Video killed the radio star
1.The beginig of new ways of getting information
The invention of television
The television has become such an integral part of homes in the modern world that it is hard to imagine
life without television. The boob tube, as television is also referred to, provides entertainment to people
of all ages. Not just for entertainment value, but TV is also a valuable resource for advertising and
different kinds of programming.
The television as we see it and know it today was not always this way. Lets take a brief look at the
history of television and how it came into being.
Timeline of TV History
Different experiments by various people, in the field of electricity and radio, led to the development of
basic technologies and ideas that laid the foundation for the invention of television.
In the late 1800s, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a student in Germany,
developed the first ever mechanical module of television. He
succeeded in sending images through wires with the help of a
rotating metal disk. This technology was called the electric
telescope that had 18 lines of resolution.
Around 1907, two separate inventors, A.A. Campbell-Swinton from
England and Russian scientist Boris Rosing, used the cathode ray
tube in addition to the mechanical scanner system, to create a new
television system.
From the experiments of Nipkow and Rosing, two types of television
systems came into existence: mechanical television and electronic
television.
Mechanical Television History
American advertisement in
In 1923, an American inventor called Charles Jenkins used the disk the beginning of the television
idea of Nipkow to invent the first ever practical mechanical
television system. By 1931, his Radiovisor Model 100 was being sold in a complete kit as a mechanical
television.
In 1926, just a little after Jenkins, a British inventor known as John Logie Baird, was the first person to
have succeeded in transmitting moving pictures through the mechanical disk system started by
Nipkow. He also started the first ever TV studio.
From 1926 till 1931, the mechanical television system saw many
innovations. Although the discoveries of these men in the Did you know?
department of mechanical television were very innovative, by It would take
1934, all television systems had converted into the electronic 1,000,000 human
system, which is what is being used even today. brains to store
all of the
Electronic Television History information that
can be found on
The experiments of Swinton in 1907, with the cathode ray tube for the internet.
electronic television held great potential but were not converted into reality. Finally, in 1927, Philo
Taylor Farnsworth was able to invent a working model of electronic television that was based on
Swintons ideas.
His experiments had started when he was just a little boy of 14 years. By the time he became 21, Philo
had created the first electronic television system, which did away with the rotating disks and other
mechanical aspects of mechanical television. Thus was born the television system which is the basis of
all modern TVs.
All the early television systems were black and white, with color television being invented much later
on. Since the early invention of television in the beginning of the 1900s, history has seen many firsts in
the area of television.
2. The television, a new way of spreading information
By 1949 Americans who lived within range of the growing number of television stations in the
country could watch some short programs, these programs were short, but people were looking
forward at their tomorrow televisions. It was a great way of replacing radio with something
more realistic. NBC and CBS took the funds needed to establish this
new medium from their radio profits. However, television
networks soon would be making substantial profits of their own,
and network radio would all but disappear, except as a carrier of
hourly newscasts. Ideas on what to do with the element television
added to radio, the visuals, sometimes seemed in short supply. On
news programs, in particular, the temptation was to fill the screen
with "talking heads," newscasters simply reading the news, as they
might have for radio. For shots of news events, the networks relied
initially on the newsreel companies, whose work had been shown
previously in movie studios. The number of television sets in use
rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951. No new
invention entered American homes faster than black and white
Old TV ads
television sets; by 1955 half of all U.S. homes had one.
3. The spread of color TV`s
Although all-electronic color was introduced in the U.S. in 1953, high prices and the scarcity of
color programming greatly slowed its acceptance in the
marketplace. The first national color broadcast (the
1954 Tournament of Roses Parade) occurred on January 1, 1954,
but during the following ten years most network broadcasts, and
nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white.
It was not until the mid-1960s that color sets started selling in large
numbers, due in part to the color transition of 1965 in which it was
announced that over half of all network prime-time programming
would be broadcast in color that fall. The first all-color prime-time
Family in the western season came just one year later. In 1972, the last holdout among
world in the 1950s daytime network programs converted to color, resulting in the first
watching TV. completely all-color network season.
