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![Family watching television 1958](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Family_watching_television_1958.jpg)
The concept of
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
was the work of many individuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first practical transmissions of moving images over a radio system used mechanical rotating perforated disks to scan a scene into a time-varying signal that could be reconstructed at a receiver back into an approximation of the original image. Development of television was interrupted by the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
. After the end of the war, all-electronic methods of scanning and displaying images became standard. Several different standards for addition of color to transmitted images were developed with different regions using technically incompatible signal standards.
Television broadcasting expanded rapidly after World War II, becoming an important
mass medium
Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.
Broadcast media transmit information ...
for advertising, propaganda, and entertainment.
Television broadcasts can be distributed over the air by VHF and UHF radio signals from terrestrial transmitting stations, by
microwave
Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ra ...
signals from Earth orbiting satellites, or by wired transmission to individual consumers by
cable TV
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
. Many countries have moved away from the original analog radio transmission methods and now use
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...
standards, providing additional operating features and conserving radio spectrum bandwidth for more profitable uses. Television programming can also be distributed over the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
.
Television broadcasting may be funded by advertising revenue, by private or governmental organizations prepared to underwrite the cost, or in some countries, by television license fees paid by owners of receivers. Some services, especially carried by cable or satellite, are paid by subscriptions.
Television broadcasting is supported by continuing technical developments such as long-haul microwave networks, which allow distribution of programming over a wide geographic area. Video recording methods allow programming to be edited and replayed for later use. Three-dimensional television has been used commercially but has not received wide consumer acceptance owing to the limitations of display methods.
Mechanical television
Facsimile transmission systems pioneered methods of mechanically scanning graphics in the early 19th century. The Scottish inventor
Alexander Bain introduced the facsimile machine between 1843 and 1846. The English physicist
Frederick Bakewell
Frederick Collier Bakewell (29 September 1800 – 26 September 1869) was an English physicist who improved on the concept of the facsimile machine introduced by Alexander Bain in 1842 and demonstrated a working laboratory version at the 1 ...
demonstrated a working laboratory version in 1851. The first practical facsimile system, working on telegraph lines, was developed and put into service by the Italian priest
Giovanni Caselli
Giovanni Caselli (8 June 1815 – 25 April 1891) was an Italian priest, inventor, and physicist. He studied electricity and magnetism as a child which led to his invention of the pantelegraph (also known as the universal telegraph or all-purpose ...
from 1856 onward.
Willoughby Smith, an English electrical engineer, discovered the
photoconductivity
Photoconductivity is an optical and electrical phenomenon in which a material becomes more electrically conductive due to the absorption of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, ultraviolet light, infrared light, or gamma radiation ...
of the element
selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and tellurium, ...
in 1873. This led, among other technologies, towards
telephotography
Wirephoto, telephotography or radiophoto is the sending of pictures by telegraph, telephone or radio.
Édouard Belin's Bélinographe of 1913, which scanned using a photocell and transmitted over ordinary phone lines, formed the basis for the W ...
, a way to send still images through
phone lines
A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or o ...
, as early as in 1895, as well as any kind of electronic
image scanning
An image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting or an object and converts it to a digital image. Commonly used in offices are variations of the desktop ''flatbed scanner'' w ...
devices, both still and in motion, and ultimately to
TV camera
A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though its use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images on film). ...
s.
![Nipkow disk](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Nipkow_disk.svg)
As a 23-year-old German university student,
Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the
Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk (sometimes Anglicized as Nipkov disk; patented in 1884), also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, rotating, geometrically operating image scanning device, patented in 1885 by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow. This scanning disk was a funda ...
in 1884.
This was a spinning disk with a spiral pattern of holes in it, so each hole scanned a line of the image. Although he never built a working model of the system, variations of Nipkow's spinning-disk "
image rasterizer" became exceedingly common.
[ ]Constantin Perskyi
Constantin Dmitrievich Perskyi (Константин Дмитриевич Перский) (2 June 18545 April 1906) was a Russian scientist who is credited with coining the word television (''télévision'') in a paper that he presented in French ...
had coined the word ''television'' in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
on August 24, 1900. Perskyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others. However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology, by Lee de Forest
Lee de Forest (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961) was an American inventor and a fundamentally important early pioneer in electronics. He invented the first electronic device for controlling current flow; the three-element " Audion" triode v ...
and Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn (20 May 1870 – 21 December/22 December 1945) was a German physicist, mathematician and inventor. He was involved in the development of the fax machine, specifically the transmission of photographs or telephotography, known as the ...
among others, made the design practical.["Sending Photographs by Telegraph"](_blank)
, ''The New York Times'', Sunday Magazine, September 20, 1907, p. 7.
The first demonstration of the ''instantaneous'' transmission of images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. A matrix of 64 selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and tellurium, ...
cells, individually wired to a mechanical commutator
In mathematics, the commutator gives an indication of the extent to which a certain binary operation fails to be commutative. There are different definitions used in group theory and ring theory.
Group theory
The commutator of two elements, ...
, served as an electronic retina
The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which the ...
. In the receiver, a type of Kerr cell
The Kerr effect, also called the quadratic electro-optic (QEO) effect, is a change in the refractive index of a material in response to an applied electric field. The Kerr effect is distinct from the Pockels effect in that the induced index chang ...
modulated the light and a series of variously angled mirrors attached to the edge of a rotating disc scanned the modulated beam onto the display screen. A separate circuit regulated synchronization. The 8×8 pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...
resolution in this proof-of-concept demonstration was just sufficient to clearly transmit individual letters of the alphabet. An updated image was transmitted "several times" each second.
In 1911, Boris Rosing
Boris Lvovich Rosing (russian: Борис Львович Розинг; 23 April 1869 (old style, 5 May 1869, new style). – 20 April 1933) was a Russian scientist and inventor in the field of television.
Biography
Boris Rosing was born in Sa ...
and his student Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin; or with the patronymic as ''Kosmich''; or russian: Кузьмич, translit=Kuz'mich, label=none. Zworykin anglicized his name to ''Vladimir Kosma Zworykin'', replacing the patronymic with the name ''Kosma'' as a middle ...
created a system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the "Braun
Braun is a common surname, originating from the German word for the color brown. The name is the 22nd most common family name in Germany. Many German emigrants to the United States also changed their name to ''Brown'' (''see Brown (surname)''). ...
tube" (cathode-ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a Phosphorescence, phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms (osci ...
or "CRT") in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy".
In May 1914, Archibald Low
Archibald Montgomery Low (17 October 1888 – 13 September 1956) developed the first powered drone aircraft. He was an English consulting engineer, research physicist and inventor, and author of more than 40 books.
Low has been called the "fa ...
gave the first demonstration of his television system at the Institute of Automobile Engineers in London. He called his system 'Televista'. The events were widely reported worldwide and were generally entitled ''Seeing By Wireless''. The demonstrations had so impressed Harry Gordon Selfridge
Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr. (11 January 1858 – 8 May 1947) was an American retail magnate who founded the London-based department store Selfridges. His 20-year leadership of Selfridges led to his becoming one of the most respected and wealthy ...
that he included Televista in his 1914 Scientific and Electrical Exhibition at his store. It also interested Deputy Consul General Carl Raymond Loop who filled a US consular report from London containing considerable detail about Low's system. Low's invention employed a matrix detector (camera) and a mosaic screen (receiver/viewer) with an electro-mechanical scanning mechanism that moved a rotating roller over the cell contacts providing a multiplex signal to the camera/viewer data link. The receiver employed a similar roller. The two rollers were synchronised. It was unlike any other TV system of the 20th Century and in some respects, Low had a digital TV system 80 years before modern digital TV. World War One
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
began shortly after these demonstrations in London and Low became involved in sensitive military work, and so he did not apply for a patent until 1917. His "Televista" Patent No. 191,405 titled "Improved Apparatus for the Electrical Transmission of Optical Images" was finally published in 1923; delayed possibly for security reasons. The patent states that the scanning roller had a row of conductive contacts corresponding to the cells in each row of the array and arranged to sample each cell in turn as the roller rotated. The receiver's roller was similarly constructed and each revolution addressed a row of cells as the rollers traversed over their array of cells. Loops report tells us that... "The receiver is made up of a series of cells operated by the passage of polarized light through thin slats of steel, and at the receiver the object before the transmitter is reproduced as a flickering image" and "The roller is driven by a motor of 3,000 revolutions per minute, and the resulting variations of light are transmitted along an ordinary conducting wire." and the patent states "into each... space I place a selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and tellurium, ...
cell". Low covered the cells with a liquid dielectric and the roller connected with each cell in turn through this medium as it rotated and travelled over the array. The receiver used bimetallic elements that acted as shutters "transmitting more or less light according to the current passing through them..." as stated in the patent. Low said the main deficiency of the system was the selenium cells used for converting light waves
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 terahe ...
into electric impulses, which responded too slowly thus spoiling the effect. Loop reported that "The system has been tested through a resistance equivalent to a distance of four miles, but in the opinion of Doctor Low there is no reason why it should not be equally effective over far greater distances. The patent states that this connection could be either wired or wireless. The cost of the apparatus is considerable because the conductive sections of the roller are made of platinum..."
In 1914, the demonstrations certainly garnered a lot of media interest, with ''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' reporting on 30 May:
On 29 May, the ''Daily Chronicle
The 'Daily Chronicle' was a British newspaper that was published from 1872 to 1930 when it merged with the '' Daily News'' to become the ''News Chronicle''.
Foundation
The ''Daily Chronicle'' was developed by Edward Lloyd out of a local newspap ...
