The History of Television

The television, as we know it today, has been bestowed upon us thanks to the effort of a number of scientists and followers of science, and it has been more than a century since the wheels of this development have been in motion. The evolution that the television has been through since its inception is noteworthy to say the least and this write-up will bring to the fore important people and events in this rather illustrious timeline.

The Early Days
Selenium’s photoconductivity was discovered in 1873 by Willoughby Smith; Paul Gottlieb Nipkow invented a scanning disk in 1884; Ferdinand Braun invented the CRT (cathode ray tube) in 1897, which Boris Rosing and Vladimir Zworykin worked on improving through the early 1900s; and in 1926, John Logie Baird first demonstrated televised moving imagery. These, by far, are the most crucial occurrences in the early days that paved way for what was to follow.

Paul Nipkow

Nipkow
Nipkow, in 1884, patented what is looked upon as the first ‘electromechanical’ television system, although a working model of the design never saw the light of the day. Variations of his model, however, became quite common and were used till the late 1930s.

John Logie Baird

Baird
In 1925, Baird gave a publicized demonstration of televised motion imagery at a departmental store in London. Later in the same year, he successfully transmitted live moving imagery, although this was under the required 12 images/second scan rate (to give a viewer the illusion of motion). This, he achieved in early 1926, when his transmission’s scan rate moved up to 12.5 images/second. He followed this with what is widely regarded as the working television’s first demonstration, and this was on the 26th January, 1926.

Baird did not stop there and in 1927, he went on to transmit a television signal from London to Glasgow covering a distance of 705 kilometres. In 1928, his company went on to broadcast from London to New York, making it the first transatlantic television signal crossing. During his tryst with this field, he also toyed with infrared, electromechanical colour, and the use of additional filters, disks, and lenses.

Zworykin

Zworykin
Zworykin got to the US after the First World War, and during his life there, he worked for Westinghouse on a number of experiments surrounding the television industry. His most noteworthy contributions during this phase included the Kinescope CRT, the first TV camera tube, and the Iconoscope. He used the Iconoscope as a camera and a CRT as the image receptor, essentially giving the world its first electronic television.

In the late 1920s he continued to tweak his CRT model and soon after he met fellow Soviet David Sarnoff, he was heading RCA’s (Radio Corporation of America’s) electronic research laboratory. In 1931, his model had reached a point where RCA felt the time was right to take their product to the masses.

On-Air
It was only in July, 1942 that television actually went ‘on-air’ for the public. This was when the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) commissioned the building of two television broadcasting stations. By the time the Second World War came to a close, six of a total of nine licensed channels were on-air. By this time, owing a television had become a status symbol of sorts, and the appearance of an antenna on a home’s roof was a sure sign on prosperity.

Post the Second World War, a large number of people had a fair amount of money to spend, and it was mainly in 1948 & 1949 that the US saw a large number of television sets being sold. This trend, shortly after, was also witnessed across the Atlantic in the UK.

Colour Television
The seeds of the colour television were sown at about the same time the world saw its first Black & White television; and this was through the use of three monochrome images. However, it wasn’t until 1928 that the world witnessed its first colour transmission, and this was thanks to John Logie Baird. He is also credited to have made the first colour broadcast in 1938 when he was successful in broadcasting mechanically scanned imagery from London’s Crystal Place to the Dominion Theatre.

The first commercial colour broadcasting system received FCC’s authorization in 1953 and this was based on a system that was designed by the RCA.

The Initial Hiccups
When the television industry was born, the creators probably did not expect as big a response as it got. For starters, viewers did not have the choice of sifting through channels at the onset, with UHF transmissions going on-air only in 1953. Before this, a viewer could only watch whatever signal their set could manage to catch. Even then, this was a time when it was felt that 12 UHF channels would suffice.

UHF programming allowed broadcasters to use specific frequencies/wavelengths, and since early TVs weren’t capable of making this switch in frequency, converter boxes were increasingly used. Soon, the production of TVs tuned to catch single frequencies was phased out, and this was mainly because the FCC issued a directive ensuring that the manufacturing of TVs without UHF switching capabilities be stopped.

It wasn’t just the frequencies that were to be addressed. When colour televisions were first introduced by CBS they used a Field Sequential Colour System that was quite a big failure given what was expected of it. The timely ban on making colour television sets, however, allowed them to withdraw without serious repercussions.

The Korean War intervened and this gave the RCA some much needed time to come up with a better working model of a colour television than the one CBS failed with. RCA, in turn, chose electronic over mechanical and ended up creating a considerably better model. They received a formal nod from the FCC in 1953, and their sets went up for public sale in 1954. However, since the programming remained in black & white, these colour sets did not find many takers and it wasn’t until 1966 when programs were made in colour that people actually started buying colour televisions in significant numbers.

