The Fernsehsender "Paul Nipkow" (''TV Station Paul Nipkow'') in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, was the first public

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 ea ...

in the world. Carrying programming from Deutscher Fernseh-Rundfunk, it was on the air from 22 March 1935, until it was shut down in 1944. The station was named after

Paul Gottlieb Nipkow Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German technician and inventor. He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. ...

, the inventor of the Nipkow disk.

History

Parallel to the experiments 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 dem ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

, by Herbert E. Ives and

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 in ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, as well as by Kenjiro Takayanagi in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, television pioneers like

Dénes Mihály Dénes Mihály (7 July 1894, Gödöllő – 29 August 1953, West-Berlin) was a Hungarian inventor, engineer. Mihály graduated as a mechanical engineer at the Technical University in Budapest. During his high school studies – at the age of 16 ...

and Manfred von Ardenne had organised experimental television transmissions in Berlin since 1928. In the same year, Telefunken presented a television set prototype during the Internationale Funkausstellung industrial exhibition. From 1929 television test programs were regularly aired from the

Funkturm Berlin The Berliner Funkturm or Funkturm Berlin (Berlin Radio Tower) is a former broadcasting tower in Berlin. Constructed between 1924 and 1926 to designs by the architect Heinrich Straumer, it was inaugurated on 3 September 1926, on the occasion of ...

transmitter (''Rundfunksender Witzleben''). The first public transmission was introduced in the Kroll Opera House on 18 April 1934. The station was receivable only in and around Berlin but became very popular when it covered the

1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-s ...

in Berlin. About 160,000 viewers saw the Olympic games on a few private televisions and in many public television parlours. Television was used more for mainstream entertainment rather than propaganda, as

Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the '' Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to ...

preferred radio as a mass-medium. The heavy and slow equipment made it difficult to report, and almost all programming was broadcast live. From 1942 to 1944, the Germans also restarted a

TV 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 eart ...

in Paris to broadcast programs in German and French. In 1944, the station was shut down, as were most other cultural events, as a consequence of the approach of the Allied Armies in the Normandy Campaign. After the collapse of East Germany in 1990, about 280 rolls of 35mm film were discovered of Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow programs. In recent years, much of that material has been aired on German and international channels, mostly by The History Channel. In Germany, the rediscovered footage has been first used in the 1996 documentary ''Televisionen im Dritten Reich'' ("Tele-Visions in the Third Reich") made by WDR and NDR, as well as in Michael Kloft's 1999 documentary ''Das Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz'' ("Television Under the

Swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. I ...

").

References

Defunct German television channels Experimental television stations History of telecommunications in Germany History of television Mass media in Berlin Mass media of Nazi Germany Television channels and stations established in 1935 1935 establishments in Germany Television channels and stations disestablished in 1944 1944 disestablishments in Germany {{germany-tv-station-stub

History

See also

References