'' reported:
In 1927, Ronald Frank Tiltman asked Low to write the introduction to his book in which he acknowledged Low's work, referring to Low's related patents with an apology that they were of 'too technical a nature for inclusion'. Later in his 1938 patent Low envisioned a much larger 'camera' cell density achieved by a deposition process of caesium alloy on an insulated substrate that was subsequently sectioned to divide it into cells, the essence of today's technology. Low's system failed for various reasons, mostly due to its inability to reproduce an image by reflected light and simultaneously depict gradations of light and shade. It can be added to the list of systems, like that of Boris Rosing
Boris Lvovich Rosing (russian: Борис Львович Розинг; 23 April 1869 (old style, 5 May 1869, new style). – 20 April 1933) was a Russian scientist and inventor in the field of television.
Biography
Boris Rosing was born in Sa ...
, that predominantly reproduced shadows. With subsequent technological advances, many such ideas could be made viable decades later, but at the time they were impractical.
In 1923, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demo ...
envisaged a complete television system that employed the Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk (sometimes Anglicized as Nipkov disk; patented in 1884), also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, rotating, geometrically operating image scanning device, patented in 1885 by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow. This scanning disk was a funda ...
. Nipkow's was an obscure, forgotten patent and not at all obvious at the time. He created his first prototypes in Hastings, where he was recovering from a serious illness. In late 1924, Baird returned to London to continue his experiments there. On March 25, 1925, Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette
A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...
images in motion, at Selfridge's
Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of high-end department stores in the United Kingdom that is operated by Selfridges Retail Limited, part of the Selfridges Group of department stores. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge ...
Department Store in London. Since human faces had inadequate contrast to show up on his system at this time, he televised cut-outs and by mid-1925 the head of a ventriloquist's dummy he later named "Stooky Bill", whose face was painted to highlight its contrast. "Stooky Bill" also did not complain about the long hours of staying still in front of the blinding level of light used in these experiments. On October 2, 1925, suddenly the dummy's head came through on the screen with incredible clarity. On January 26, 1926, he demonstrated the transmission of images of real human faces for 40 distinguished scientists of the Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, inc ...
. This is widely regarded as being the world's first public television demonstration. Baird's system used Nipkow disks for both scanning the image and displaying it. A brightly illuminated subject was placed in front of a spinning Nipkow disk set with lenses that swept images across a static photocell. At this time, it is believed that it was a thallium sulphide (Thalofide) cell, developed by Theodore Case
Theodore Willard Case (December 12, 1888 – May 13, 1944) was an American chemist and inventor known for the invention of the Movietone sound-on-film system.
Early life and education
Theodore Willard Case was born in 1888 in Auburn, New Yo ...
in the US, that detected the light reflected from the subject. This was transmitted by radio to a receiver unit, where the video signal was applied to a neon bulb behind a similar Nipkow disk synchronised with the first. The brightness of the neon lamp was varied in proportion to the brightness of each spot on the image. As each lens in the disk passed by, one scan line
A scan line (also scanline) is one line, or row, in a raster scanning pattern, such as a line of video on a cathode ray tube (CRT) display of a television set or computer monitor.
On CRT screens the horizontal scan lines are visually discernible ...
of the image was reproduced. With this early apparatus, Baird's disks had 16 lenses, yet in conjunction with the other discs used produced moving images with 32 scan-lines, just enough to recognize a human face. He began with a frame-rate of five per second, which was soon increased to a rate of 12 frames per second and 30 scan-lines.
In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over of telephone line between London and Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
. In 1928, Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and the first shore-to-ship transmission. In 1929, he became involved in the first experimental mechanical television service in Germany. In November of the same year, Baird and Bernard Natan of Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...
established France's first television company, Télévision-Baird-Natan. In 1931, he made the first outdoor remote broadcast, of the Derby
Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby gai ...
. In 1932, he demonstrated ultra-short wave
Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves ( radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter.
Frequencies immediately below V ...
television. Baird Television Limited's mechanical systems reached a peak of 240 lines of resolution at the company's Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace may refer to:
Places Canada
* Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick
* Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario
* Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition building ...
studios, and later on BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
television broadcasts in 1936, though for action shots (as opposed to a seated presenter) the mechanical system did not scan the televised scene directly. Instead, a
17.5mm film was shot, rapidly developed, and then scanned while the film was still wet.
The
Scophony
Scophony was a sophisticated mechanical television system developed in Britain by Scophony Limited. A black and white image was produced by an early form of acousto-optic modulation of a bright light using a piezoelectric crystal and water or othe ...
Company's success with their mechanical system in the 1930s enabled them to take their operations to the US when
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
curtailed their business in Britain.
An American inventor,
Charles Francis Jenkins
Charles Francis Jenkins (August 22, 1867 – June 6, 1934) was an American engineer who was a pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies. His businesses incl ...
, also pioneered the television. He published an article on "Motion Pictures by Wireless" in 1913, but it was not until December 1923 that he transmitted moving silhouette images for witnesses. On June 13, 1925, Jenkins publicly demonstrated the synchronized transmission of silhouette pictures. In 1925, Jenkins used a
Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk (sometimes Anglicized as Nipkov disk; patented in 1884), also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, rotating, geometrically operating image scanning device, patented in 1885 by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow. This scanning disk was a funda ...
and transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles (from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, D.C.), using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.
He was granted U.S. patent 1,544,156 (Transmitting Pictures over Wireless) on June 30, 1925 (filed March 13, 1922).
On December 25, 1926,
Kenjiro Takayanagi
was a Japanese engineer and a pioneer in the development of television. Although he failed to gain much recognition in the West, he built the world's first all-electronic television receiver, and is referred to as "the father of Japanese televisi ...
demonstrated a television system with a 40-line resolution that employed a Nipkow disk scanner and
CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan. This prototype is still on display at the Takayanagi Memorial Museum at
Shizuoka University
is a List of national universities in Japan, national university in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.
Shizuoka University is well known in the field of engineering, in creative innovation, and in the invention of next generation technology, with ...
, Hamamatsu Campus.
[''Kenjiro Takayanagi: The Father of Japanese Television''](_blank)
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), 2002, retrieved 2009-05-23. By 1927, Takayanagi improved the resolution to 100 lines, which was not surpassed until 1931. In Japan he is viewed as the man who completed the first all-electronic television. His research toward creating a production model was halted by the US after Japan lost
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
In 1927, a team from
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...
demonstrated television transmission from Washington to New York, using a prototype flat panel plasma display to make the images visible to an audience. The monochrome display measured two feet by three feet and had 2500 pixels.
Herbert E. Ives
Herbert Eugene Ives (July 31, 1882 – November 13, 1953) was a scientist and engineer who headed the development of facsimile and television systems at AT&T in the first half of the twentieth century. He is best known for the 1938 Ives–Stilwel ...
and
Frank Gray
Francis Tierney Gray (born 27 October 1954) is a Scottish Association football, football manager (association football), manager and former player. He played for Leeds United F.C., Leeds United, Nottingham Forest F.C., Nottingham Forest, Sunde ...
of
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...
gave a dramatic demonstration of mechanical television on April 7, 1927. The reflected-light television system included both small and large viewing screens. The small receiver had a two-inch-wide by 2.5-inch-high screen. The large receiver had a screen 24 inches wide by 30 inches high. Both sets were capable of reproducing reasonably accurate, monochromatic moving images. Along with the pictures, the sets also received synchronized sound. The system transmitted images over two paths: first, a
copper wire
Copper has been used in electrical wiring since the invention of the electromagnet and the telegraph in the 1820s. The invention of the telephone in 1876 created further demand for copper wire as an electrical conductor.
Copper is the electr ...
link from Washington to New York City, then a radio link from
Whippany, New Jersey
Whippany is a unincorporated community located within Hanover Township in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. Whippany's name is derived from the Whippanong Native Americans, a tribe that once inhabited the area. Whippanong meant "place ...
. Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality. Subjects of the telecast included
Secretary of Commerce
The United States secretary of commerce (SecCom) is the head of the United States Department of Commerce. The secretary serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all matters relating to commerce. The secretary rep ...
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
. A
flying-spot scanner
A flying-spot scanner (FSS) uses a scanning source of a spot of light, such as a high-resolution, high-light-output, low-persistence cathode ray tube (CRT), to scan an image. Usually the image to be scanned is on photographic film, such as motion ...
beam illuminated these subjects. The scanner that produced the beam had a 50-aperture disk. The disc revolved at a rate of 18 frames per second, capturing one frame about every 56
millisecond
A millisecond (from '' milli-'' and second; symbol: ms) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one thousandth (0.001 or 10−3 or 1/1000) of a second and to 1000 microseconds.
A unit of 10 milliseconds may be called ...
s. (Today's systems typically transmit 30 or 60 frames per second, or one frame every 33.3 or 16.7 milliseconds respectively.) Television historian Albert Abramson underscored the significance of the Bell Labs demonstration: "It was in fact the best demonstration of a mechanical television system ever made to this time. It would be several years before any other system could even begin to compare with it in picture quality."
In 1928,
WRGB
WRGB (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Schenectady, New York, United States, serving the Capital District as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside CW affiliate WCWN (channel 45, also licensed to Sc ...
(then W2XB) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
facility in
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...
. It was popularly known as "
WGY Television".
Meanwhile, in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
,
Léon Theremin
Leon Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Termen rus, Лев Сергеевич Термéн, p=ˈlʲef sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ tɨrˈmʲen; – 3 November 1993) was a Russian and Soviet inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one o ...
had been developing a mirror drum-based television, starting with 16-line resolution in 1925, then 32 lines and eventually 64 using
interlacing in 1926. As part of his thesis on May 7, 1926, Theremin electrically transmitted and then projected near-simultaneous moving images on a five-foot square screen.
