cost, high-power computing, engineers experimented with the digital broadcast . Digital broadcast “decoding” could be done by a computer chip within the tv set which breaks down the waves into discrete zeroes and ones. 

While this could be used to produce greater image quality and clearer audio, it would also require a much higher bandwidth and computing power that was only available in the seventies. The bandwidth required was improved over time with the advent of “ compression ” algorithms, and television networks could broadcast greater amounts of data to televisions at home.

Digital broadcast of television via cable television began in the mid-nineties , and as of July 2021 , no television station in the United States broadcasts in analog.

VHS Brings the Movies to TV

For a very long time, what you saw on television was decided by what the television networks decided to broadcast. While some wealthy people could afford film projectors, the large box in the living room could only show what someone else wanted it to.

Then, in the 1960s, electronics companies began to provide devices that could “record television” onto electromagnetic tapes, which could then be watched through the set at a later time. These “Video Cassette Recorders” were expensive but desired by many. The first Sony VCR cost the same as a new car.

In the late seventies, two companies faced off to determine the standard of home video cassettes in what some referred to as a “format war.” 

Sony’s “Betamax” eventually lost to JVC’s “VHS” format due to the latter company’s willingness to make their standard “open” (and not require licensing fees).

VHS machines quickly dropped in price, and soon most homes contained an extra piece of equipment. Contemporary VCRs could record from the television and played portable tapes with other recordings. In California, businessman George Atkinson purchased a library of fifty movies directly from movie companies and then proceeded to start a new industry.

The Birth of Video Rental Companies

For a fee, customers could become members of his “Video Station” . Then, for an additional cost, they could borrow one of the fifty movies to watch at home, before returning. So began the era of the video rental company.

Movie studios were concerned by the concept of home video. They argued that giving people the ability to copy to tape what they are shown constituted theft. These cases reached the Supreme Court, which eventually decided that recording for home consumption was legal. 

Studios replied by creating licensing agreements to make video rental a legitimate industry and produce films specifically for home entertainment. 

While the first “direct to video” movies were low-budget slashers or pornography, the format became quite popular after the success of Disney’s “Aladdin: Return of Jafar.” This sequel to the popular animated movie sold 1.5 Million copies in its first two days of release.

READ MORE: The Dawn of Desire: Who Invented Porn?

Home video changed slightly with the advent of digital compression and the rise of optical disc storage. 

Soon, networks and film companies could offer high-quality digital television recordings on Digital Versatile Discs (or DVDs). These discs were introduced in the mid-nineties but soon were superseded by high-definition discs. 

As possible evidence of karma, it was Sony’s “Blu-Ray” system that won against Toshiba’s “HG DVD” in home video’s second “Format War.” Today, Blu-Rays are the most popular form of physical purchase for home entertainment.

READ MORE: The First Movie Ever Made

First Satellite TV

On July 12, 1962, the Telstar 1 satellite beamed images sent from Andover Earth Station in Maine to the Pleumeur-Bodou Telecom Center in Brittany, France. So marked the birth of satellite television. Only three years later, the first commercial satellite for the purposes of broadcasting was sent into space.

Satellite television systems allowed television networks to broadcast around the world, no matter how far from the rest of society a receiver might be. While owning a personal receiver was, and still is, far more expensive than conventional television, networks took advantage of such systems to offer subscription services that were not available to public consumers. These services were a natural evolution of already existing “cable channels” such as “Home Box Office,” which relied on direct payment from consumers instead of external advertising.

The first live satellite broadcast that was watchable worldwide occurred in June 1967. BBC’s “Our World” employed multiple geostationary satellites to beam a special entertainment event that included the first public performance of “All You Need is Love” by The Beatles. 

The Constant Rise and Fall of 3D Television

It is a technology with a long history of attempts and failures and which will likely return one day. “3D Television” refers to television that conveys depth perception, often with the aid of specialized screens or glasses .

It may come as no surprise that the first example of 3D television came from the labs of John Baird. His 1928 presentation bore all the hallmarks of future research into 3D television because the principle has always been the same. Two images are shown at slightly different angles and differences to approximate the different images our two eyes see.

While 3D films have come and gone as gimmicky spectacles, the early 2010s saw a significant spark of excitement for 3D television — all the spectacle of the movies at home. While there was nothing technologically advanced about screening 3D television, broadcasting it required more complexity in standards. At the end of 2010, the DVB-3D standard was introduced, and electronics companies around the world were clambering to get their products into homes .

However, like the 3D crazes in movies every few decades, the home viewer soon grew tired. While 2010 saw the PGA Championship, FIFA World Cup, and Grammy Awards all filmed and broadcast in 3D, channels began to stop offering the service only three years later. By 2017, Sony and LG officially announced they would no longer support 3D for their products.

Some future “visionary” will likely take another shot at 3D television but, by then, there is a very good chance that television will be something very different indeed.

LCD/LED Systems

During the late twentieth century, new technologies arose in how television could be presented on the screen. Cathode Ray Tubes had limitations in size, longevity, and cost. The invention of low-cost microchips and the ability to manufacture quite small components led TV manufacturers to look for new technologies.

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) is a way to present images by having a backlight shine through millions (or even billions) of crystals that can be individually made opaque or translucent using electricity . This method allows the display of images using devices that can be very flat and use little electricity.

While popular in the 20th century for use in clocks and watches, improvements in LCD technology let them become the next way to present images for television. Replacing the old CRT meant televisions were lighter, thinner, and inexpensive to run. Because they did not use phosphorous, images left on the screen could not “burn-in” .

Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) use extremely small “diodes” that light up when electricity passes through them. Like LCD, they are inexpensive, small, and use little electricity. Unlike LCD, they need no backlight. Because LCDs are cheaper to produce, they have been the popular choice in the early 21st century. However, as technology changes , the advantages of LED may eventually lead to it taking over the market.

The Internet Boogeyman

The ability for households to have personal internet access in the nineties led to fear among those in the television industry that it might not be around forever. While many saw this fear as similar to the rise of VHS, others took advantage of the changes.

With internet speeds increasing, the data that was previously sent to the television via radio waves or cables could not be sent through your telephone line. The information you would once need to record onto a video cassette could be “downloaded” to watch in the future. People began acting “outside of the law,”very much like the early video rental stores.

Then, when internet speed reached a point fast enough, something unusual happened.

“Streaming Video” and the rise of YouTube

In 2005, three former employees of the online financial company PayPal created a website that allowed people to upload their home videos to watch online. You didn’t need to download these videos but could watch them “live” as the data was “streamed” to your computer. This means you did not need to wait for a download or use up hard-drive space.

Videos were free to watch but contained advertising and allowed content creators to include ads for which they would be paid a small commission. This “partner program” encouraged a new wave of creators who could make their own content and gain an audience without relying on television networks.

The creators offered a limited release to interested people, and by the time the site officially opened, more than two million videos a day were being added.

