When was broadcast television invented

Meanwhile, an American inventor named Philo Farnsworth had been working on his own television system. Farnsworth, who grew up on a farm in Utah, reportedly came up with his big idea—a vacuum tube that could dissect images into lines, transmit those lines and turn them back into images—while still a teenager in chemistry class.

The U. Though viewed by many historians as the true father of television, Farnsworth never earned much more from his invention, and was dogged by patent appeal lawsuits from RCA. He later moved on to other fields of research, including nuclear fission, and died in debt in By , there were only a few hundred televisions in use in the United States. With radio still dominating the airwaves— more than 80 percent of American homes owned one at the time—TV use grew slowly over the course of the decade, and by the mids, the United States had 23 television stations and counting.

By , a year after the debut of the hit variety show Texaco Star Theater , hosted by comedian Milton Berle, the nation boasted 1 million TV sets in use. By the s, television had truly entered the mainstream, with more than half of all American homes owning TV sets by As the number of consumers expanded, new stations were created and more programs broadcast, and by the end of that decade TV had replaced radio as the main source of home entertainment in the United States.

As of , nearly half of American viewers are watching television in high definition, the fastest adoption of TV technology since the introduction of the VCR in the s Stelter, The new technology is attracting viewers to watch television for longer periods of time.

According to the Nielsen Company, a company that measures TV viewership, households with HDTV watch 3 percent more prime-time television —programming screened between 7 and 11 p.

The same report claims that the cinematic experience of HDTV is bringing families back together in the living room in front of the large wide-screen TV and out of the kitchen and bedroom, where individuals tend to watch television alone on smaller screens.

However, these viewing patterns may change again soon as the Internet plays an increasingly larger role in how people view TV programs. The impact of new technologies on television is discussed in much greater detail in Section 9.

Please respond to the following writing prompts. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph. Boddy, William. Klooster, John. Steinberg, Jacques. Stelter, Brian. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Chapter 9: Television. Search for:. Explain why electronic television prevailed over mechanical television.

Identify three important developments in the history of television since The Origins of Television Inventors conceived the idea of television long before the technology to create it appeared.

Mechanical Television versus Electronic Television From the early experiments with visual transmissions, two types of television systems came into existence: mechanical television and electronic television. Color Technology Although it did not become available until the s or popular until the s, the technology for producing color television was proposed as early as , and was demonstrated by John Logie Baird in The Rise of Cable Television Formerly known as Community Antenna Television, or CATV, cable television was originally developed in the s in remote or mountainous areas, including in Arkansas, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, to enhance poor reception of regular television signals.

The Emergence of Digital Television Following the FCC standards set out during the early s, television sets received programs via analog signals made of radio waves. Key Takeaways Two key technological developments in the late s played a vital role in the evolution of television: the cathode ray tube and the scanning disk.

The cathode ray tube, invented by German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun in , was the forerunner of the TV picture tube. The scanning disk, invented by German inventor Paul Nipkow, was a large, flat metal disk that could be used as a rotating camera.

It served as the foundation for experiments on the transmission of visual images for several decades. Out of the cathode ray tube and the scanning disk, two types of primitive television systems evolved: mechanical systems and electronic systems.

Mechanical television systems had several technical disadvantages: Low resolution caused fuzzy images, and the use of a spinning disk limited the number of new pictures that could be seen per second, resulting in excessive flickering.

By , all mechanical television broadcasts in the United States had been replaced by electronic broadcasts. Early televisions were expensive, and the technology was slow to catch on because development was delayed during World War II. Color technology was delayed even further because early color systems were incompatible with black-and-white television sets.

Following the war, television rapidly replaced radio as the new mass medium. Since , several key technological developments have taken place in the television industry. Color television gained popularity in the late s and began to replace black-and-white television in the s. Cable television, initially developed in the s to cater to viewers in rural areas, switched its focus from local to national television, offering an extensive number of channels.

Color television was placed on the backburner for about 20 years. In , the idea of color television was renewed in earnest.

As TheHistoryOfTelevision. Black and white television was thought of as old and it was time to do something new. This is when color television systems first began to be considered seriously. CBS was the first company to create a color television set.

Thus, it was not compatible with black and white TV sets in use across America. Unfazed, RCA continued to develop their own color television system that would be compatible with its customers RCA sets. Few people owned color TV sets between and However, starting in , color TV programming was broadcast across America, leading to a surge in sales of color television sets.

Between the s and s, television turned from a niche technology into a critical form of communication found in living rooms across the nation. A vast number of changes and improvements took place in the second half of the 20th century to make the television into what it is today. Today, online television and other broadcasting technologies have changed the future of traditional TV.

Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Home » History » History of the Television. History of the Television Televisions can be found in billions of homes around the world. Mechanical Televisions in the s and Early s Prior to electric televisions, we had mechanical televisions.

How Did Early Televisions Work? Mechanical Televisions Mechanical televisions relied on rotating disks to transmit images from a transmitter to the receiver.

Color Television in America Color television traces its roots as far back as , when a German inventor received a patent for color television. Timeline of TV History Between the s and s Between the s and s, television turned from a niche technology into a critical form of communication found in living rooms across the nation.

This act was a supplement to the Communications Act of , which required broadcasters to give equal airtime to candidates running in elections. The half-hour sitcom ranked as the number one program in the nation for four of its first six full seasons. Then networks specifically designed to be distributed by the cable system began to appear: Time Inc.

Television's development followed different patterns in other countries. Often government, not private corporations, owned some, most, or all of the major networks. In Great Britain the British Broadcasting Corporation, the country's dominant radio broadcaster, established and retained dominance over television.

The BBC, funded by a tax on the sale of television sets, established a worldwide reputation for producing quality programming. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also freed by government support from many commercial pressures, was praised by some observers for the seriousness of much of its news and public-affairs programming. France's major television networks were also supported by the government; however, in France that support was seen as encouraging a tilt in news coverage toward the side of whatever party happened to be in power.

By the late s and s, as cable and direct-satellite television systems increased the number of channels, the hold of these government-funded networks began to weaken. Most countries around the world began moving more toward the U. By the s politicians and government leaders were familiar enough with the workings of television to be able to exploit the medium to their own ends.

Reagan's skilled advisors were masters of the art of arranging flags and releasing balloons to place him in the most attractive settings. They also knew how to craft and release messages to maximize positive coverage on television newscasts.

The Persian Gulf War in provided further proof of the power of television, with pictures of U. Both Iraqi and U. However, the U. Defense Department, armed with lessons learned in Vietnam, succeeded in keeping most reporters well away from the action and the bloodshed.

Instead, pictures were provided to television by the military of "smart" bombs deftly hitting their targets. In the s, home videocassette recorders became widely available.

Viewers gained the ability to record and replay programs and, more significantly, to rent and watch movies at times of their own choosing in their own homes.

Video games also became popular during this decade, particularly with the young, and the television, formally just the site of passive entertainment, became an intricate, moving, computerized game board. The number of cable networks grew throughout the s and then exploded in the s as improved cable technology and direct-broadcast satellite television multiplied the channels available to viewers. The number of broadcast networks increased also, with the success of the Fox network and then the arrival of the UPN and WB networks.

The share the broadcast networks attracted continued to erode, from well over 90 percent in the early s to under 50 percent by Although the population of the United States has continued to grow, the Nielson Media Research company estimated that fewer people watched the highly publicized final episode of Seinfeld in first aired in ; see Seinfeld, Jerry than watched the final episode of MASH in first aired in The trial of former football star O.

Simpson in for the murder of his wife he was acquitted further demonstrated the hold that cable networks had on American audiences.

Some stations carried almost every minute of the lengthy trial live and then filled the evening with talk shows dissecting that day's developments. The effects of television on children, particularly through its emphasis on violence and sex, has long been an issue for social scientists, parents, and politicians see children's television.

In the late s and s, with increased competition brought on by the proliferation of cable networks, talk shows and "tabloid" news shows seemed to broaden further frank or sensational on-air discussion of sex. In response to government pressure, the television industry decided to display ratings of its programs in The ratings were designed to indicate the age groups for which the programs might be suitable: TV-G for general audiences , TV-PG parental guidance suggested , TV unsuitable for children under 14 , and TV-MA for mature audiences only.

In response to additional complaints, all the networks except NBC agreed the next year to add V for violence , S for sex , L for course language and D for suggestive dialogue to those ratings.

Also, the "V-chip" imbedded in new television sets, in accordance with a provision of a telecommunications bill passed in , gave parents the power to automatically prevent their children from watching television programs with inappropriate ratings. Critics of the ratings saw them as a step toward censorship and questioned whether a TV rating would make a program seem more, not less, attractive to an inquisitive child. In the federal government gave each U.

Initial transmissions of this high-resolution form of television, in which images appear much sharper and clearer, began in Standard television sets cannot pick up HDTV and will presumably have to be replaced or modified by , when traditional, low-definition television broadcasts are scheduled to end and broadcasters are scheduled to return their original, non-HDTV channel to the government.