By 1927 he achieved an image of 100 lines, a resolution that was not surpassed until 1931 by RCA, with 120 lines.
Because only a limited number of holes could be made in the disks, and disks beyond a certain diameter became impractical, image resolution in mechanical television broadcasts was relatively low, ranging from about 30 lines up to about 120. Nevertheless, the image quality of 30-line transmissions steadily improved with technical advances, and by 1933 the UK broadcasts using the Baird system were remarkably clear. A few systems ranging into the 200-line region also went on the air. Two of these were the 180-line system that Compagnie des Compteurs (CDC) installed in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
in 1935, and the 180-line system that
Peck Television Corp. Peck Television Corp. was a private company headquartered in Montreal, Canada that was a pioneer in television. William Hoyt Peck developed a mechanical television
Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is a television system that ...
started in 1935 at station VE9AK in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
.
Anton Codelli (22 March 1875 – 28 April 1954), a
Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
n nobleman, was a passionate inventor. Among other things, he had devised a miniature refrigerator for cars and a new rotary engine design. Intrigued by television, he decided to apply his technical skills to the new medium. At the time, the biggest challenge in television technology was to transmit images with sufficient resolution to reproduce recognizable figures. As recounted by media historian Melita Zajc, most inventors were determined to increase the number of lines used by their systems – some were approaching what was then the magic number of 100 lines. But Codelli had a different idea. In 1929, he developed a television device with a single line – but one that formed a continuous spiral on the screen. Codelli based his ingenious design on his understanding of the human eye. He knew that objects seen in peripheral vision don't need to be as sharp as those in the center. Codelli's mechanical television system, whose image was sharpest in the middle, worked well, and he was soon able to transmit images of his wife, Ilona von Drasche-Lazar, over the air.
Despite the backing of the German electronics giant Telefunken, however, Codelli's television system never became a commercial reality. Electronic television ultimately emerged as the dominant system, and Codelli moved on to other projects. His invention was largely forgotten.
The advancement of all-electronic television (including
image dissector
An image dissector, also called a dissector tube, is a video camera tube in which photocathode emissions create an "electron image" which is then swept up, down and across an anode to produce an electrical signal representing the visual image. It e ...
s and other camera tubes and
cathode ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), pictu ...
s for the reproducer) marked the beginning of the end for mechanical systems as the dominant form of television. Mechanical TV usually only produced small images. It was the main type of TV until the 1930s. The last mechanical television broadcasts ended in 1939 at stations run by a handful of public universities in the United States.
Electronic television
In 1897
J. J. Thomson
Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered.
In 1897, Thomson showed that ...
, an English
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
, in his three famous experiments was able to deflect cathode rays, a fundamental function of the modern
cathode-ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a Phosphorescence, phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms (osci ...
(CRT). The earliest version of the CRT was invented by the German physicist
Karl Ferdinand Braun
Karl Ferdinand Braun (; 6 June 1850 – 20 April 1918) was a German electrical engineer, inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology: he shared the ...
in 1897 and is also known as the ''Braun tube''. It was a
cold-cathode
A cold cathode is a cathode that is not electrically heated by a filament.A negatively charged electrode emits electrons or is the positively charged terminal. For more, see field emission. A cathode may be considered "cold" if it emits more ele ...
diode
A diode is a two-terminal electronic component that conducts current primarily in one direction (asymmetric conductance); it has low (ideally zero) resistance in one direction, and high (ideally infinite) resistance in the other.
A diode ...
, a modification of the
Crookes tube
A Crookes tube (also Crookes–Hittorf tube) is an early experimental electrical discharge tube, with partial vacuum, invented by English physicist William Crookes and others around 1869-1875, in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were dis ...
with a
phosphor
A phosphor is a substance that exhibits the phenomenon of luminescence; it emits light when exposed to some type of radiant energy. The term is used both for fluorescent or phosphorescent substances which glow on exposure to ultraviolet or vi ...
-coated screen. A cathode ray tube was successfully demonstrated as a displaying device by the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
Professor Max Dieckmann in 1906, his experimental results were published by the journal ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
'' in 1909.
[
] In 1908
Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton
Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton FRS (18 October 1863 – 19 February 1930) was a Scottish consulting electrical engineer, who provided the theoretical basis for the electronic television, two decades before the technology existed to implement ...
, fellow of the UK
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
, published a letter in the scientific journal ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'' in which he described how "distant electric vision" could be achieved by using a
cathode ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), pictu ...
(or "Braun" tube) as both a transmitting and receiving device.
[
][
] He expanded on his vision in a speech given in London in 1911 and reported in ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' and the ''Journal of the
Röntgen Society''.
[
] In a letter to ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'' published in October 1926, Campbell-Swinton also announced the results of some "not very successful experiments" he had conducted with G. M. Minchin and J. C. M. Stanton. They had attempted to generate an electrical signal by projecting an image onto a selenium-coated metal plate that was simultaneously scanned by a
cathode ray beam.
[
] These experiments were conducted before March 1914, when Minchin died.
[
] They were later repeated in 1937 by two different teams, H. Miller and J. W. Strange from
EMI
EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...
,
[
] and H. Iams and A. Rose from
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
.
[
] Both teams succeeded in transmitting "very faint" images with the original Campbell-Swinton's selenium-coated plate. Although others had experimented with using a cathode ray tube as a receiver, the concept of using one as a transmitter was novel. The first cathode ray tube to use a
hot cathode
In vacuum tubes and gas-filled tubes, a hot cathode or thermionic cathode is a cathode electrode which is heated to make it emit electrons due to thermionic emission. This is in contrast to a cold cathode, which does not have a heating element. ...
was developed by
John B. Johnson (who gave his name to the term
Johnson noise
Johnson is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin meaning "Son of John". It is the second most common in the United States and 154th most common in the world. As a common family name in Scotland, Johnson is occasionally a variation of ''Johnston'', a ...
) and Harry Weiner Weinhart of
Western Electric
The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...
, and became a commercial product in 1922.
The problem of low sensitivity to light resulting in low electrical output from transmitting or "camera" tubes would be solved with the introduction of charge-storage technology by the Hungarian engineer
Kálmán Tihanyi
Kálmán Tihanyi or in English language technical literature often mentioned as Coloman Tihanyi or Koloman Tihanyi (28 April 1897 – 26 February 1947) was a Hungarian physicist, electrical engineer and inventor. One of the early pioneers o ...
in the beginning of 1924.
[Kálmán Tihanyi (1897–1947)](_blank)
, ''IEC Techline'', International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), 2009-07-15.
In 1926, Tihanyi designed a television system utilizing fully electronic scanning and display elements and employing the principle of "charge storage" within the scanning (or "camera") tube.
His solution was a camera tube that accumulated and stored electrical charges ("photoelectrons") within the tube throughout each scanning cycle. The device was first described in a patent application he filed in
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
in March 1926 for a television system he dubbed "Radioskop".
["Kálmán Tihanyi's 1926 Patent Application 'Radioskop'"](_blank)
, ''Memory of the World'', United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
), 2005, retrieved 2009-01-29. After further refinements included in a 1928 patent application,
Tihanyi's patent was declared void in Great Britain in 1930,
[Tihanyi, Koloman, ''Improvements in television apparatus''](_blank)
. European Patent Office, Patent No. GB313456. Convention date UK application: 1928-06-11, declared void and published: 1930-11-11, retrieved: 2013-04-25. and so he applied for patents in the United States. Although his breakthrough would be incorporated into the design of
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
's "
iconoscope" in 1931, the U.S. patent for Tihanyi's transmitting tube would not be granted until May 1939. The patent for his receiving tube had been granted the previous October. Both patents had been purchased by RCA prior to their approval.
Tihanyi's charge storage idea remains a basic principle in the design of imaging devices for television to the present day.
On December 25, 1926,
Kenjiro Takayanagi
was a Japanese engineer and a pioneer in the development of television. Although he failed to gain much recognition in the West, he built the world's first all-electronic television receiver, and is referred to as "the father of Japanese televisi ...
demonstrated a TV system with a 40-line resolution that employed a CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan.
Takayanagi did not apply for a patent.
On September 7, 1927,
Philo Farnsworth
Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor and television pioneer. He made many crucial contributions to the early development of all-electronic television. He is best known for his 1927 invention of t ...
's
image dissector
An image dissector, also called a dissector tube, is a video camera tube in which photocathode emissions create an "electron image" which is then swept up, down and across an anode to produce an electrical signal representing the visual image. It e ...
camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
.
[Postman, Neil, "Philo Farnsworth"](_blank)
''The TIME 100: Scientists & Thinkers'', TIME.com, 1999-03-29, retrieved 2009-07-28.
, ''The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco'', retrieved 2009-07-15. By September 3, 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press. This is widely regarded as the first electronic television demonstration.
In 1929, the system was further improved by elimination of a motor generator, so that his television system now had no mechanical parts. That year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images with his system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife Elma ("Pem") with her eyes closed (possibly due to the bright lighting required).
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zworykin was also experimenting with the cathode ray tube to create and show images. While working for
Westinghouse Electric
The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in ...
in 1923, he began to develop an electronic camera tube. But in a 1925 demonstration, the image was dim, had low contrast and poor definition, and was stationary. Zworykin's imaging tube never got beyond the laboratory stage. But RCA, which acquired the Westinghouse patent, asserted that the patent for Farnsworth's 1927 image dissector was written so broadly that it would exclude any other electronic imaging device. Thus RCA, on the basis of Zworykin's 1923 patent application, filed a
patent interference
An interference proceeding, also known as a priority contest, is an inter partes proceeding to determine the priority issues of multiple patent applications. It is a proceeding unique to the patent law of the United States. Unlike in most other co ...
suit against Farnsworth. The
U.S. Patent Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
examiner disagreed in a 1935 decision, finding priority of invention for Farnsworth against Zworykin. Farnsworth claimed that Zworykin's 1923 system would be unable to produce an electrical image of the type to challenge his patent. Zworykin received a patent in 1928 for a color transmission version of his 1923 patent application,
[Zworykin, Vladimir K., Television System]
. Patent No. 1691324, U.S. Patent Office. Filed 1925-07-13, issued 1928-11-13. Retrieved 2009-07-28 he also divided his original application in 1931.
