Timeline
1862
Abbe Giovanna Caselli invents the Pantelegraph and becomes the first person to transmit a still image over wires
1873
Scientists May and Smith start to experiment with selenium and light, this reveals the possibility for inventors to transform images into electronic signals
1876
Eugen Goldstein coins the term “cathode rays” to describe the light emitted when electric current was forced through a vacuum tube
1880
Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison theorize about telephone devices that transmit image as well as sound.
Bell’s photophone used light to transmit sound but, he wanted to advance his device for image sending
1884
Paul Nipkow sends images over wires using a rotating metal disk to move the picture. He calls it the electric telescope.
1990
Russian Constantin Perskyi made the first known use of the word “television”
Two major paths of development of a television system were pursued by inventors
- Inventors attempted to build mechanical television systems based on Paul Nipkow’s rotating disks
- Inventors attempted to build electronic television systems based on the cathode rays developed interdependently in 1907 by English inventors A.A. Campell Swinton and Russian scientist Boris Rosing
1906
Lee de Forest invents the Audion vacuum tube
This was the first tube with the ability to amplify signals
Boris Rosing combines Nipkow’s disk and a cathode ray tube and builds the first working mechanical TV system
1924
John Baird becomes the first person to transmit moving silhouette images using a mechanical system based on Nipkow’s disk
1927
Bell Telephone and the US Department of Commerce conduct the first long-distance use of television that took place between Washington D.C. and New York City on April 7th
“Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown” – Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
Philo Farmsworth, files for a patent on the first completely electronic television system, which he called the Image Dissector
1930
Charles Jenkins broadcast the first TV commercial
The BBC begins regular TV transmissions
1936
Over 200 hundred television sets are in the use worldwide
1937
CBS is the first major television network
1939
Television was demonstrated at the New York World Fair and the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition
1941
The first paid television advertisement was presented on July 1st, 1941 over the New York station WNBT before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement was for Bulova watches.
1946
Peter Goldmark, working for CBS, demonstrated the color television system to the FCC. His system produced color pictures by having a red-blue-green wheel spin in front of the cathode ray tube
He is recognized as the first to introduce a broadcasting color television system
1948
One million homes in the United States have television sets
1950
Color television has now been a development for many years and was released to the public in 1950.
1956
Robert Adler invents the first practical remote control called the Zenith Space Commander
Before this time, all television had been broadcasted live
1962
AT&T launches Telstar, the first satellite to carry TV broadcasts
1969
July 20th, 1969, was the first time people on earth saw a TV transmission from the moon
Over 600 million people watched
1976
Sony introduces Betamax, the first home video cassette recorder
1996
The FCC approves ATSC’s HDTV standard
A billion television sets are sold worldwide
1997
Panasonic develops and releases the first flat screen television. It quickly starts to replace CRT TV’s and takes over the television market
2009
All Americans are made to switch to an all-digital television viewing
Bibliography:
Bellis, Mary. “Learn the History of Television and when the First TV was Invented.” ThoughtCo., accessed Nov 1, 2017, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-invention-of-television-1992531.