History of Television
Paul Nipkow in 1884 developed the first electromechanical television scanning
device. This technology was based on a spinning disk which rotated before
a moving image to capture it. In 1924 John Logie Baird invented the first
mechanical television; he based his ideas on Nipkows work and developed
it further. The concept of the first electronic television system was invented
by Philo Farmsworth in 1927; he was just fourteen years old at that time.
The dissector device he developed transmitted current to a cathode ray
tube and reproduced images by scanning it onto a fluorescent surface.
The cathode ray tube is a picture tube found in all electronic television
sets. It is based on the concept where images are formed when an electron
beam strikes a phosphorescent surface. He transmitted the first image which
was of a dollar sign.
At the same time Vladimir Zworykin develop
a cathode ray tube called the kinescope and a television system called
the iconoscope. The first long distance public television broadcast
was an image of Herbert Hoover and it took place between Washington D.C.
and New York City in 1927. Guillermo Camarena invented the color television
and sent the first color transmission from his lab to the offices
of The Mexican League of Radio experiments. The first electronic color
televisions were invented in 1950 along with the remote control.
In 1936
AT&T set the first cable lines
to transmit television signals between New York and Philadelphia. NBC started
the first television station called W2XBS in the 1930’s. The early
television sets had only 12 channels and nobody could have imagined at
that time that more than 12 channels could ever exist. The television has
made the world a smaller place, not only has television developed in the
number of channels but also to broadcasts in other languages and to the
birth of cable network.