[Zworykin, Vladimir K., Television System](_blank)
. Patent No. 2022450, U.S. Patent Office. Filed 1923-12-29, issued 1935-11-26. Retrieved 2010-05-10. Zworykin was unable or unwilling to introduce evidence of a working model of his tube that was based on his 1923 patent application. In September 1939, after losing an appeal in the courts and determined to go forward with the commercial manufacturing of television equipment, RCA agreed to pay Farnsworth US$1 million over a ten-year period, in addition to license payments, to use Farnsworth's patents.
In 1933 RCA introduced an improved camera tube that relied on Tihanyi's charge storage principle.
[
] Dubbed the Iconoscope by Zworykin, the new tube had a light sensitivity of about 75,000 lux, and thus was claimed to be much more sensitive than Farnsworth's image dissector. However, Farnsworth had overcome his power problems with his Image Dissector through the invention of a unique "multipactor" device that he began work on in 1930, and demonstrated in 1931.
This small tube could amplify a signal reportedly to the 60th power or better
and showed great promise in all fields of electronics. A problem with the multipactor, unfortunately, was that it wore out at an unsatisfactory rate.
At the
Berlin Radio Show
The IFA ( ) or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (International radio exhibition Berlin, a.k.a. 'Berlin Radio Show') is one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany. Between 1924 and 1939 it was an annual event, but from 1950 it was ...
in August 1931,
Manfred von Ardenne
Manfred von Ardenne (20 January 1907 – 26 May 1997) was a German researcher and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physi ...
gave a public demonstration of a television system using a CRT for both transmission and reception. However, Ardenne had not developed a camera tube, using the CRT instead as a
flying-spot scanner
A flying-spot scanner (FSS) uses a scanning source of a spot of light, such as a high-resolution, high-light-output, low-persistence cathode ray tube (CRT), to scan an image. Usually the image to be scanned is on photographic film, such as motion ...
to scan slides and film. Philo Farnsworth gave the world's first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system, using a live camera, at the
Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...
of
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
on August 25, 1934, and for ten days afterwards.
In Britain the
EMI
EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...
engineering team led by
Isaac Shoenberg
Sir Isaac Shoenberg (1 March 1880 – 25 January 1963) was a British electronic engineer born in Belarus who was best known for his role in the history of television. He was the head of the EMI research team that developed the 405-line (Marconi-EM ...
applied in 1932 for a patent for a new device they dubbed "the Emitron",
[
][
] which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the BBC. In November 1936, a
405-line broadcasting service employing the Emitron began at studios in
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a Grade II listed entertainment and sports venue in London, situated between Wood Green and Muswell Hill in the London Borough of Haringey. It is built on the site of Tottenham Wood and the later Tottenham Wood Farm. Origi ...
and transmitted from a specially built mast atop one of the Victorian building's towers. It alternated for a short time with Baird's mechanical system in adjoining studios but was more reliable and visibly superior. This was the world's first regular high-definition television service.
The original American iconoscope was noisy, had a high ratio of interference to signal, and ultimately gave disappointing results, especially when compared to the high definition mechanical scanning systems then becoming available.
The
EMI
EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...
team under the supervision of
Isaac Shoenberg
Sir Isaac Shoenberg (1 March 1880 – 25 January 1963) was a British electronic engineer born in Belarus who was best known for his role in the history of television. He was the head of the EMI research team that developed the 405-line (Marconi-EM ...
analyzed how the iconoscope (or Emitron) produces an electronic signal and concluded that its real efficiency was only about 5% of the theoretical maximum.
[
][
] They solved this problem by developing and patenting in 1934 two new camera tubes dubbed
super-Emitron and
CPS Emitron.
[
][
][
] The super-Emitron was between ten and fifteen times more sensitive than the original Emitron and iconoscope tubes and, in some cases, this ratio was considerably greater.
It was used for an
outside broadcasting
Outside broadcasting (OB) is the electronic field production (EFP) of television or radio programmes (typically to cover television news and sports television events) from a mobile remote broadcast television studio. Professional video camera ...
by the BBC, for the first time, on Armistice Day 1937, when the general public could watch on a television set how the King laid a wreath at the Cenotaph.
[
] This was the first time that anyone could broadcast a live street scene from cameras installed on the roof of neighbouring buildings, because neither Farnsworth nor RCA could do the same before the
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchas ...
.
![1939 RCA Television Advertisement](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/1939_RCA_Television_Advertisement.jpg)
On the other hand, in 1934, Zworykin shared some patent rights with the German licensee company Telefunken.
The "image iconoscope" ("Superikonoskop" in Germany) was produced as a result of the collaboration. This tube is essentially identical to the super-Emitron. The production and commercialization of the super-Emitron and image iconoscope in Europe were not affected by the
patent war
A patent war is a "battle" between corporations or individuals to secure patents for litigation, whether offensively or defensively. There are ongoing patent wars between the world's largest technology and software corporations. Contemporary pat ...
between Zworykin and Farnsworth, because Dieckmann and Hell had priority in Germany for the invention of the image dissector, having submitted a patent application for their ''Lichtelektrische Bildzerlegerröhre für Fernseher'' (''Photoelectric Image Dissector Tube for Television'') in Germany in 1925,
[
] two years before Farnsworth did the same in the United States.
[
] The image iconoscope (Superikonoskop) became the industrial standard for public broadcasting in Europe from 1936 until 1960, when it was replaced by the vidicon and plumbicon tubes. Indeed, it was the representative of the European tradition in electronic tubes competing against the American tradition represented by the image orthicon.
[
] The German company Heimann produced the Superikonoskop for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games,
[
][
] later Heimann also produced and commercialized it from 1940 to 1955,
[
] finally the Dutch company
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
produced and commercialized the image iconoscope and multicon from 1952 to 1958.
[
]
American television broadcasting at the time consisted of a variety of markets in a wide range of sizes, each competing for programming and dominance with separate technology, until deals were made and standards agreed upon in 1941.
RCA, for example, used only Iconoscopes in the New York area, but Farnsworth Image Dissectors in Philadelphia and San Francisco.
In September 1939, RCA agreed to pay the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation royalties over the next ten years for access to Farnsworth's patents.
[Schatzkin, Paul (2002), ''The Boy Who Invented Television''. Silver Spring, Maryland: Teamcom Books, pp. 187–8. .] With this historic agreement in place, RCA integrated much of what was best about the Farnsworth Technology into their systems.
In 1941, the United States implemented 525-line television.
The world's first 625-line television standard was designed in the Soviet Union in 1944, and became a national standard in 1946.
The first broadcast in 625-line standard occurred in 1948 in Moscow. The concept of 625 lines per frame was subsequently implemented in the European
CCIR standard.
In 1936,
Kálmán Tihanyi
Kálmán Tihanyi or in English language technical literature often mentioned as Coloman Tihanyi or Koloman Tihanyi (28 April 1897 – 26 February 1947) was a Hungarian physicist, electrical engineer and inventor. One of the early pioneers o ...
described the principle of
plasma display
A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display that uses small cells containing plasma: ionized gas that responds to electric fields. Plasma televisions were the first large (over 32 inches diagonal) flat panel displays to be release ...
, the first
flat panel display
A flat-panel display (FPD) is an electronic display used to display visual content such as text or images. It is present in consumer, medical, transportation, and industrial equipment.
Flat-panel displays are thin, lightweight, provide better li ...
system.
In 1978, James P. Mitchell described, prototyped and demonstrated what was perhaps the earliest monochromatic flat panel
LED display
A LED display is a flat panel display that uses an array of light-emitting diodes as pixels for a video display. Their brightness allows them to be used outdoors where they are visible in the sun for store signs and billboards. In recent ...
targeted at replacing the CRT.
Color television
The basic idea of using three monochrome images to produce a color image had been experimented with almost as soon as black-and-white televisions had first been built. Older televisions have the RGB (red–blue–green) color scheme, while modern televisions use LEDs to create the image.
Among the earliest published proposals for television was one by Maurice Le Blanc in 1880 for a color system, including the first mentions in television literature of line and frame scanning, although he gave no practical details. Polish inventor
Jan Szczepanik
Jan Szczepanik (June 13, 1872 – April 18, 1926) was a Polish inventor, with several hundred patents and over 50 discoveries to his name, many of which are still applied today, especially in the motion picture industry, as well as in photography ...
patented a color television system in 1897, using a
selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and tellurium, ...
photoelectric cell at the transmitter and an electromagnet controlling an oscillating mirror and a moving prism at the receiver. But his system contained no means of analyzing the spectrum of colors at the transmitting end, and could not have worked as he described it. Another inventor,
Hovannes Adamian
Hovhannes (Ivan) Abgari Adamian (5 February 1879 – 12 September 1932) was an Armenian engineer, an author of more than 20 inventions. The first experimental color television was shown in London in 1928 based on Adamian's tricolor principle, and h ...
, also experimented with color television as early as 1907. The first color television project is claimed by him, and was patented in Germany on March 31, 1908, patent No. 197183, then in
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
, on April 1, 1908, patent No. 7219, in France (patent No. 390326) and in Russia in 1910 (patent No. 17912).