The 70s
The early 70s saw the disappearance of vacuum tubes from colour TVs as solid-state electronics were given preference (Black & White sets, though, continued to rely on vacuum tubes). Since this allowed for better picture quality, the sales of colour TVs increased manifold, and 1971 is the year when more colour TVs were sold in comparison to their Black & White counterparts (in the US).

Another significant change that the 70s saw was the extensive use of electronic tuners in expensive TVs, and these went on to become a standard feature along with the use of remote controls in the days to follow.

The 80s
While the first remote controls did come out in the 50s, the high pitched tones they emitted made them quite a hassle, and it was only in the early 80s that electronic remote controls entered the scene.

In Europe, colour televisions took longer to break into the mainstream, only managing to do so in the 80s. Developments in this decade included the rise of cable television networks on one hand, and the introduction of LCD and Plasma TVs on the other. With regular CRT based TVs, the use of analog comb filters and television tuners became increasingly common. Black & White TVs were pretty much phased out from the US market. In the late 80s, plasma displays did hold more promise that their LCD counterparts.

LCD TVs
LCD stands for ‘liquid crystal display’ and LCD TVs use this technology to produce mobile imagery. Considerably lighter and thinner than CRT TVs, they are made available in much larger sizes. Casio made the first LCD TV in 1983; and Sharp Corporation, in 1988 introduced a 14” LCD TV that was the first commercially available one.

It was not until 2007, though, that the worldwide sales of LCD TVs managed to overtake those of CRT TVs. As of now, LCD TVs are at the top when it comes to large screen TVs, and are easily the most sold variants the world over.

Plasma TVs
If you felt that plasma TVs are a recent phenomena, think again. Kálmán Tihanyi first described the ‘plasma TV’ principle and conceptualized a flat-panel screen way back in 1936. Much later, IBM, in 1983, launched a 19” ‘orange on black’ monochrome-display. However, owing to a lot of competition from monochrome-LCDs, they decided to shut down operations and focussed, instead, on manufacturing mainframe computing machines. Larry Weber, at this point, co-founded Plasmaco along with Stephen Globus.

Fujitsu launched the first 21” colour hybrid plasma TV in 1992; Larry Weber held a colour plasma technology demonstration in 1994; and Fujitsu launched the first 42” plasma TV in 1997.

The Turn of the Century
During the first few years of this century, plasma TVs were chosen over LCD TVs and they offered more benefits. Not only were they available in larger screen sizes, they also boasted of wider viewing angles, better colour spectrums, quicker response times, better contrasts, etc. Until this point, the LCD technology was looked upon as being limited to smaller screens.

Although Plasma TVs were looked upon as better alternatives at the onset, lower production costs in the field of LCDs clubbed with technological advancements made them a more viable alternative later on.

Until the latter part of 2006, plasma TVs found more favour with buyers on the whole. It was around this period that LCD TV sales started overtaking Plasma TV sales, and this was noticed particularly in the large TV segment (> 40”). Figures for worldwide sales of television sets in 2008’s first quarter showed that CRT sales stood at 22.1 million; LCD sales at 21.1 million; and Plasma sales at a poor 2.8 million.

HDTVs
A high definition TV is one that offers significantly higher resolution as compared to the traditional prevailing system. For example, a standard HDTV would have around 5 times the pixel count/frame in comparison to standard definition. While broadcasting HD content in the past relied on analog technology, HD broadcasting has now become digital and relies on video compression.

HDTV services date back to 1936, when the British high-definition TV service started their regular service (they used both electronic and mechanical systems). France, in 1949, started high definition transmission in 1949, and this service ran until 1985.

HDTV technology reached the United States in 1990, and although Europe also saw HDTV demonstrations around the same time, the first regular broadcasting only began in 2004 (in Belgium). The US gave up its analog broadcasting in favour of DTV (Digital terrestrial television) in 2009.

TVs Today
TVs today have come a long way from the devices that Nipkow or Baird had created. Today’s HDTVs can connect to the internet and allow you to stream online content wirelessly. Accessing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is something that can easily be done with a number of TVs available today. That you can add external digital storage devices like computers, external hard drives, pen drives, gaming consoles, etc. to play content on your TV is also a distinct possibility.

The TV, in this day and age, has truly taken entertainment to a whole new level, and saying that the modern day TV is far from home would not really be off the mark. And for anyone still referring to it as an idiot box, just think of all the brains that have gone into getting it to where it is.