Today, creating content on YouTube is big business. With the ability for users to “subscribe” to their favorite creators, the top YouTube stars can earn tens of millions of dollars a year.

Netflix, Amazon, and the New Television Networks

In the late nineties, a new subscription video rental service formed that was seemingly like all those who came after George Atkinson. It had no physical buildings but would rely on people returning the video in the mail before renting the next one. Because videos now came on DVD, postage was cheap, and the company soon rivaled the most prominent video rental chains.

Then in 2007, as people were paying attention to the rise of YouTube, the company took a risk. Using the rental licenses it already had to lend out its movies, it placed them online for consumers to stream directly. It started with 1,000 titles and only allowed 18 hours of streaming per month. This new service was so popular that, by the end of the year, the company had 7.5 million subscribers.

The problem was that, for Netflix, they relied on the same television networks that their company was damaging. If people watched their streaming service more than traditional television, networks would need to increase their fee for licensing their shows to rental companies. In fact, if a network decided to no longer license its content to Netflix, there would be little the company could do.

So, the company started to produce its own material. It hoped to attract even more viewers by investing a large amount of money on new shows like “Daredevil” and the US remake of “House of Cards.” The latter series, which ran from 2013 to 2018, won 34 Emmys , cementing Netflix as a competitor in the television network industry. 

In 2021, the company spent $17 Billion on original content and continued to decrease the amount of content purchased from the three major networks.

Other companies took note of the success of Netflix. Amazon, which started life as an online bookstore, and became one of the largest e-commerce platforms globally, began to produce its own original in the same year as Netflix and has since been joined by dozens of other services around the world.

The Future of Television

In some ways, those who feared the internet were right. Today, streaming takes up over a quarter of the audience’s viewing habits, with this number rising every year. 

However, this change is less about the media and more about the technology that accesses it. Mechanical Televisions are gone. Analog broadcasts are gone. Eventually, radio-broadcasted television will disappear as well. But television? Those half-hour and one-hour blocks of entertainment, they are not going anywhere. 

The most-watched streaming programs of 2021 include dramas, comedies, and, just like at the beginning of television history, cooking shows.

While slow to react to the internet, the major networks all now have their own streaming services, and new advances in fields like virtual reality mean that television will continue to evolve well into our future.

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9.1 The Evolution of Television

Learning objectives.

• Identify two technological developments that paved the way for the evolution of television.
• Explain why electronic television prevailed over mechanical television.
• Identify three important developments in the history of television since 1960.

Since replacing radio as the most popular mass medium in the 1950s, television has played such an integral role in modern life that, for some, it is difficult to imagine being without it. Both reflecting and shaping cultural values, television has at times been criticized for its alleged negative influences on children and young people and at other times lauded for its ability to create a common experience for all its viewers. Major world events such as the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations and the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the Challenger shuttle explosion in 1986, the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and the impact and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have all played out on television, uniting millions of people in shared tragedy and hope. Today, as Internet technology and satellite broadcasting change the way people watch television, the medium continues to evolve, solidifying its position as one of the most important inventions of the 20th century.

The Origins of Television

Inventors conceived the idea of television long before the technology to create it appeared. Early pioneers speculated that if audio waves could be separated from the electromagnetic spectrum to create radio, so too could TV waves be separated to transmit visual images. As early as 1876, Boston civil servant George Carey envisioned complete television systems, putting forward drawings for a “selenium camera” that would enable people to “see by electricity” a year later (Federal Communications Commission, 2005).

During the late 1800s, several technological developments set the stage for television. The invention of the cathode ray tube (CRT) by German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897 played a vital role as the forerunner of the TV picture tube. Initially created as a scanning device known as the cathode ray oscilloscope, the CRT effectively combined the principles of the camera and electricity. It had a fluorescent screen that emitted a visible light (in the form of images) when struck by a beam of electrons. The other key invention during the 1880s was the mechanical scanner system. Created by German inventor Paul Nipkow, the scanning disk was a large, flat metal disk with a series of small perforations arranged in a spiral pattern. As the disk rotated, light passed through the holes, separating pictures into pinpoints of light that could be transmitted as a series of electronic lines. The number of scanned lines equaled the number of perforations, and each rotation of the disk produced a television frame. Nipkow’s mechanical disk served as the foundation for experiments on the transmission of visual images for several decades.

In 1907, Russian scientist Boris Rosing used both the CRT and the mechanical scanner system in an experimental television system. With the CRT in the receiver, he used focused electron beams to display images, transmitting crude geometrical patterns onto the television screen. The mechanical disk system was used as a camera, creating a primitive television system.

Two key inventions in the 1880s paved the way for television to emerge: the cathode ray tube and the mechanical disk system.

Mechanical Television versus Electronic Television

From the early experiments with visual transmissions, two types of television systems came into existence: mechanical television and electronic television. Mechanical television developed out of Nipkow’s disk system and was pioneered by British inventor John Logie Baird. In 1926, Baird gave the world’s first public demonstration of a television system at Selfridge’s department store in London. He used mechanical rotating disks to scan moving images into electrical impulses, which were transmitted by cable to a screen. Here they showed up as a low-resolution pattern of light and dark. Baird’s first television program showed the heads of two ventriloquist dummies, which he operated in front of the camera apparatus out of the audience’s sight. In 1928, Baird extended his system by transmitting a signal between London and New York. The following year, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) adopted his mechanical system, and by 1932, Baird had developed the first commercially viable television system and sold 10,000 sets. Despite its initial success, mechanical television had several technical limitations. Engineers could get no more than about 240 lines of resolution, meaning images would always be slightly fuzzy (most modern televisions produce images of more than 600 lines of resolution). The use of a spinning disk also limited the number of new pictures that could be seen per second, resulting in excessive flickering. The mechanical aspect of television proved to be a disadvantage that required fixing in order for the technology to move forward.

At the same time Baird (and, separately, American inventor Charles Jenkins) was developing the mechanical model, other inventors were working on an electronic television system based on the CRT. While working on his father’s farm, Idaho teenager Philo Farnsworth realized that an electronic beam could scan a picture in horizontal lines, reproducing the image almost instantaneously. In 1927, Farnsworth transmitted the first all-electronic TV picture by rotating a single straight line scratched onto a square piece of painted glass by 90 degrees.

Farnsworth barely profited from his invention; during World War II, the government suspended sales of TV sets, and by the time the war ended, Farnsworth’s original patents were close to expiring. However, following the war, many of his key patents were modified by RCA and were widely applied in broadcasting to improve television picture quality.

Having coexisted for several years, electronic television sets eventually began to replace mechanical systems. With better picture quality, no noise, a more compact size, and fewer visual limitations, the electronic system was far superior to its predecessor and rapidly improving. By 1939, the last mechanical television broadcasts in the United States had been replaced with electronic broadcasts.