Early color sets were either floor-standing console models or
tabletop versions nearly as bulky and heavy, so in practice they remained firmly anchored in
one place. The introduction of GE's relatively compact and lightweight Porta-Color set in the
spring of 1966 made watching color television a more flexible and convenient proposition. In
1972, sales of color sets finally surpassed sales of black-and-white sets.
Color broadcasting in Europe was also not standardized on the PAL format until the 1960s.
By the mid-1970s, the only stations
broadcasting in black-and white were a
few high-numbered UHF stations in
small markets, and a handful of low-
power repeater stations in even
smaller markets such as vacation
spots. By 1979, even the last of these
had converted to color and by the
Satellite dishes used for early 1980s B&W sets had been pushed
catching satellite TV into niche markets, notably low-power uses, small portable
channels. sets, or use as video monitor screens in lower-cost consumer
equipment. By late 1980's even these areas switched to color sets.
This time we could say clearly that video killed the radio star.
4. The television after 1980s
The analog TV sets, digital video recorders, digital video games Did you know?
and the most important the computer were all invented in 1980s.
The television
therefore it was expected that also the TV channels should be took 13 years to
reach a market
upgraded to digital. The first experiments concluded in a new audience of 50
way of broadcasting, digital channel broadcasting. This was million while the
iPod took 3 years
spread thorough 90s to 2000s and countries started to convert to reach a market
audience of 50
to digital all the analog channels. million.
5. New ways of sharing information
The personal computers were invented in 1980s and by 1990s
they became popular. Alongside with computers were invented
the internet. A network which first debuted in 1960s in US military
and then reconstructed in early 1990s. It was a great way of
sharing information. New American companies were created
during the 1970s to 1990s period, giants of computer engineering
were created. Apple, Microsoft, IBM were mass- producing
personal computers
which were in a high-
speed evolving process. Microsoft invented Internet
Explorer in 1995 and that time companies offered online
services but these were costly and not that handy. In late
1990s web search
Did you know? operators such as
In 1984, the number Google, Yahoo or MSN
of internet devices were invented. People
reached 1000. could search online
In 1992, the number without extra charges
of internet devices and so the internet
reached 1 million. became popular. Sharing information became easier with
In 2008, the number webpages and the internet was about to get a higher role in info
of internet devices then television.
reached 1 billion!
6. A new era is coming, mobile phones, smartphones
Did you know? By early 2000s mobile phones began
to spread widely all over the world.
The first SMS ever
sent was a message They were light, small, and full of
wishing Christmas of handy features like communication
1992 it included the
text Merry wirelessly and basic internet access.
Christmas and is They were perfect for texting and
the key point of
starting the second
soon became more and more popular
generation of mobile especially for teenagers and
phones.
businessmen. These devices together
with internet and computers started to take advantage to the TV.
Then in 2007 everything changed with the invention of the first
mobile to have a multi- touch screen, capable of rich internet Mobile phones used in
browsing and communicating. Since then the mobile phone industry 2000s.
is based on that way of creating
touch screens for their smartphones which are also replacing
computers. This new boom of sharing information over the
internet has started to make the internet an absolute leader in
the information industry. Television today is becoming more an
internet capable device than a
normal TV. Information is now Did you know?
something rapid, something that
we can access in every moment Today, the number
of text messages
First generation of iPhone, without having to wait for a news sent and received
the first multi- touch edition on TV. All in all now we can everyday, is more
device. say, Yes TV killed the radio star, than the total
population of the
but it got convicted by the planet.
internet.
Did you know?
In 2004, the at symbol
used in emails @ became
the first new character to
be added to Morse code in
several decades! The new
character, known as the
Commat consists of the
signals for both A (dot-
dash), and C (dash-dot-
dash-dot) with no space or
break in between.
