Television is a way of sending and receiving moving images and sounds over wires or through the air by electrical impulses. The big breakthrough in technology was the ability to send sound and pictures over the air. The word television comes from the Greek prefix tele and the Latin word vision or “seeing from a distance.” The TV camera converts images into electrical impulses, which are sent along cables, or by radio waves, or satellite to a television receiver where they are changed back into a picture.
As with most inventions, television’s development depended upon previous inventions, and more than one individual contributed to the development of television, as we know it today. People started experimenting with television during the 19th century. When you ask the question--who invented television, you may get a few different answers.
In England in 1878, John Loggie Baird, a Scottish amateur scientist, successfully transmitted the first TV picture, after years of work, in 1926, with his mechanical system. Baird’s system used a mechanical camera consisting of a large spinning disc, with a spiral of holes that Paul Nipkow had developed in 1884. This old mechanical technology was quickly replaced by superior electronic television.
Philo Farnsworth successfully demonstrated electronic television in San Francisco, in 1927. Farnsworth, at the age of fifteen, began imagining ways that electronic television could work. One day while working in the fields among rows of vegetables, he was inspired. He realized that a picture could be dissected by a simple television camera into a series of lines of electricity. The lines would be transmitted so quickly that the eyes would merge the lines. Then, a cathode ray tube television receiver would change those lines back into a picture. Initially, television was available only in black and white, even though experiments with color began in the 1920s; however, you could not buy a color television until 1953.
Nobel laureate Ferdinand Braun invented the cathode ray tube, the basis of all modern television cameras and receivers. Vladimir Zworykin improved television with the invention of a completely electric camera–the Iconoscope, and a receiver–the Kinescope, which both used a cathode ray tube. David Sarnoff, head of RCA and founder of the NBC television network, backed his powerful belief in the possibilities of television with financial backing by hiring Zworykin and purchasing the rights to use Farnsworth’s image dissector in RCA products.
Pictured above from left to right: Loggie Barid with his mechanical TV system, the spinning disc was early mechanical technology, Philo Farnsworth demonstrating his television system and a diagram of cathode ray tube.
FAQs
Conceived in the early 20th century as a possible medium for education and interpersonal communication, it became by mid-century a vibrant broadcast medium, using the model of broadcast radio to bring news and entertainment to people all over the world.
How does a TV work step by step? ›
TV begins with a video camera. The camera records the pictures and sound of a TV program. It changes the pictures and sound into electric signals. A TV set receives the signals and turns them back into pictures and sound.
When were TVs common in homes? ›
Television replaced radio as the dominant broadcast medium by the 1950s and took over home entertainment. Approximately 8,000 U.S. households had television sets in 1946; 45.7 million had them by 1960.
How do TV waves work? ›
For TV broadcasts, sounds are encoded with frequency modulation, and pictures are encoded with amplitude modulation. The encoded waves are broadcast from a TV tower. When the waves are received by television sets, they are decoded and changed back to sounds and pictures.
What did people do before TV? ›
Before their emergence, families often gathered together in the evenings to read books, play games, or listen to music. However, with the introduction of televisions and radios into households, people were now given the opportunity to escape their everyday lives and immerse themselves in the world of mass media.
Who invented TV and why was it invented? ›
Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927. The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, who had been working on it since 1920. Electronic television is a type of television that uses electronic signals to produce images on a video screen.
What is the difference between TV and television? ›
Television is usually used to refer to the device, such as saying that I'm watching television right now. There is no real difference, as TV is just an abbreviation of television.
How was a TV invented? ›
In 1921, Edouard Belin sent the first image via radio waves with his belinograph. By the 1920s, when amplification made television practical, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird employed the Nipkow disk in his prototype video systems.
How does a TV work without cable? ›
For those wondering how to watch TV without cable, smart TVs and streaming devices like Roku, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Apple TV provide the answer. These devices connect to your TV and internet, transforming a television into a smart device capable of accessing a wide range of streaming services.
What was the first color TV? ›
The RCA CT-100 was the first mass-produced color TV set. Although all-electronic color was introduced in the US in 1953, high prices and the scarcity of color programming greatly slowed its acceptance in the marketplace.
Mechanical TVs were commercially sold from 1928 to 1934 in the UK, US, and the Soviet Union. These TV sets were basically a radio with the added incentive of a TV device that consisted of a neon tube behind a mechanically spinning disk with a spiral of apertures that produced a red postage stamp sized image.
What was the first picture on TV? ›
In his laboratory on 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed "Stooky Bill" in a 32-line vertically scanned image, at five pictures per second.
How does color TV work? ›
In a color TV picture tube the colored images are produced by electron beams from three separate guns impinging from slightly different angles onto a triad arrangement of phosphor stripes, each of which emits one of the primary colors: red, green, or blue.
How fast do TV signals travel? ›
Light waves, radio waves and all of the other electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light—about 300,000,000 meters per second!
Why is radio reception better at night? ›
Sunlight affects radio broadcasts to some extent during the day. The magnetic field of the earth acts with reduced intensity during the night, thereby reducing its impact on broadcasts.
When and why was the TV invented? ›
Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927. The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a 21-year-old inventor who had lived in a house without electricity until he was 14.
How did the TV help the world? ›
Television has revolutionized communication and knowledge sharing. TV provides immediate coverage of current events, from live sports to breaking news. It enables people from different countries to communicate and understand one another by sharing many perspectives. This changed when TV revolutionized news delivery.
What was the purpose of the flat screen TV? ›
Benefits of flat-panel over CRT:
Because the screens of flat-panel TVs are not curved, as they are on CRT sets, the display is not distorted at the edges. Flat screens are also less prone to reflection and viewable from a wider angle than curved displays.
Why was TV important in the 1960s? ›
Television news proved its merits with five days of nearly continuous coverage of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963). Later in the decade, coverage of the Vietnam War (1954–75) and the Apollo moon landings helped make TV the primary way that Americans got their news.