Early Broadcasting

Television broadcasting began as early as 1928, when the Federal Radio Commission authorized inventor Charles Jenkins to broadcast from W3XK, an experimental station in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. Silhouette images from motion picture films were broadcast to the general public on a regular basis, at a resolution of just 48 lines. Similar experimental stations ran broadcasts throughout the early 1930s. In 1939, RCA subsidiary NBC (National Broadcasting Company) became the first network to introduce regular television broadcasts, transmitting its inaugural telecast of the opening ceremonies at the New York World’s Fair. The station’s initial broadcasts transmitted to just 400 television sets in the New York area, with an audience of 5,000 to 8,000 people (Lohr, 1940).

Television was initially available only to the privileged few, with sets ranging from $200 to $600—a hefty sum in the 1930s, when the average annual salary was $1,368 (KC Library). RCA offered four types of television receivers, which were sold in high-end department stores such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, and received channels 1 through 5. Early receivers were a fraction of the size of modern TV sets, featuring 5-, 9-, or 12-inch screens. Television sales prior to World War II were disappointing—an uncertain economic climate, the threat of war, the high cost of a television receiver, and the limited number of programs on offer deterred numerous prospective buyers. Many unsold television sets were put into storage and sold after the war.

NBC was not the only commercial network to emerge in the 1930s. RCA radio rival CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) also began broadcasting regular programs. So that viewers would not need a separate television set for each individual network, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) outlined a single technical standard. In 1941, the panel recommended a 525-line system and an image rate of 30 frames per second. It also recommended that all U.S. television sets operate using analog signals (broadcast signals made of varying radio waves). Analog signals were replaced by digital signals (signals transmitted as binary code) in 2009.

With the outbreak of World War II, many companies, including RCA and General Electric, turned their attention to military production. Instead of commercial television sets, they began to churn out military electronic equipment. In addition, the war halted nearly all television broadcasting; many TV stations reduced their schedules to around 4 hours per week or went off the air altogether.

Color Technology

Although it did not become available until the 1950s or popular until the 1960s, the technology for producing color television was proposed as early as 1904, and was demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1928. As with his black-and-white television system, Baird adopted the mechanical method, using a Nipkow scanning disk with three spirals, one for each primary color (red, green, and blue). In 1940, CBS researchers, led by Hungarian television engineer Peter Goldmark, used Baird’s 1928 designs to develop a concept of mechanical color television that could reproduce the color seen by a camera lens.

Following World War II, the National Television System Committee (NTSC) worked to develop an all-electronic color system that was compatible with black-and-white TV sets, gaining FCC approval in 1953. A year later, NBC made the first national color broadcast when it telecast the Tournament of Roses Parade. Despite the television industry’s support for the new technology, it would be another 10 years before color television gained widespread popularity in the United States, and black-and-white TV sets outnumbered color TV sets until 1972 (Klooster, 2009).

The Golden Age of Television

During the so-called “golden age” of television, the percentage of U.S. households that owned a television set rose from 9 percent in 1950 to 95.3 percent in 1970.

The 1950s proved to be the golden age of television, during which the medium experienced massive growth in popularity. Mass-production advances made during World War II substantially lowered the cost of purchasing a set, making television accessible to the masses. In 1945, there were fewer than 10,000 TV sets in the United States. By 1950, this figure had soared to around 6 million, and by 1960 more than 60 million television sets had been sold (World Book Encyclopedia, 2003). Many of the early television program formats were based on network radio shows and did not take advantage of the potential offered by the new medium. For example, newscasters simply read the news as they would have during a radio broadcast, and the network relied on newsreel companies to provide footage of news events. However, during the early 1950s, television programming began to branch out from radio broadcasting, borrowing from theater to create acclaimed dramatic anthologies such as Playhouse 90 (1956) and The U.S. Steel Hour (1953) and producing quality news film to accompany coverage of daily events.

Two new types of programs—the magazine format and the TV spectacular—played an important role in helping the networks gain control over the content of their broadcasts. Early television programs were developed and produced by a single sponsor, which gave the sponsor a large amount of control over the content of the show. By increasing program length from the standard 15-minute radio show to 30 minutes or longer, the networks substantially increased advertising costs for program sponsors, making it prohibitive for a single sponsor. Magazine programs such as the Today show and The Tonight Show , which premiered in the early 1950s, featured multiple segments and ran for several hours. They were also screened on a daily, rather than weekly, basis, drastically increasing advertising costs. As a result, the networks began to sell spot advertisements that ran for 30 or 60 seconds. Similarly, the television spectacular (now known as the television special) featured lengthy music-variety shows that were sponsored by multiple advertisers.

ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire brought the quiz show back to prime-time television after a 40-year absence.

sonicwwtbamfangamer2 – millionaire – CC BY-SA 2.0.

In the mid-1950s, the networks brought back the radio quiz-show genre. Inexpensive and easy to produce, the trend caught on, and by the end of the 1957–1958 season, 22 quiz shows were being aired on network television, including CBS’s $64,000 Question . Shorter than some of the new types of programs, quiz shows enabled single corporate sponsors to have their names displayed on the set throughout the show. The popularity of the quiz-show genre plunged at the end of the decade, however, when it was discovered that most of the shows were rigged. Producers provided some contestants with the answers to the questions in order to pick and choose the most likable or controversial candidates. When a slew of contestants accused the show Dotto of being fixed in 1958, the networks rapidly dropped 20 quiz shows. A New York grand jury probe and a 1959 congressional investigation effectively ended prime-time quiz shows for 40 years, until ABC revived the genre with its launch of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 1999 (Boddy, 1990).

The Rise of Cable Television

Formerly known as Community Antenna Television, or CATV, cable television was originally developed in the 1940s in remote or mountainous areas, including in Arkansas, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, to enhance poor reception of regular television signals. Cable antennas were erected on mountains or other high points, and homes connected to the towers would receive broadcast signals.

In the late 1950s, cable operators began to experiment with microwave to bring signals from distant cities. Taking advantage of their ability to receive long-distance broadcast signals, operators branched out from providing a local community service and began focusing on offering consumers more extensive programming choices. Rural parts of Pennsylvania, which had only three channels (one for each network), soon had more than double the original number of channels as operators began to import programs from independent stations in New York and Philadelphia. The wider variety of channels and clearer reception the service offered soon attracted viewers from urban areas. By 1962, nearly 800 cable systems were operational, serving 850,000 subscribers.