[A. Rokhlin, Tak rozhdalos' dal'novidenie (in Russian)](_blank)
Scottish inventor
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demo ...
demonstrated the world's first color transmission on July 3, 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with filters of a different primary color; and three light sources at the receiving end, with a
commutator
In mathematics, the commutator gives an indication of the extent to which a certain binary operation fails to be commutative. There are different definitions used in group theory and ring theory.
Group theory
The commutator of two elements, ...
to alternate their illumination. Baird also made the world's first color broadcast on February 4, 1938, sending a mechanically scanned 120-line image from Baird's
Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace may refer to:
Places Canada
* Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick
* Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario
* Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition building ...
studios to a projection screen at London's
Dominion Theatre
The Dominion Theatre is a West End theatre and former cinema on Tottenham Court Road, close to St Giles Circus and Centre Point, in the London Borough of Camden. Planned as primarily a musical theatre, it opened in 1929, but the following year ...
.
Mechanically scanned color television was also demonstrated by
Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
in June 1929 using three complete systems of
photoelectric cells, amplifiers, glow-tubes and color filters, with a series of mirrors to superimpose the red, green and blue images into one full color image.
The first practical hybrid system was again pioneered by John Logie Baird. In 1940 he publicly demonstrated a color television combining a traditional black-and-white display with a rotating colored disc. This device was very "deep", but was later improved with a mirror folding the light path into an entirely practical device resembling a large conventional console.
However, Baird was not happy with the design, and as early as 1944 had commented to a British government committee that a fully electronic device would be better.
Mexican inventor
Guillermo González Camarena
Guillermo González Camarena (17 February 1917 – 18 April 1965) was a Mexican electrical engineer who was the inventor of a color-wheel type of color television.
Early life
González Camarena was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was the younge ...
also played an important role in early TV. His experiments with TV (known as telectroescopía at first) began in 1931 and led to a patent for the "trichromatic field sequential system"
color television
Color television or Colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white t ...
in 1940.
In 1939, Hungarian engineer
Peter Carl Goldmark
Peter Carl Goldmark (born Péter Károly Goldmark; December 2, 1906 – December 7, 1977) was a Hungarian-American engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing microgroove 33 rpm phonogr ...
introduced an electro-mechanical system while at
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
, which contained an
Iconoscope sensor. The CBS field-sequential color system was partly mechanical, with a disc made of red, blue, and green filters spinning inside the television camera at 1,200 rpm, and a similar disc spinning in synchronization in front of the cathode ray tube inside the receiver set. The system was first demonstrated to the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC) on August 29, 1940, and shown to the press on September 4.
CBS began experimental color field tests using film as early as August 28, 1940, and live cameras by November 12.
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...
(owned by RCA) made its first field test of color television on February 20, 1941. CBS began daily color field tests on June 1, 1941. These color systems were not compatible with existing black-and-white television sets, and as no color television sets were available to the public at this time, viewing of the color field tests was restricted to RCA and CBS engineers and the invited press. The
War Production Board
The War Production Board (WPB) was an agency of the United States government that supervised war production during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it in January 1942, with Executive Order 9024. The WPB replaced the Sup ...
halted the manufacture of television and radio equipment for civilian use from April 22, 1942, to August 20, 1945, limiting any opportunity to introduce color television to the general public.
As early as 1940 Baird had started work on a fully electronic system he called the "
Telechrome Telechrome was the first all-electronic single-tube color television system. It was invented by well-known Scottish television engineer, John Logie Baird, who had previously made the first public television broadcast, as well as the first color bro ...
". Early Telechrome devices used two electron guns aimed at either side of a phosphor plate. Using cyan and magenta phosphors, a reasonable limited-color image could be obtained. He also demonstrated the same system using monochrome signals to produce a 3D image (called "stereoscopic" at the time). A demonstration on August 16, 1944, was the first example of a practical color television system. Work on the Telechrome continued and plans were made to introduce a three-gun version for full color. This used a patterned version of the phosphor plate, with the guns aimed at ridges on one side of the plate. However, Baird's untimely death in 1946 ended development of the Telechrome system.
[Baird Television]
The World's First High Definition Colour Television System
.
Similar concepts were common through the 1940s and 1950s, differing primarily in the way they re-combined the colors generated by the three guns. The
Geer tube
Geer (; wa, Djer) is a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality of Wallonia located in the Liège Province, province of Liège, Belgium.
On January 1, 2006, Geer had a total population of 2,854. The total area is 23.62 km² which gives a p ...
was similar to Baird's concept, but used small pyramids with the phosphors deposited on their outside faces, instead of Baird's 3D patterning on a flat surface. The
penetron The penetron, short for penetration tube, is a type of limited-color television used in some military applications. Unlike a conventional color television, the penetron produces a limited color gamut, typically two colors and their combination. Pene ...
used three layers of phosphor on top of each other and increased the power of the beam to reach the upper layers when drawing those colors. The
chromatron
The Chromatron is a color television cathode ray tube design invented by Nobel prize-winner Ernest Lawrence and developed commercially by Paramount Pictures, Sony, Litton Industries and others. The Chromatron offered brighter images than convention ...
used a set of focusing wires to select the colored phosphors arranged in vertical stripes on the tube.
One of the great technical challenges of introducing color
broadcast television
Broadcast television systems (or terrestrial television systems outside the US and Canada) are the encoding or formatting systems for the transmission and reception of terrestrial television signals.
Analog television systems were standardized b ...
was the desire to conserve
bandwidth
Bandwidth commonly refers to:
* Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range
* Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
, potentially three times that of the existing
black-and-white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
standards, and not use an excessive amount of
radio spectrum
The radio spectrum is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum with frequencies from 0 Hz to 3,000 GHz (3 THz). Electromagnetic waves in this frequency range, called radio waves, are widely used in modern technology, particula ...
. In the United States, after considerable research, the National Television Systems Committee
[National Television System Committee (1951–1953), [Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplementary references cited in the Reports, and the Petition for adoption of transmission standards for color television before the Federal Communications Commission, n.p., 1953], 17 v. illus., diagrams., tables. 28 cm. LC Control No.:5402138]
Library of Congress Online Catalog
approved an all-electronic
Compatible color
Color television or Colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white t ...
system developed by
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
, which encoded the color information separately from the brightness information and greatly reduced the resolution of the color information in order to conserve bandwidth. The brightness image remained compatible with existing black-and-white television sets at slightly reduced resolution, while color televisions could decode the extra information in the signal and produce a limited-resolution color display. The higher resolution black-and-white and lower resolution color images combine in the brain to produce a seemingly high-resolution color image. The
NTSC
The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
standard represented a major technical achievement.
![SMPTE Color Bars](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/SMPTE_Color_Bars.svg)
Although all-electronic color was introduced in the U.S. in 1953, high prices and the scarcity of color programming greatly slowed its acceptance in the marketplace. The first national color broadcast (the 1954
Tournament of Roses Parade
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
# One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...
) occurred on January 1, 1954, but during the following ten years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white. It was not until the mid-1960s that color sets started selling in large numbers, due in part to the color transition of 1965 in which it was announced that over half of all network prime-time programming would be broadcast in color that fall. The first all-color prime-time season came just one year later. In 1972, the last holdout among daytime network programs converted to color, resulting in the first completely all-color network season.
Early color sets were either floor-standing console models or tabletop versions nearly as bulky and heavy, so in practice they remained firmly anchored in one place. The introduction of
GE's relatively compact and lightweight
Porta-Color
General Electric's Porta-Color was the first "portable" color television introduced in the United States in 1966.
The Porta-Color set introduced a new variation of the shadow mask display tube. It had the electron guns arranged in an in-line confi ...
set in the spring of 1966 made watching color television a more flexible and convenient proposition. In 1972, sales of color sets finally surpassed sales of black-and-white sets.
Color broadcasting in Europe was also not standardized on the PAL format until the 1960s.
By the mid-1970s, the only stations broadcasting in black-and-white were a few high-numbered UHF stations in small markets and a handful of low-power repeater stations in even smaller markets, such as vacation spots. By 1979, even the last of these had converted to color and by the early 1980s, black-and-white sets had been pushed into niche markets, notably low-power uses, small portable sets, or use as
video monitor
A display device is an output device for presentation of information in visual or tactile form (the latter used for example in tactile electronic displays for blind people). When the input information that is supplied has an electrical signal the ...
screens in lower-cost consumer equipment. By the late 1980s, even these areas switched to color sets.
Digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of audio and video by digitally processed and multiplexed signal, in contrast to the totally analog and channel separated signals used by
analog television
Analog television is the original television technology that uses analog signals to transmit video and audio. In an analog television broadcast, the brightness, colors and sound are represented by amplitude, instantaneous phase and frequency, ...
. Digital TV can support more than one program in the same channel bandwidth. It is an innovative service that represents the first significant evolution in television technology since color television in the 1950s.
Digital TV's roots have been tied very closely to the availability of inexpensive, high-performance computers. It wasn't until the 1990s that digital TV became a real possibility.
In the mid-1980s Japanese consumer electronics firm
Sony Corporation
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
developed HDTV technology and the
equipment to record at such resolution, and the
MUSE
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
analog format proposed by
NHK
, also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
NHK operates two terrestr ...
, a Japanese broadcaster, was seen as a pacesetter that threatened to eclipse U.S. electronics companies. Sony's system produced images at 1125-line resolution (or in digital terms, 1875x1125, close to the resolution of Full HD video) Until June 1990, the Japanese MUSE standard—based on an analog system—was the front-runner among the more than 23 different technical concepts under consideration. Then, an American company, General Instrument, demonstrated the feasibility of a digital television signal. This breakthrough was of such significance that the FCC was persuaded to delay its decision on an ATV standard until a digitally based standard could be developed.
