The concept of transmitting images via long distances was born in 1876-77 when a Boston dude named George Carey brought forth an idea and a drawing of a contraption that will allow people to “see by electricity”. He most likely got the idea from a discovery by a certain Willoughby Smith in 1873 of the photoconductivity of selenium— which is an element usually used in photocells/photosensors.

The first patent for a concept television was made in 1884 by Paul Nipkow who proposed an electromechanical gadget that will transmit images using spinning metal disks. He called it the “electric telescope”. Nipkow’s spinning disks is described in detail in Wikipedia:

…a mechanically spinning disk of any suitable material (metal, plastic, cardboard, etc.), with a series of equally distanced circular holes of equal diameter drilled in it.

These holes are positioned to form a single-turn spiral starting from an external radial point of the disk and proceeding to the center of the disk, much like a gramophone record. The holes, when the disk rotates, trace circular ring surfaces, with inner and outer diameter depending on each hole’s position on the disk and thickness equal to each hole’s diameter. These surfaces may or may not partly overlap, depending on the exact construction of the disk.

The term “Television” was first coined by Constantin Perskyi who, in a paper submitted and read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on August of the year 1900, reported on the existing electromechanical technologies of their time. He combined the ideas brought forth by the ideas of photo-conductivity (using selenium) and Nipkow’s mechanical spinning disks.

In 1907, the technology for the TV got a boost when the Cathode Ray Tube was invented independently by two inventors: An English inventor named A.A. Campbell-Swinton and a Russian scientist Boris Rosing.

After this the evolution of the television took 2 distinct roads of development. One continued on the electromechanical route based on Nipkow’s spinning disks and the electronic route which involved the cathode ray tube (CRT).

Two guys, an American named Charles Jenkins and a Scotsman John Baird, followed up on the mechanical model while Philo Farnsworth from San Francisco and Vladimir Zworkin, a Russian working for Westinghouse, strove for the advancement of the electronic route initiated by the invention of the CRT.

Moving images were first broadcast using the mechanical model in the 1920s by Jenkins and Baird in London though all they transmitted were images of stick figures and sillhouettes. In America, Jenkins was the first one to broadcast the very first ever TV commercial (1930).

The CRT didn’t take off initially when Zworkin started his work on it in 1927 because of poor image quality. However, he made improvement by 1931. Zworkin’s work became the basis for Britain’s Isaac Shoenberg “Emitron tube” which he made for Marconi-EMI which became the main components of cameras they built for BBC, which gave out better images compared to the mechanical types.

Color Television made its debut in the US in the 1946 through the work of Peter Goldmark using a mechanical model.

The years 1930-1959 were considered the Golden Era (at least in America) of the television because, according to the History of Communications courtesy of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it was during that period that we…

…saw the establishment of several significant technological standards. These included the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) standards for black and white (1941) and color television (1953). In 1952 the FCC made a key decision, via what is known as the Sixth Report and Order, to permit UHF broadcasting for the 1st time on 70 new channels (14 to 83). This was an essential decision because the Nation was already running out of channels on VHF (channels 2-13). That decision gave 95% of the U.S. television markets three VHF channels each, establishing a pattern that generally continues today.

Thus the “Golden Age” was a period of intense growth and expansion, introducing many of the television accessories and methods of distribution that we take for granted today. But the revolution – technological and cultural – that television was to introduce to America and the world was just beginning.

To be continued…