The Evolution of Television

Cable’s exponential growth was viewed as competition by local TV stations, and broadcasters campaigned for the FCC to step in. The FCC responded by placing restrictions on the ability of cable systems to import signals from distant stations, which froze the development of cable television in major markets until the early 1970s. When gradual deregulation began to loosen the restrictions, cable operator Service Electric launched the service that would change the face of the cable television industry— pay TV . The 1972 Home Box Office (HBO) venture, in which customers paid a subscription fee to access premium cable television shows and video-on-demand products, was the nation’s first successful pay cable service. HBO’s use of a satellite to distribute its programming made the network available throughout the United States. This gave it an advantage over the microwave-distributed services, and other cable providers quickly followed suit. Further deregulation provided by the 1984 Cable Act enabled the industry to expand even further, and by the end of the 1980s, nearly 53 million households subscribed to cable television (see Section 6.3 “Current Popular Trends in the Music Industry” ). In the 1990s, cable operators upgraded their systems by building higher-capacity hybrid networks of fiber-optic and coaxial cable. These broadband networks provide a multichannel television service, along with telephone, high-speed Internet, and advanced digital video services, using a single wire.

The Emergence of Digital Television

Following the FCC standards set out during the early 1940s, television sets received programs via analog signals made of radio waves. The analog signal reached TV sets through three different methods: over the airwaves, through a cable wire, or by satellite transmission. Although the system remained in place for more than 60 years, it had several disadvantages. Analog systems were prone to static and distortion, resulting in a far poorer picture quality than films shown in movie theaters. As television sets grew increasingly larger, the limited resolution made scan lines painfully obvious, reducing the clarity of the image. Companies around the world, most notably in Japan, began to develop technology that provided newer, better-quality television formats, and the broadcasting industry began to lobby the FCC to create a committee to study the desirability and impact of switching to digital television . A more efficient and flexible form of broadcast technology, digital television uses signals that translate TV images and sounds into binary code, working in much the same way as a computer. This means they require much less frequency space and also provide a far higher quality picture. In 1987, the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Services began meeting to test various TV systems, both analog and digital. The committee ultimately agreed to switch from analog to digital format in 2009, allowing a transition period in which broadcasters could send their signal on both an analog and a digital channel. Once the switch took place, many older analog TV sets were unusable without a cable or satellite service or a digital converter. To retain consumers’ access to free over-the-air television, the federal government offered $40 gift cards to people who needed to buy a digital converter, expecting to recoup its costs by auctioning off the old analog broadcast spectrum to wireless companies (Steinberg, 2007). These companies were eager to gain access to the analog spectrum for mobile broadband projects because this frequency band allows signals to travel greater distances and penetrate buildings more easily.

The Era of High-Definition Television

Around the same time the U.S. government was reviewing the options for analog and digital television systems, companies in Japan were developing technology that worked in conjunction with digital signals to create crystal-clear pictures in a wide-screen format. High-definition television , or HDTV, attempts to create a heightened sense of realism by providing the viewer with an almost three-dimensional experience. It has a much higher resolution than standard television systems, using around five times as many pixels per frame. First available in 1998, HDTV products were initially extremely expensive, priced between $5,000 and $10,000 per set. However, as with most new technology, prices dropped considerably over the next few years, making HDTV affordable for mainstream shoppers.

HDTV uses a wide-screen format with a different aspect ratio (the ratio of the width of the image to its height) than standard-definition TV. The wide-screen format of HDTV is similar to that of movies, allowing for a more authentic film-viewing experience at home.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0.

As of 2010, nearly half of American viewers are watching television in high definition, the fastest adoption of TV technology since the introduction of the VCR in the 1980s (Stelter, 2010). The new technology is attracting viewers to watch television for longer periods of time. According to the Nielsen Company, a company that measures TV viewership, households with HDTV watch 3 percent more prime-time television —programming screened between 7 and 11 p.m., when the largest audience is available—than their standard-definition counterparts (Stelter, 2010). The same report claims that the cinematic experience of HDTV is bringing families back together in the living room in front of the large wide-screen TV and out of the kitchen and bedroom, where individuals tend to watch television alone on smaller screens. However, these viewing patterns may change again soon as the Internet plays an increasingly larger role in how people view TV programs. The impact of new technologies on television is discussed in much greater detail in Section 9.4 “Influence of New Technologies” of this chapter.

Since 1950, the amount of time the average household spends watching television has almost doubled.

Key Takeaways

• Two key technological developments in the late 1800s played a vital role in the evolution of television: the cathode ray tube and the scanning disk. The cathode ray tube, invented by German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897, was the forerunner of the TV picture tube. It had a fluorescent screen that emitted a visible light (in the form of images) when struck by a beam of electrons. The scanning disk, invented by German inventor Paul Nipkow, was a large, flat metal disk that could be used as a rotating camera. It served as the foundation for experiments on the transmission of visual images for several decades.
• Out of the cathode ray tube and the scanning disk, two types of primitive television systems evolved: mechanical systems and electronic systems. Mechanical television systems had several technical disadvantages: Low resolution caused fuzzy images, and the use of a spinning disk limited the number of new pictures that could be seen per second, resulting in excessive flickering. By 1939, all mechanical television broadcasts in the United States had been replaced by electronic broadcasts.
• Early televisions were expensive, and the technology was slow to catch on because development was delayed during World War II. Color technology was delayed even further because early color systems were incompatible with black-and-white television sets. Following the war, television rapidly replaced radio as the new mass medium. During the “golden age” of television in the 1950s, television moved away from radio formats and developed new types of shows, including the magazine-style variety show and the television spectacular.
• Since 1960, several key technological developments have taken place in the television industry. Color television gained popularity in the late 1960s and began to replace black-and-white television in the 1970s. Cable television, initially developed in the 1940s to cater to viewers in rural areas, switched its focus from local to national television, offering an extensive number of channels. In 2009, the traditional analog system, which had been in place for 60 years, was replaced with digital television, giving viewers a higher-quality picture and freeing up frequency space. As of 2010, nearly half of American viewers have high-definition television, which offers a crystal-clear picture in wide-screen to provide a cinematic experience at home.

Please respond to the following writing prompts. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• Prior to World War II, television was in the early stages of development. In the years following the war, the technical development and growth in popularity of the medium were exponential. Identify two ways television evolved after World War II. How did these changes make postwar television superior to its predecessor?
• Compare the television you use now with the television from your childhood. How have TV sets changed in your lifetime?
• What do you consider the most important technological development in television since the 1960s? Why?

Boddy, William. “The Seven Dwarfs and the Money Grubbers,” in Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism , ed. Patricia Mellencamp (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 98–116.

Federal Communications Commission, “Visionary Period, 1880’s Through 1920’s,” Federal Communications Commission , November 21, 2005, http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/tv/1880-1929.html .

KC Library, Lone Star College: Kinwood, “American Cultural History 1930–1939,” http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade30.html .

Klooster, John. Icons of Invention: The Makers of the Modern World from Gutenberg to Gates (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 442.

Lohr, Lenox. Television Broadcasting (New York: McGraw Hill, 1940).

Steinberg, Jacques. “Converters Signal a New Era for TVs,” New York Times , June 7, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/technology/07digital.html .

Stelter, Brian. “Crystal-Clear, Maybe Mesmerizing,” New York Times , May 23, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/business/media/24def.html .