In March 1990, when it became clear that a digital standard was feasible, the FCC made a number of critical decisions. First, the Commission declared that the new ATV standard must be more than an enhanced analog signal, but be able to provide a genuine HDTV signal with at least twice the resolution of existing television images. Then, to ensure that viewers who did not wish to buy a new digital television set could continue to receive conventional television broadcasts, it dictated that the new ATV standard must be capable of being "simulcast" on different channels. The new ATV standard also allowed the new DTV signal to be based on entirely new design principles. Although incompatible with the existing NTSC standard, the new DTV standard would be able to incorporate many improvements.
The final standard adopted by the FCC did not require a single standard for scanning formats, aspect ratios, or lines of resolution. This outcome resulted from a dispute between the consumer electronics industry (joined by some broadcasters) and the computer industry (joined by the film industry and some public interest groups) over which of the two scanning processes—interlaced or progressive—is superior. Interlaced scanning, which is used in televisions worldwide, scans even-numbered lines first, then odd-numbered ones. Progressive scanning, which is the format used in computers, scans lines in sequences, from top to bottom. The computer industry argued that progressive scanning is superior because it does not "flicker" in the manner of interlaced scanning. It also argued that progressive scanning enables easier connections with the Internet, and is more cheaply converted to interlaced formats than vice versa. The film industry also supported progressive scanning because it offers a more efficient means of converting filmed programming into digital formats. For their part, the consumer electronics industry and broadcasters argued that interlaced scanning was the only technology that could transmit the highest quality pictures then feasible, that is, 1080 lines per picture and 1920 pixels per line. William F. Schreiber, who was a director of the Advanced Television Research Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1983 until his retirement in 1990, thought that the continued advocacy of interlaced equipment originated from consumer electronics companies that were trying to get back the substantial investments they made in the interlaced technology.
Digital television transition
The digital television transition, also called the digital switchover (DSO), the analogue switch/sign-off (ASO), the digital migration, or the analogue shutdown, is the process in which older analogue television broadcasting technology is conv ...
started in the late 2000s. All the governments across the world set the deadline for analog shutdown by the 2010s. Initially the adoption rate was low. But soon, more and more households were converting to digital televisions. The transition was expected to be complete worldwide by the mid to late 2010s.
Smart television
![Samsung Smart TV 2012 (E-Series)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Samsung_Smart_TV_2012_%28E-Series%29.jpg)
Advent of digital television allowed innovations like smart TVs. A smart television, sometimes referred to as ''connected TV'' or ''hybrid television'', is a television set with integrated Internet and
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...
features, and is an example of
technological convergence
Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media p ...
between computers and television sets and set-top boxes. Besides the traditional functions of television sets and set-top boxes provided through traditional
broadcasting media, these devices can also provide Internet TV, online
interactive media
Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user's actions by presenting content such as text, moving image, animation, video and audio. Since its early conception, various fo ...
,
over-the-top content
An over-the-top (OTT) media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms: the types of companies that traditionally act as controllers or distributors ...
, as well as
on-demand streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
, and
home network
A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Devices capable of participating in this network, for example, smart devices such as netwo ...
ing access. These TVs come pre-loaded with an operating system, including
Android or a derivative of it,
Tizen
Tizen () is a Linux-based mobile operating system backed by the Linux Foundation, mainly developed and used primarily by Samsung Electronics.
The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo. Sa ...
,
webOS
webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...
,
Roku OS
The Roku OS is an operating system, by Roku Inc., which powers consumer electronics such as smart TVs and streaming devices. Based on Linux, it features a user interface linking into Roku's Channel Store. In 2022, the Roku OS reportedly had 70 ...
, and
SmartCast
Vizio Inc. (stylized as VIZIO) is an American publicly traded company that designs and sells televisions, sound bars, viewer data, and advertising. The company was founded in 2002 and is based in Irvine, California.Lawton, Christopher, Iwatani K ...
.
Smart TV should not to be confused with
Internet TV
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aer ...
,
IPTV
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...
or with
Web TV
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air ae ...
.
Internet television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...
refers to the receiving television content over internet instead of traditional systems (terrestrial, cable and satellite) (although internet itself is received by these methods).
Internet Protocol television
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...
(IPTV) is one of the emerging Internet television technology standards for use by television broadcasters.
Web television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aer ...
(WebTV) is a term used for programs created by a wide variety of companies and individuals for broadcast on Internet TV.
A first patent was filed in 1994 (and extended the following year) for an "intelligent" television system, linked with data processing systems, by means of a digital or analog network. Apart from being linked to data networks, one key point is its ability to automatically download necessary software routines, according to a user's demand, and process their needs.
Major TV manufacturers have announced production of smart TVs only, for middle-end and high-end TVs in 2015.
3D television
Stereoscopic 3D television was demonstrated for the first time on August 10, 1928, by
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demo ...
in his company's premises at 133 Long Acre, London. Baird pioneered a variety of 3D television systems using electro-mechanical and cathode-ray tube techniques. The first 3D TV was produced in 1935. The advent of digital television in the 2000s greatly improved 3D TVs.
Although 3D TV sets are quite popular for watching 3D home media such as on Blu-ray discs, 3D programming has largely failed to make inroads among the public. Many 3D television channels that started in the early 2010s were shut down by the mid-2010s.
Terrestrial television
Overview
Programming is
broadcast
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...
by
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
s, sometimes called "channels", as stations are
licensed
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
by their governments to broadcast only over assigned
channels
Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to:
Geography
* Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water.
Australia
* Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...
in the television
band
Band or BAND may refer to:
Places
*Bánd, a village in Hungary
*Band, Iran, a village in Urmia County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran
* Band, Mureș, a commune in Romania
*Band-e Majid Khan, a village in Bukan County, West Azerbaijan Province, I ...
. At first,
terrestrial broadcasting was the only way television could be widely distributed, and because
bandwidth
Bandwidth commonly refers to:
* Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range
* Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
was limited, i.e., there were only a small number of
channels
Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to:
Geography
* Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water.
Australia
* Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...
available, government regulation was the norm.
Canada
The
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the government. ...
(CBC) adopted the American NTSC 525-line B/W 60 field per second system as its broadcast standard. It began television broadcasting in Canada in September 1952. The first broadcast was on September 6, 1952, from its
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
station
CBFT
CBFT-DT (channel 2) is a television station in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, serving as the flagship station of the French-language service of Ici Radio-Canada Télé. It is owned and operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (known in Fren ...
. The premiere broadcast was bilingual, spoken in English and French. Two days later, on September 8, 1952, the
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
station
CBLT
CBLT-DT (channel 5) is a television station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, serving as the flagship station of the English-language service of CBC Television. It is part of a twinstick with Ici Radio-Canada Télé outlet CBLFT-DT (channel 25). B ...
went on the air. This became the English-speaking flagship station for the country, while CBFT became the French-language flagship after a second English-language station was licensed to CBC in Montreal later in the decade. The CBC's first privately owned affiliate television station,
CKSO in
Sudbury, Ontario
Sudbury, officially the City of Greater Sudbury is the largest city in Northern Ontario by population, with a population of 166,004 at the 2021 Canadian Census. By land area, it is the largest in Ontario and the fifth largest in Canada. It is a ...
, launched in October 1953 (at the time, all private stations were expected to affiliate with the CBC, a condition that was relaxed in 1960–61 when CTV, Canada's second national English-language network, was formed).
Czechoslovakia
![Höritz Museum - Fernseher Tesla 40001A](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/H%C3%B6ritz_Museum_-_Fernseher_Tesla_40001A.jpg)
In former
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
(now the
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
and
Slovakia
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
) the first experimental
television set
A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...
s were produced in 1948. In the same year the first test television transmission was performed. Regular television broadcasts in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
area started on May 1, 1953. Television service expanded in the following years as new studios were built in
Ostrava
Ostrava (; pl, Ostrawa; german: Ostrau ) is a city in the north-east of the Czech Republic, and the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It has about 280,000 inhabitants. It lies from the border with Poland, at the confluences of four rive ...
,
Bratislava
Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approxim ...
,
Brno
Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...
and
Košice
Košice ( , ; german: Kaschau ; hu, Kassa ; pl, Коszyce) is the largest city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary. With a population of app ...
. By 1961 more than a million citizens owned a television set. The second channel of the state-owned
Czechoslovak Television
Czech Television ( cs, Česká televize, italics=no ; abbreviation: ČT) is a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic, broadcasting seven channels. Established after the Velvet Revolution in 1992, it is the successor to Czechoslov ...
started broadcasting in 1970.
Preparations for color transmissions in the PAL color system started in the second half of the 1960s. However, due to the
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia refers to the events of 20–21 August 1968, when the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Rep ...
and the following
normalization period, the broadcaster was ultimately forced to adopt the SECAM color system used by the rest of the
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
. Regular color transmissions eventually started in 1973, with television studios using PAL equipment and the output signal only being transcoded to SECAM at transmitter sites.
After the
Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations agains ...
, it was decided to switch to the PAL standard. The new
OK3 channel was launched by Czechoslovak Television in May 1990 and broadcast in the format from the very start. The remaining channels switched to PAL by July 1, 1992. Commercial television didn't start broadcasting until after the
dissolution of Czechoslovakia
The dissolution of Czechoslovakia ( cs, Rozdělení Československa, sk, Rozdelenie Česko-Slovenska) took effect on December 31, 1992, and was the self-determined split of the federal republic of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries o ...
.