World Book Encyclopedia (2003), s.v. “Television.”

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

When Was the First TV Invented?

A Historical Timeline of the Evolution of the Television (1831–1996)

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Television was not invented by a single inventor. Instead, many people working together and alone over the years contributed to the evolution of the device.

Joseph Henry 's and Michael Faraday 's work with electromagnetism jumpstarts the era of electronic communication.

Abbe Giovanna Caselli invents his Pantelegraph and becomes the first person to transmit a still image over wires.

Scientist Willoughby Smith experiments with selenium and light, revealing the possibility for inventors to transform images into electronic signals.

Boston civil servant George Carey was thinking about complete television systems and in 1877 he put forward drawings for what he called a selenium camera that would allow people to see by electricity.

Eugen Goldstein coins the term " cathode rays " to describe the light emitted when an electric current was forced through a vacuum tube.

The Late 1870s

Scientists and engineers like Valeria Correa Vaz de Paiva, Louis Figuier, and Constantin Senlecq were suggesting alternative designs for telectroscopes.

Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison theorize about telephone devices that transmit images as well as sound.

Bell's photophone used light to transmit sound and he wanted to advance his device for image sending.

George Carey builds a rudimentary system with light-sensitive cells.

Sheldon Bidwell experiments with his telephotography that was similar to Bell's photophone.

Paul Nipkow sends images over wires using a rotating metal disk technology calling it the electric telescope with 18 lines of resolution.

At the World's Fair in Paris, the first International Congress of Electricity was held. That is where Russian Constantin Perskyi made the first known use of the word "television."

Soon after 1900, the momentum shifted from ideas and discussions to the physical development of television systems. Two major paths in the development of a television system were pursued by inventors.

• Inventors attempted to build mechanical television systems based on Paul Nipkow's rotating disks.
• Inventors attempted to build electronic television systems based on the cathode ray tube developed independently in 1907 by English inventor A.A. Campbell-Swinton and Russian scientist Boris Rosing.

Lee de Forest invents the Audion vacuum tube that proves essential to electronics. The Audion was the first tube with the ability to amplify signals.

Boris Rosing combines Nipkow's disk and a cathode ray tube and builds the first working mechanical TV system.

Campbell Swinton and Boris Rosing suggest using cathode ray tubes to transmit images. Independent of each other, they both develop electronic scanning methods of reproducing images.

Vladimir Zworykin  patents his iconoscope a TV camera tube based on Campbell Swinton's ideas. The iconoscope, which he called an electric eye, becomes the cornerstone for further television development. Zworkin later develops the kinescope for picture display (aka the receiver).

American  Charles Jenkins  and  John Baird  from Scotland each demonstrate the mechanical transmissions of images over wire circuits.

John Baird becomes the first person to transmit moving silhouette images using a mechanical system based on Nipkow's disk.

Charles Jenkin built his Radiovisor and in 1931 and sold it as a kit for consumers to put together.

Vladimir Zworykin patents a  color television  system.

John Baird operates a television system with 30 lines of resolution system running at five frames per second.

Bell Telephone  and the U.S. Department of Commerce conducted the first long-distance use of television that took place between Washington, D.C., and New York City on April 7. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover commented, “Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in (this) new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.”

Philo Farnsworth files for a patent on the first completely electronic television system, which he called the Image Dissector.

The Federal Radio Commission issues the first television station license (W3XK) to Charles Jenkins.

Vladimir Zworykin demonstrates the first practical electronic system for both the transmission and reception of images using his new kinescope tube.

John Baird opens the first TV studio; however, the image quality is poor.

Charles Jenkins broadcasts the first TV commercial.

The BBC begins regular TV transmissions.

Iowa State University (W9XK) starts broadcasting twice-weekly television programs in cooperation with radio station WSUI.

About 200 television sets are in use worldwide.

Coaxial cable—a pure copper or copper-coated wire surrounded by insulation and aluminum covering—is introduced. These cables were and are used to transmit television, telephone, and data signals.

The first experimental coaxial cable lines were laid by AT&T between New York and Philadelphia in 1936. The first regular installation connected Minneapolis and Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in 1941.

The original L1 coaxial cable system could carry 480 telephone conversations or one television program. By the 1970s, L5 systems could carry 132,000 calls or more than 200 television programs.

CBS begins its TV development.

The BBC begins high-definition broadcasts in London.

Brothers and Stanford researchers Russell and Sigurd Varian introduce the Klystron. A Klystron is a high-frequency amplifier for generating microwaves. It is considered the technology that makes UHF-TV possible because it gives the ability to generate the high power required in this spectrum.

Vladimir Zworykin and RCA conduct experimental broadcasts from the  Empire State Building .

Television was demonstrated at the New York World's Fair and the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition.

RCA's David Sarnoff used his company's exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair as a showcase for the first presidential speech (by Franklin D. Roosevelt) on television and to introduce RCA's new line of television receivers, some of which had to be coupled with a radio if you wanted to hear the sound.

The Dumont company starts making TV sets.

Peter Goldmark invents 343 lines of the resolution color television system.

The FCC releases the NTSC standard for black and white TV.

Vladimir Zworykin develops a better camera tube called the Orthicon. The Orthicon has enough light sensitivity to record outdoor events at night.

Peter Goldmark, working for CBS, demonstrated his color television system to the FCC. His system produced color pictures by having a red-blue-green wheel spin in front of a cathode ray tube.

This mechanical means of producing a color picture was used in 1949 to broadcast medical procedures from Pennsylvania and Atlantic City hospitals. In Atlantic City, viewers could come to the convention center to see broadcasts of operations. Reports from the time noted that the realism of seeing surgery in color caused more than a few viewers to faint.

Although Goldmark's mechanical system was eventually replaced by an electronic system, he is recognized as the first to introduce a broadcasting color television system.

Cable television is introduced in Pennsylvania as a means of bringing television to rural areas.

A patent was granted to Louis W. Parker for a low-cost television receiver.

One million homes in the United States have television sets.

The FCC approves the first color television standard, which is replaced by a second in 1953.

Vladimir Zworykin developed a better camera tube called the Vidicon.

Ampex introduces the first practical  videotape  system of broadcast quality.

Robert Adler invents the first practical  remote control  called the Zenith Space Commander. It was preceded by wired remotes and units that failed in sunlight.

The first split-screen broadcast occurs during the debates between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

The All-Channel Receiver Act requires that UHF tuners (channels 14 to 83) be included in all sets.

A joint international collaboration between AT&T, Bell Labs, NASA, British General Post Office, the French National Post, Telegraph, and Telecom Office results in the development and launch of  Telstar , the first satellite to carry TV broadcasts. Broadcasts are now internationally relayed.

Most TV broadcasts are in color.

On July 20, 600 million people watch the first TV transmission made from the moon.