France
The first experiments in television broadcasting began in France in the 1930s, although the French did not immediately employ the new technology.
In November 1929, Bernard Natan established France's first television company, Télévision-
Baird-Natan. On April 14, 1931, there took place the first transmission with a thirty-line standard by
René Barthélemy
René Barthélemy (10 March 1889 – 12 February 1954) was a French engineer and a pioneer in the development of television.
Background
The invention of television was a slow enterprise of collective improvement between researchers and do-it- ...
. On December 6, 1931,
Henri de France
Henri Georges de France (7 September 1911 Paris – 29 April 1986 Paris) was a pioneering French television inventor. His inventions include the 819 line French standard and the SECAM color system. He was also apparently behind the HD-MAC high ...
created the Compagnie Générale de Télévision (CGT). In December 1932, Barthélemy carried out an experimental program in black and white (definition: 60 lines) one hour per week, "''Paris Télévision''", which gradually became daily from early 1933.
The first official channel of French television appeared on February 13, 1935, the date of the official inauguration of television in France, which was broadcast in 60 lines from 8:15 to 8:30 pm. The program showed the actress Béatrice Bretty in the studio of Radio-PTT Vision at 103 rue de Grenelle in Paris. The broadcast had a range of . On November 10,
George Mandel
George Mandel (11 February 1920 – 13 February 2021) was an American author and artist. His first novel is considered to be an early work of the east coast Beat Generation. His novels, interviews, novellas, cartoons and short stories have been ...
, Minister of Posts, inaugurated the first broadcast in 180 lines from the transmitter of the
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower.
Locally nicknamed "'' ...
. On the 18th, Susy Wincker, the first announcer since the previous June, carried out a demonstration for the press from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Broadcasts became regular from January 4, 1937, from 11:00 to 11:30 am and 8:00 to 8:30 pm during the week, and from 5:30 to 7:30 pm on Sundays. In July 1938, a decree defined for three years a standard of 455 lines VHF (whereas three standards were used for the experiments: 441 lines for Gramont, 450 lines for the Compagnie des Compteurs and 455 for Thomson). In 1939, there were about only 200 to 300 individual television sets, some of which were also available in a few public places.
With the entry of France into World War II the same year, broadcasts ceased and the transmitter of the Eiffel Tower was sabotaged. On September 3, 1940, French television was seized by the German occupation forces. A technical agreement was signed by the Compagnie des Compteurs and
Telefunken
Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company').
The name "Telefunken" app ...
, and a financing agreement for the resuming of the service is signed by German Ministry of Post and Radiodiffusion Nationale (
Vichy
Vichy (, ; ; oc, Vichèi, link=no, ) is a city in the Allier Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of central France, in the historic province of Bourbonnais.
It is a Spa town, spa and resort town and in World ...
's radio). On May 7, 1943, at 3:00 evening broadcasts. The first broadcast of
Fernsehsender Paris (Paris Télévision) was transmitted from rue Cognac-Jay. These regular broadcasts (5 hours a day) lasted until August 16, 1944. One thousand 441-line sets, most of which were installed in soldiers' hospitals, picked up the broadcasts. These Nazi-controlled television broadcasts from the Eiffel Tower in Paris were able to be received on the south coast of England by R.A.F. and BBC engineers, who photographed the station identification image direct from the screen.
In 1944, René Barthélemy developed an
819-line
819-line was an analog monochrome TV system developed and used in France as television broadcast resumed after World War II. Transmissions started in 1949 and were active up to 1985, although limited to France, Belgium and Luxembourg. It is associa ...
television standard. During the years of occupation, Barthélemy reached 1015 and even 1042 lines. On October 1, 1944, television service resumed after the
liberation of Paris
The liberation of Paris (french: Libération de Paris) was a military battle that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. Paris had been occupied by Nazi Germ ...
. The broadcasts were transmitted from the Cognacq-Jay studios. In October 1945, after repairs, the transmitter of the Eiffel Tower was back in service. On November 20, 1948,
François Mitterrand
François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he ...
decreed a broadcast standard of 819 lines; broadcasting began at the end of 1949 in this definition. Besides France, this standard was later adopted by Algeria, Monaco, and Morocco. Belgium and Luxembourg used a modified version of this standard with bandwidth narrowed to 7 MHz.
Germany
Electromechanical broadcasts began in Germany in 1929, but were without sound until 1934. Network electronic service started on March 22, 1935, on
180 lines
180-line is an early electronic television system. It was used in Germany after March 22, 1935, using telecine transmission of film, intermediate film system, or cameras using the Nipkow disk. Simultaneously, fully electronic transmissions using c ...
using
telecine
Telecine ( or ) is the process of transferring film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process.
Telecine enables a motion picture, captured originally on f ...
transmission of film,
intermediate film system
The intermediate film system was a television process in which motion picture film was processed almost immediately after it was exposed in a camera, then scanned by a television scanner, and transmitted over the air. This system was used principa ...
, or cameras using the Nipkow Disk. Transmissions using cameras based on the
iconoscope began on January 15, 1936. The Berlin
Summer Olympic Games
The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inau ...
were televised, using both all-electronic iconoscope-based cameras and intermediate film cameras, to Berlin and
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
in August 1936. Twenty-eight public television rooms were opened for anybody who did not own a television set. The Germans had a 441-line system on the air in February 1937, and during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
brought it to France, where they broadcast from the Eiffel Tower.
After the end of World War II, the victorious Allies imposed a general ban on all radio and television broadcasting in Germany. Radio broadcasts for information purposes were soon permitted again, but television broadcasting was allowed to resume only in 1948.
In East Germany, the head of broadcasting in the Soviet occupation zone, Hans Mahler, predicted in 1948 that in the near future 'a new and important technical step forward in the field of broadcasting in Germany will begin its triumphant march: television.' In 1950, the plans for a nationwide television service got off the ground, and a Television Centre in Berlin was approved. Transmissions began on December 21, 1952, using the 625-line standard developed in the Soviet Union in 1944, although at that time there were probably no more than 75 television receivers capable of receiving the programming.
In West Germany, the British occupation forces as well as
NWDR
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR; ''Northwest German Broadcasting'') was the organization responsible for public broadcasting in the German Länder of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia from 22 September 1945 to ...
(Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk), which had started work in the British zone straight after the war, agreed to the launch of a television station. Even before this, German television specialists had agreed on 625 lines as the future standard. This standard had narrower channel bandwidth (7 MHz) compared to the Soviet specification (8 MHz), allowing three television channels to fit into the
VHF I
Band I is a range of radio frequencies within the very high frequency (VHF) part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The first time there was defined "for simplicity" in Annex 1 of "Final acts of the European Broadcasting Conference in the VHF and ...
band. In 1963 a second broadcaster (
ZDF
ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...
) started. Commercial stations began programming in the 1980s.
When color was introduced, West Germany (1967) chose a variant of the
NTSC
The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
color system, modified by
Walter Bruch
Walter Bruch (2 March 1908 – 5 May 1990) was a German electrical engineer and pioneer of German television. He was the inventor of Closed-circuit television. He invented the PAL colour television system at Telefunken in the early 1960s. In add ...
and called
PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
. East Germany (1969) accepted the French
SECAM
SECAM, also written SÉCAM (, ''Séquentiel de couleur à mémoire'', French for ''color sequential with memory''), is an analog color television system that was used in France, some parts of Europe and Africa, and Russia. It was one of th ...
system, which was used in Eastern European countries. With the reunification of Germany, it was decided to switch to the PAL color system. The system was changed in December 1990.
Italy
In Italy, the first experimental tests on television broadcasts were made in
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
since 1934. The city already hosted the Center for Management of the
EIAR
Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR, "Italian Body for Radio Broadcasting") was the public service broadcaster in Fascist Italy and the only entity permitted to broadcast by the government.
History
The company was established in 1 ...
(lately renamed as
RAI
RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (; commercially styled as Rai since 2000; known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane) is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many ter ...
) at the premises of the Theatre of Turin. Subsequently, the EAIR established offices in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
and
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
.
On July 22, 1939, comes into operation in Rome the first television transmitter at the EIAR station, which performed a regular broadcast for about a year using a 441-line system that was developed in Germany. In September of the same year, a second television transmitter was installed in Milan, making experimental broadcasts during major events in the city.
The broadcasts were suddenly ended on May 31, 1940, by order of the government, allegedly because of interferences encountered in the first air navigation systems. Also, the imminent participation in the war is believed to have played a role in this decision. EIAR transmitting equipment was relocated to Germany by the German troops. Lately, it was returned to Italy.
The first official television broadcast began on January 3, 1954, by the RAI.
Japan
Television broadcasting in Japan started on August 28, 1953, making the country one of the first in the world with an experimental television service. The first television tests were conducted as early as 1926 using a combined mechanical
Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk (sometimes Anglicized as Nipkov disk; patented in 1884), also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, rotating, geometrically operating image scanning device, patented in 1885 by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow. This scanning disk was a funda ...
and electronic
Braun tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), pictu ...
system, later switching to an all-electronic system in 1935 using a domestically developed
iconoscope system. In spite of that, because of the beginning of
World War II in the Pacific
The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the Theater (warfare), theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, ...
region, this first full-fledged TV broadcast experimentation lasted only a few months. Regular television broadcasts would eventually start in 1953.
In 1979, NHK first developed a consumer high-definition television with a 5:3 display aspect ratio. The system, known as Hi-Vision or MUSE after its
Multiple sub-Nyquist sampling encoding
MUSE (Multiple sub-Nyquist Sampling Encoding), commercially known as Hi-Vision (a contraction of HIgh-definition teleVISION) was a Japanese analog HDTV system, with design efforts going back to 1979.
It used dot-interlacing and digital video co ...
for encoding the signal, required about twice the bandwidth of the existing NTSC system but provided about four times the resolution (1080i/1125 lines). Satellite test broadcasts started in 1989, with regular testing starting in 1991 and regular broadcasting of
BS-9ch commenced on November 25, 1994, which featured commercial and NHK
television program
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, e ...
ming.
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
first demonstrated a wideband
analog high-definition television system
Analog high-definition television has referred to a variety of analog video broadcast television systems with various display resolutions throughout history.
Pre-1940
On 2 November 1936 the BBC began transmitting the world's first public re ...
HDTV
High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
capable video camera, monitor and
video tape recorder
A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio material from magnetic tape. The early VTRs were open-reel devices that record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide (5.08 cm) tape. They were use ...
(VTR) in April 1981 at an international meeting of television engineers in
Algiers
Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...
. The
Sony HDVS
Sony HDVS is a range of high-definition video equipment developed in the 1980s to support an early analog high-definition television system (used in multiple sub-Nyquist sampling encoding (MUSE) broadcasts) thought to be the broadcast television ...
range was launched in April 1984, with the HDC-100 camera, HDV-100 video recorder and HDS-100
video switcher
A vision mixer is a device used to select between several different live video sources and, in some cases, compositing live video sources together to create visual effects.
In most of the world, both the equipment and its operator are called ...
all working in the 1125-line
component video
Component video is an analog video signal that has been split into two or more component channels. In popular use, it refers to a type of component analog video (CAV) information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals. Compon ...
format with
interlaced video
Interlaced video (also known as interlaced scan) is a technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video display without consuming extra bandwidth. The interlaced signal contains two fields of a video frame captured consecutively. This ...
and a 5:3 aspect ratio.
Mexico
The first testing television station in Mexico signed on in 1935. When
KFMB-TV
KFMB-TV (channel 8) is a television station in San Diego, San Diego, California, United States, affiliated with CBS, The CW, and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Tegna Inc., it has studios on Engineer Road in the Kearny Mesa, San Diego, Kearny Mesa section ...
in
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
signed on in 1949,
Baja California
Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...
became the first state to receive a commercial television station over the air. Within a year, the Mexican government would adopt the U.S. NTSC 525-line B/W 60-field-per-second system as the country's broadcast standard. In 1950, the first commercial television station within Mexico,
XHTV
XHTV-TDT (virtual channel 4), founded in 1950 by Romulo O'Farril, is a flagship TV station of Televisa and carries its Foro (TV channel), FORO news network. FOROtv is available on various cable television companies and SKY México satellite serv ...
in Mexico City, signed on the air, followed by
XEW-TV
XEW-TDT (channel 2) is a television station in Mexico City, Mexico. The station is owned by Grupo Televisa and is the flagship station to the Las Estrellas network. XEW is the second-oldest Televisa station and Mexico City's second-oldest stati ...
in 1951 and
XHGC
XHGC-TDT (channel 5) is a television station owned by Grupo Televisa, broadcasting from Mexico City, and is the flagship of the Canal 5 network.
History
XHGC signed on May 10, 1952, broadcasting a Mother's Day event organized by the Excélsior ...
in 1952. Those three were not only the first television stations in the country, but also the flagship stations of
Telesistema Mexicano
Telesistema Mexicano was the predecessor of Televisa. Telesistema Mexicano was a television alliance made up of the independently owned television flagship stations XEW Canal 2, XHTV Canal 4, and XHGC Canal 5 in Mexico, Distrito Federal.
Histo ...
, which was formed in 1955. That year,
Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta
Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta (2 March 1895, Tampico, Tamaulipas – 23 September 1972, Mexico City) was a Mexican businessman who built an entertainment conglomerate.
The son of Basque immigrants Mariano Azcárraga and Emilia Vidaurreta, his ...
, who had signed on XEW-TV, entered into a partnership with
Rómulo O'Farrill
Rómulo O'Farrill II (15 December 1917 – 18 May 2006) was a Mexican multi-millionaire businessman.
His father, Rómulo O'Farrill, founded the '' Novedades'' newspaper and owned the first commercial TV station ( XHTV, Canal 4) through his com ...
who had signed on XHTV, and
Guillermo González Camarena
Guillermo González Camarena (17 February 1917 – 18 April 1965) was a Mexican electrical engineer who was the inventor of a color-wheel type of color television.
Early life
González Camarena was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was the younge ...
, who had signed on XHGC. The earliest
3D television
3D television (3DTV) is television that conveys depth perception to the viewer by employing techniques such as stereoscopic display, multi-view display, 2D-plus-depth, or any other form of 3D display. Most modern 3D television sets use an ...
broadcasts in the world were broadcast over XHGC in 1954. Color television was introduced in 1962, also over XHGC-TV. One of Telesistema Mexicano's earliest broadcasts as a network, over XEW-TV, on June 25, 1955, was the first international North American broadcast in the medium's history, and was jointly aired with NBC in the United States, where it aired as the premiere episode of ''
Wide Wide World
''Wide Wide World'' is a 1955–1958 90-minute documentary series telecast live on NBC on Sunday afternoons at 4pm Eastern. Conceived by network head Pat Weaver and hosted by Dave Garroway, ''Wide Wide World'' was introduced on the ''Producers' ...
,'' and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Except for a brief period between 1969 and 1973, nearly every commercial television station in Mexico, with exceptions in the border cities, was expected to affiliate with a subnetwork of Telesistema Mexicano or its successor,
Televisa
Grupo Televisa is a Mexican multimedia mass media company. A major Latin American mass media corporation, it often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content.
In April 2021, Televisa and Univision Communications announce ...
(formed by the 1973 merger of Telesistema Mexicano and
Television Independiente de Mexico
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, e ...
). This condition would not be relaxed for good until 1993, when Imevision was privatized to become
TV Azteca
TV Azteca, S.A.B. de C.V. is a Mexican multimedia conglomerate owned by Grupo Salinas. It is the second-largest mass media company in Mexico after Televisa. It primarily competes with Televisa as well as some local operators. It owns two national ...
.
Soviet Union (USSR)
The Soviet Union began offering 30-line electromechanical test broadcasts in Moscow on October 31, 1931, and a commercially manufactured television set in 1932.
First electronic television system on 180 lines at 25 fps was created in the beginning of 1935 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In September 1937 the experimental Leningrad TV Center (OLTC) was put in action. OLTC worked with 240 lines at 25 fps progressive scan.
In Moscow, experimental transmissions of electronic television took place on March 9, 1937, using equipment manufactured by
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
. Regular broadcasting began on December 31, 1938. It was quickly realized that 343 lines of resolution offered by this format would have become insufficient in the long run, thus a specification for 441-line format at 25 fps interlaced was developed in 1940.
Television broadcasts were suspended during
Great Patriotic War
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Sout ...
. In 1944, while the war was still raging, a new standard, offering 625 lines of vertical resolution was prepared. This format was ultimately accepted as a national standard.
The transmissions in 625-line format started in Moscow on November 4, 1948. Regular broadcasting began on June 16, 1949. Details for this standard were formalized in 1955 specification called ''GOST 7845-55, basic parameters for black-and-white television broadcast''. In particular, frame size was set to 625 lines, frame rate to 25 frames/s interlaced, and video bandwidth to 6 MHz. These basic parameters were accepted by most countries having 50 Hz mains frequency and became the foundation of television systems presently known as PAL and SECAM.
Starting in 1951, broadcasting in the 625-line standard was introduced in other major cities of the Soviet Union.
Color television broadcast started in 1967, using SECAM color system.
Turkey
The first Turkish
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
channel,
ITU TV
İTÜ TV is the first Turkish television station. The first Turkish television broadcast occurred on July 9, 1952, from a station at Istanbul Technical University's electrical engineering department. Weekly two-hour broadcasts from ITU continue ...
, was launched in 1952. The first national television is
TRT 1
TRT 1 (''TRT One'') is the first Turkish national television channel, owned by state broadcaster TRT. It was launched on 31 January 1968 as a test broadcast and was officially launched in December 1971. It was the only channel in Turkey until 15 ...
and was launched in 1964.
Color television
Color television or Colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white t ...
was introduced in 1981. Before 1989 there was the only channel, the state broadcasting company TRT, and it broadcast in several times of the dateline.
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
's first private television channel
Star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
started it broadcast on 26 May 1989. Until then there was only one television channel controlled by the state, but with the wave of liberalization, privately owned broadcasting began. Turkey's television market is defined by a handful of big channels, led by
Kanal D
Kanal D, also known as Channel D, is a nationwide television channel in Turkey and part of Demirören Group. It was founded by Ayhan Şahenk and Aydın Doğan in 1993.
The network also runs an international channel, Euro D which is available o ...
,
ATV and
Show, with 14%, 10% and 9.6% market share, respectively. The most important reception platforms are terrestrial and satellite, with almost 50% of homes using satellite (of these 15% were pay services) at the end of 2009. Three services dominate the multi-channel market: the satellite platforms
Digitürk
Digiturk is a Turkish satellite television provider founded in 1999, with services starting in mid-2000. They provide both national television channels and their own channels, national radio, and music streams of different genres. Digiturk is als ...
and
D-Smart
D-Smart is a Turkish satellite television provider launched in 2007. It launched high-definition television
High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the pr ...
and the cable TV service
Türksat.
United Kingdom
The first British television broadcast was made by Baird Television's electromechanical system over the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
radio transmitter in September 1929. Baird provided a limited amount of programming five days a week by 1930. During this time, Southampton earned the distinction of broadcasting the first-ever live television interview, which featured Peggy O'Neil, an actress and singer from