Half the TVs in homes are color sets.

Giant screen projection TV is first marketed.

Sony introduces Betamax, the first home video cassette recorder.

PBS becomes the first station to switch to an all-satellite delivery of programs.

NHK demonstrates HDTV with 1,125 lines of resolution.

Dolby Surround Sound for home sets is introduced.

Direct Broadcast Satellite begins service in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Stereo TV broadcasts are approved.

Super VHS is introduced.

Closed captioning is required on all sets.

The FCC approves ATSC's HDTV standard.

TV sets are in excess of 1 billion homes across the world.

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Who Invented Television?

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: March 12, 2024 | Original: June 29, 2021

The way people watch television has changed dramatically since the medium first burst onto the scene in the 1940s and ‘50s and forever transformed American life. Decade after decade, TV technology has steadily advanced: Color arrived in the 1960s, followed by cable in the ‘70s, VCRs in the ‘80s and high-definition in the late ‘90s. In the 21st century, viewers are just as likely to watch shows on cell phones, laptops and tablets as on a TV set. Amazingly, however, all these technological changes were essentially just improvements on a basic system that has worked since the late 1930s—with roots reaching even further back than that.

Early TV Technology: Mechanical Spinning Discs

No single inventor deserves credit for the television. The idea was floating around long before the technology existed to make it happen, and many scientists and engineers made contributions that built on each other to eventually produce what we know as TV today.

Television’s origins can be traced to the 1830s and ‘40s, when Samuel F.B. Morse developed the telegraph , the system of sending messages (translated into beeping sounds) along wires. Another important step forward came in 1876 in the form of Alexander Graham Bell ’s telephone, which allowed the human voice to travel through wires over long distances.

Both Bell and Thomas Edison speculated about the possibility of telephone-like devices that could transmit images as well as sounds. But it was a German researcher who took the next important step toward developing the technology that made television possible. In 1884, Paul Nipkow came up with a system of sending images through wires via spinning discs. He called it the electric telescope, but it was essentially an early form of mechanical television.

TV Goes Electronic With Cathode Ray Tubes

In the early 1900s, both Russian physicist Boris Rosing and Scottish engineer Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton worked independently to improve on Nipkow’s system by replacing the spinning discs with cathode ray tubes, a technology developed earlier by German physicist Karl Braun. Swinton’s system, which placed cathode ray tubes inside the camera that sent a picture, as well as inside the receiver, was essentially the earliest all-electronic television system.

Russian-born engineer Vladimir Zworykin had worked as Rosing’s assistant before both of them emigrated following the Russian Revolution . In 1923, Zworykin was employed at the Pittsburgh-based manufacturing company Westinghouse when he applied for his first television patent, for the “Iconoscope,” which used cathode ray tubes to transmit images.

Meanwhile, Scottish engineer John Baird gave the world's first demonstration of true television before 50 scientists in central London in 1927. With his new invention, Baird formed the Baird Television Development Company, and in 1928 it achieved the first transatlantic television transmission between London and New York and the first transmission to a ship in the mid-Atlantic. Baird is also credited with giving the first demonstration of both color and stereoscopic television.

In 1929, Zworykin demonstrated his all-electronic television system at a convention of radio engineers. In the audience was David Sarnoff , an executive at Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the nation’s biggest communications company at the time. Born into a poor Jewish family in Minsk, Russia, Sarnoff had come to New York City as a child and began his career as a telegraph operator . He was actually on duty on the night of the Titanic disaster; although he likely didn’t—as he later claimed—coordinate distress messages sent to nearby ships, he did help disseminate the names of the survivors.

Utah Inventor Battles Giant Corporation

Sarnoff was among the earliest to see that television, like radio, had enormous potential as a medium for entertainment as well as communication. Named president of RCA in 1930, he hired Zworykin to develop and improve television technology for the company. Meanwhile, an American inventor named Philo Farnsworth had been working on his own television system. Farnsworth, who grew up on a farm in Utah, reportedly came up with his big idea—a vacuum tube that could dissect images into lines, transmit those lines and turn them back into images—while still a teenager in chemistry class.

In 1927, at the age of 21, Farnsworth completed the prototype of the first working fully electronic TV system, based on this “image dissector.” He soon found himself embroiled in a long legal battle with RCA, which claimed Zworykin’s 1923 patent took priority over Farnsworth’s inventions. The U.S. Patent Office ruled in favor of Farnsworth in 1934 (helped in part by an old high school teacher, who had kept a key drawing by the young inventor), and Sarnoff was eventually forced to pay Farnsworth $1 million in licensing fees. Though viewed by many historians as the true father of television, Farnsworth never earned much more from his invention and was dogged by patent appeal lawsuits from RCA . He later moved on to other fields of research and died in debt in 1971.

Although the BBC had begun the world’s first regular TV broadcasts in 1936, Sarnoff used his company's marketing might to introduce the American public to television in a big way at the World’s Fair in New York City in 1939. Under the umbrella of RCA’s broadcasting division, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Sarnoff broadcast the fair’s opening ceremonies, including a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt .

The Rise of a New Medium

By 1940, there were only a few hundred televisions in use in the United States. With radio still dominating the airwaves— more than 80 percent of American homes owned one at the time—TV use grew slowly over the course of the decade, and by the mid-1940s, the United States had 23 television stations (and counting). By 1949, a year after the debut of the hit variety show Texaco Star Theater , hosted by comedian Milton Berle, the nation boasted 1 million TV sets in use .

By the 1950s, television had truly entered the mainstream, with more than half of all American homes owning TV sets by 1955 . As the number of consumers expanded, new stations were created and more programs broadcast, and by the end of that decade TV had replaced radio as the main source of home entertainment in the United States. During the 1960 presidential election, the young, handsome John F. Kennedy had a noticeable advantage over his less telegenic opponent, Richard M. Nixon in televised debates, and his victory that fall would bring home for many Americans the transformative impact of the medium. 

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History of Television.

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A brief history of television, by decade

Many Americans received their first taste of TV during the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York. But even before then, scientists and inventors were investigating ways that cathode ray tubes and microscopes might allow people to be entertained by moving pictures. That’s right, before you binge-watched your favorite series on a 55-inch plasma screen TV, there was a time when TV technology was much more primitive.

Stacker takes a look at a brief history of television, by decade, examining how television has evolved over the past century. Research was pulled from primary sources like newspaper articles, academic articles, and history websites like the Smithsonian’s online database.

Do you know about the Russian American who created the blueprint for the first TV sets? What about the longest-running U.S. TV show, which first aired in the 1940s? Or the product once frequently seen in shows and during commercial breaks that was banned during the freewheeling 1970s?

Keep reading to find out this information and more—the technological advances and memorable moments in news, sports, and sitcoms, as well as some of the TV-related inventions that didn’t pan out so well, but still influenced television programming of the future.

Television as we know it began to take shape in the 1920s. Vladimir K. Zworykin was born in Russia and became a pioneer of television technology with the development of a kinescope, which recorded images on motion picture film. In 1926, John Logie Baird gave a public demonstration of a television system in London; two years later, the first television stations launched.

The opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York introduced television to a national audience, thanks to RCA and a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. NBC soon began nightly broadcasts. Founded in 1931, DuMont Laboratories quickly became a revolutionary force in the days of early television, both in programming and technology.

As black-and-white TVs became more common in American households, the finishing touches on what we would come to know as color TV were refined in the late 1940s. Pro sports were first broadcast on American stations and ABC formed this decade. In 1947, “Meet the Press” debuted and eventually became TV’s longest-running show.

The concept of morning television was revolutionized with the debut of NBC’s “Today” Show in 1952. In a precursor to “must-see TV,” more than half of the television-watching public tuned in to “ I Love Lucy ” as Lucy went into labor. Elvis Presley made his first TV appearances in the middle of the decade, and soon became proof that television presence could create a worldwide star.

Political discourse and global ambitions were elevated to a new level this decade. The 1960s began with Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy going against each other in a split-screen televised debate, and three years later, breaking news coverage forever changed with Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. Earlier in 1963, televised coverage of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech helped the civil rights leader’s message resonate with millions around the world; the decade ended with audiences similarly expanding their beliefs of what is possible by watching man walk on the moon.

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HBO became available on TV sets in 1972, changing the pay cable format with exclusive movies, groundbreaking original programming, and live sports like boxing. Long a staple of TV advertising, cigarettes were banned from commercials beginning in 1970. Also that year, the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, began operations and created a market for nonprofit educational programming.

In 1980, during a broadcast of “Monday Night Football,” Howard Cosell memorably told audiences of the murder of John Lennon, in a rare crossover of national news during a professional sports broadcast (later examples include the O.J. Simpson chase during the NBA Finals, and news of the death of Osama bin Laden reported during a nationally televised game between the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets). In 1981, MTV launched and played its first music video, the aptly titled “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles, and changed the entertainment industry. Combo TVs, featuring a TV and VCR, gained popularity.

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NBC’s “Must See TV” block of shows created the zenith of sitcom television, spinning out a slew of hits like “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” and “Frasier.” Less successful was the launch of the Olympics “Triplecast” project, which offered round-the-clock, pay-per-view coverage of the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona; although the endeavor flopped, future Olympic Games would feature almost 24-hour coverage across several networks. TiVo and DVR technology was rolled out at the end of the century, soon making VCRs almost obsolete.

Reality TV became all the craze in the 2000s, with shows like “Survivor,” “American Idol,” and “The Amazing Race” drawing some of the biggest rating numbers in history. In 2007, Netflix offered a streaming option for its library of TV shows and movies, and two years later, “NFL RedZone” reshaped pro sports viewing in the U.S., allowing football fans to watch important plays from every NFL game, even those out of market. Flatscreen televisions begin to all but replace the presence of bigger, cube-shaped cathode-ray tube TVs.

Over-the-top streaming became even more popular, with HBO, NBC, and even the WWE creating their own monthly subscription services. Smart TVs become more prevalent in American households, allowing viewers to stream music, skim through YouTube, and watch their favorite shows all on one device. Chromecast was another mind-bending technological advancement; as for the actual shows, the era of prestige television ushered in what many consider some of the best series ever.

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History of television

Oct 10, 2014

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History of television. Hamza Naseer Ammar Khan Haider Khan Rohail Anwer Zulqarnain Bhatti. History of television. Invention of TV was a collective work of different people

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Presentation Transcript

History of television HamzaNaseer Ammar Khan Haider Khan RohailAnwer ZulqarnainBhatti

History of television • Invention of TV was a collective work of different people • Inventors from all over the world had been working on transmitting pictures or objects onto a screen since the 1830’s, but the first physical television didn’t evolve until the 1900’s • German inventor named Paul Nipkow invented the first rotating disk that would allow pictures to transmit over wire in 1884 • This discovery was the first electromechanical television scanning system in the world.

Early Television set Pictures

History of television • The earliest proposal was in 1908, in a paper by A. A. Campbell-Swinton and postulated the use of cathode rays. • The first practical demonstrations of television, though, were developed using electromechanical methods to scan, transmit, and reproduce an image. •  As electronic camera and display tubes were perfected, electromechanical television gave way to all-electronic systems in nearly all applications.

Vladimir Zworykin • Vladimir Zworykin invented the Cathode Ray tube, which he named the Kinescope and started a new era in the history of TV. •  Before the Kinescope, televisions in the 1920’s were mechanical.  The Cathode Ray tube was not only needed for transmission; this device transformed the television into an electronic device.

Charles Jenkins • Charles Jenkins invented a mechanical television that he called “radio vision,” which was said to have transmitted one of the first moving images in 1923 • This American inventor went on to promote his theories in the technology of the television along with other inventors when they transmitted the first live pictures onto a screen • This pilgrim in the history of the television is also famous for creating the first television station in North America.

John Baird • John Baird became famous when he invented the first pictures in motion that were televised in Europe in 1924 •  He later transmitted the human face onto a screen, and during World War II invented the first color picture tube • While it would be some time before color TV became a staple in American households, his contribution to the history of TV was enormous.

Philo Farnsworth,Farnworth • Finally, an American farmer named Philo Farnsworth made a breakthrough in the history of TV at the age of 13, when he discovered a way to transmit images onto a screen by the use of 60 horizontal lines, • It made picture clear • Farnsworth also invented over 165 devices, including the dissector tube, which became the groundwork for televisions we use today.

Early Television • On early TV’s,  you could only watch a play on a screen the size of a dollar coin • The actors also had to take turns in front of the camera, because the screen was only big enough to see one person at a time. •  In 1931 Allen B. Du Mont made the first commercially practical and durable CRT for television • The CRT technology allowed TV screens to get bigger and better. But it's easy to forget that all televisions during these early years were black and white •  It wasn't until 1953 that the introduction of the first color TV broadcasts occurred and manufacturers raced to make color TVs for eager consumers. •  Most people did not get a color TV until the mid 60's.

First Commercial Televisions • People feared the new technology, thinking that televisions could transmit personal conversations onto the TV • The 1928 Baird model mechanical television sets were introduced to the public at the “Olympia” Radio Exhibition in 1929 • These mechanical TV sets projected orange-red blurry images on a screen about the size of a dollar coin. • The first televisions sold for about fifty-five dollars, which only people of wealth could afford

Television in the United Kingdom • Public television broadcasting started in the United Kingdom in 1936 • collection of free and subscription services with 480 channels • The UK's five most watched channels • BBC One • BBC Two • ITV • Channel 4 • Channel 5

Television in the United States • Decentralized, market-oriented television system • No national broadcast programming service • five major U.S. networks are NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and The CW • Independent Channels • The Oprah Winfrey Show • reality television

Modern Television • A television set, also called a television, TV set, TV, or "Telly" (UK) is a device that combines a tuner, display, and speakers for the purpose of viewing television. • Television sets became a popular consumer product after the Second World War, using vacuum tubes and cathode ray tube displays.

Modern Television • After 1953, television became more papolar and common among the masses. • People started keeping TV set in their houses as the an outdoor antenna became most common feature of suburban homes. • The shape of the television also changed in the modern era, it became more slim and light in weight.

Modern Television • Modern television sets incorporate liquid-crystal flat-screen displays, solid-state circuits and microprocessor controls. • They can interface with a variety of video signal sources, allowing the user to view broadcast and subscription cable TV signals or satellite television. • They can also display recorded material on DVD disks or VHS tape, or less common devices such as home security systems, and even over-the-air broadcasts received through an indoor or outdoor antenna.

Modern Television • The screen of the television converted to LCD (liquid crystal display) and now emerging technology is LED, which consume less electricity and it efficiency is more. • Also emerging televisions are now smart TVs, which can process things and also gives you variety of things to do at the same time, having processor and board, such as synchronizing, video calling, retina display, touch display screen LCD and auto features, especial OS – operating system is installed in it.

World Program History • Sept. 11, 1928. First play broadcast by television, "The Queen's Messenger," on W2XAD. The event was reported on page 1 of the New York Times the next day. • The show ran for about 80 minutes and the sound was carried on the General Electric's radio station. • 1929. Milton Berle appears in an experimental TV broadcast. Film of the appearance survives. • May 11, 1929. The "first regularly scheduled TV broadcasts" begin (one source), three nights per week.

World Program History • July 21, 1931. W2XAB New York (CBS) begins broadcasting the first regular seven-day-per-week TV broadcasting schedule in the U. S., 28 hours per week with live pickups and a wide variety of programs. • The first broadcast included Mayor James J. Walker, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. • May 31, 1938. W2XBS telecasts the movie The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel, starring Leslie Howard; the staff projectionist played the last reel out of order, ending the film 20 minutes early. • After this incident, NBC could not obtain first-run movies for many years. 

World Program History • April 30, 1939. President Roosevelt is the first President to appear on television, from the New York World's Fair on W2XBS, now transmitting on 45.25 MHz visual and 49.75 MHz aural. • June 1, 1939. First heavyweight boxing match televised, Max Baer vs. Lou Nova, form Yankee Stadium

History of TV in Pakistan • Initially, transmission was live and as it is because no proper mechanism was there for recording and for display recorded programs. • Mostly, dramas and shows were performed live and telecasted, was no margin for mistake in the live programs. • All the transmissions were black and white, initially. • On 26 November 1962, after an introduction by Wajid Ali, the first news were broadcast which beamed black and white transmission by the PTV.

History of TV in Pakistan • The first program, formatted by Thomas Television International, telecast amateur programs with foreign films; • the television division in the Punjab Province was established with the help of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Colombo Plan, and the Government of Japan.

History of TV in Pakistan • The PTV remained under the private sector management with more than half of the shares were sold to Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in a fear that all shares would fall into the hands of government in the name of greater interest of the country. • President Ayub Khan appointed Ubaid urRahman in the Ministry of Information to continue with the NEC joint venture collaboration in launching the PTV. • The project began with a tent on the back lot of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation by Ubaid urRahman where a transmission tower and a studio were constructed by his team.

History of TV in Pakistan • On 26 November 1964, President Ayub Khan inaugurated the first official television station commencing transmission broadcasts from Lahore. • Then it was followed by Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1965 (then the capital of East Pakistan, a third centre was established in Rawalpindi and Islamabad in 1965 and the fourth in Karachi in 1966. • On 29 May 1967, the private company established as "Pakistan Television Corporation" under the Company Act, 1913, with private sector remains charged with broadcasting the television.

Historical Programs in Pakistani TV History • During the decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, PTV dramas and teleplays were considered as the best in the Indian subcontinent.  • These included Khuda Ki Basti, Unkahi, Tanhaiyaan, AanganTerha, Fifty Fifty, Studio Dhai (2-1/2), Studio Ponay Teen (2-3/4), AndehraUjala, SonaChandi

Historical Programs in Pakistani TV History • Uncle Urfi, Taleem-e-Baalighan, Alif Noon, Waaris, DhoopKinare, Sunehray Din, Alpha Bravo Charlie, Ana, AkhriChatan, ZairZabar and block buster serials like Pesh, Dhuwan, Kath Putli, Wafa Ham NibhaeinGai, Bandhan, Kaghaz Kay Phool, Muqqdas, Bint-e-Adam, Malangi, Sawan, SheelaBagh, Tinkay, 

Historical Programs in Pakistani TV History • AisaBhiHotaHaibhar, rasta de zindgi, Chuban, KuchLamhay, khuwaheshokaysarab, and many others • A few of the programs were very popular even in India. Indian streets becomes deserted when few of the most popular TV dramas were broadcast. Although Pakistan and India are the arch rivals, still the dramas of PTV were very popular in India.

Early TV Stations in Pakistan • PTV 1 Changed its name to PTV Home • PTV 2 Shut Down • PTV World Changed its name to PTV World News • PTV World News Changed its name to PTV News • Channel 3 Shut Down • Prime Entertainment Shut Down • Sunday TV Shut Down • OYE TV Shut Down • Uni Plus Shut Down • Musix Station Shut Down • Fun TV Shut Down • The Musik Replaced with ARY Musik • Rung TV Shut Down

Early TV Stations in Pakistan • Pak TV Shut Down • Mashriq TV Shut Down • FORTUNE TV Shut Down • KOOK TV - Replaced with 8XM Jalwa • NTM Shut Down • PTN Shut Down • STN Shut Down • UTN Shut Down • ShamalTVShamal TV Network, First HindkoChannel

Private TV channels in Pakistan • Indus Media Group (IMG) owns and operates INDUS TV NETWORK (PRIVATE) LIMITED and the INDUS brand of television channels in various global markets. • IMG entered the Pakistani market in 2000 with the launch of its flagship channel INDUS VISION – the first independent satellite channel and a drama channel.

Private TV channels in Pakistan GEO • Karachi-based Pakistani news channel • fully owned and operated by Jang Group • started its broadcasting in November 2005

Private TV channels in Pakistan ARY NEWS • Dubai-based Pakistani news channel • launched in 26 September 2004 • ARY One World until 2009 when it was re-branded as ARY News

Private TV channels in Pakistan HUM TV • 24-hour Pakistani entertainment TV channel based in Karachi • first brand of Eye Television Network Limited, Pakistan • Launched on January 17, 2005 • Masala TV was launched on 22 November 2006 in Pakistan • Style 360 is an in fashion, lifestyle and entertainment television channel

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