The History of Television

Television— The Beginning

In the beginning, a snowy picture with a horizontal bar rolling through it was the best many TV viewers could hope for. For thousands of people living some distance from the large cities even this kind of picture required the installation of a tall antenna next to their houses. Often, they could only get only one station — and only then if atmospheric conditions were good.

But, despite the difficulties, it was television, and it marked the beginning of a phenomenon that was to have a major impact on news, advertising, film, radio, and the world — not to mention how millions of people would spend their leisure hours.

Inventions Leading to Television

For decades before its invention, something called "television" had been part of science fiction stories.

Discovering how to send audio thorough the airwaves opened the door to the possibility of television, but video was far more complex. It was correctly reasoned that since pictures had millions of times more data than audio, pictures would have to be broken down into bits of information (a data stream) before being transmitted.

The first application of this concept was wirephotos (using telephone lines to send still photos to newspapers). This was done by wrapping a photo around a drum and rotating the drum as a light-sensitive photocell moved over the image picking up brightness differences. The photocell created voltages that were amplified thousands of times and then sent by telephone lines to the subscribing newspapers.

At the receiving end somewhat the reverse took place. A piece of photographic paper spun around on a cylinder within a light-tight enclosure. The intensity of a pinpoint of light focused on the paper varied with the signal being picked up by the originating machine. When the scan was finished, the paper was taken out in a darkroom and processed as a photographic print.

Wirephoto machines established the basic concept of scanning pictures a line at a time. But still photos are not motion pictures. The problem was one of electronically transmitting a series of still pictures every second. To do this the newspaper approach of transmitting still photos — which originally took about 20 minutes just to transmit one picture — would have to be speeded up millions of times.

Who Invented TV ?

Many countries lay claim to inventing television; and without a doubt engineers in several countries developed various early approaches to transmitting pictures.

Early approaches were based on mechanical devices using a kind of moving peephole that focused light reflected from a scene on a photocell. Although the devices worked, they were big, heavy, cumbersome, and of low resolution (producing limited detail). Even with the obvious limitations, some TV transmitters went on the air using mechanical approaches.

The first all-electronic TV programming was launched by the BBC from Alexandra Palace in London in 1936. Unlike the mechanical systems, this approach was the direct precursor to today's all-electronic approach to transmitting TV pictures. The BBC system was developed by Marconi, the father of radio.

(Interestingly, Marconi's work, specifically the effect that aircraft had on the transmissions, led to the development of radar, which helped the RAF win the Battle of Britain.)

In the United States, four people are given credit for major inventions leading to television: Philo T. Farnsworth, Allen B. DuMont, Charles Jenkins, and Vladimir K. Zworykin.

Philo T. Farnsworth, an American engineer, who is most associated with the invention of TV, rejected the mechanical approach and decided that the only thing fast enough to scan a moving image was a stream of electrons. In 1926, he was trying to construct a TV receiver in the dining room of his Hollywood, California apartment. According to his wife, although constant "pops," "sizzles" and "bangs" came from the experimental TV equipment, these were not as bad as the terrible acidic smell that filled their apartment.

Farnsworth developed the basic element of a TV camera: a dissector tube that used a moving stream of electrons to "read out" brightness information on a line-by-line basis from the backside of an image focused on a light-sensitive area of a tube.

Once the problem of how to dissect images and sequentially transmit them through the air by means of radio waves was solved, we had the central elements of the television equation.

"The Queen's Messenger," was the first television drama to be broadcast in the United States. It was transmitted in 1928 from a General Electric station in Schenectady, NY. There were no TV sets in homes at that point, but, the experiment was successful nonetheless.

Television Officially Launched by RCA

A few years later the RCA Corporation put the ideas of Philo T. Farnsworth, Allen B. DuMont, Charles Jenkins, and Vladimir K. Zworykin and others into development. They "officially" debuted TV in the United States by telecasting parts of 1939 New York World’s Fair, including a speech by President Franklin Roosevelt. But, since there still weren't many TV sets in existence, most of the TV audience was watching the show at the Fair.

The first TV receivers had 13 cm (5 inch) screens and black and white pictures. They cost about half the price of an automobile. Before long, six TV stations were on the air in the U.S., and many more were in development.

Meanwhile, in 1936, Germany televised the Olympics, and Great Britain began regular programming for a few hours each day. In both cases, however, there were few people with TV sets to watch.

As things picked up, new, less expensive TV sets were introduced with larger screens, including the popular tabletop version. On July 1st, 1942, CBS launched 15 hours of weekly programming, including two 15-minute, Monday through Friday newscasts. They were simply read from a script, radio style, by an announcer in a small announce booth. A single camera was aimed through the window of the booth.

Also on July 1st, an NBC station broadcast the Dodger-Phillie baseball game — complete with a Bulova watch commercial (TV's first commercial). The people who had seen TV were mesmerized by what they saw, and television was poised to immediately take off.

Then World War II came along. Everything stopped as U.S. industry moved into large-scale production of armaments and related materials.

Once the war ended, some 70 stations immediately went on the air. Things expanded rapidly until 1948. At that point the FCC saw that the number of available TV channels (2-13 on the VHF band) wasn't going to meet the demand for new stations. To have time to sort out the problem they initiated a four-year freeze on issuing new TV station licenses.

UHF Television Launched

The solution the FCC came up with was to authorize the use of a whole new group of channels. In 1952, they launched UHF television (ultra high frequency, channels 14–83) and lifted the freeze. Their plan provided for 2,053 stations in 1,291 communities in the U.S. and its territories. Channel assignments in 242 communities were set aside for noncommercial and educational purposes.

Since the UHF band represented much higher frequencies than the original VHS channels, it presented some unique problems — not the least of which was the fact that existing TV sets could not receive any of these channels.

The FCC then mandated that all new TV sets manufactured must have the ability to receive both VHS and UHF channels. Owners of existing receivers had to buy a special tuner if they wanted to see UHF stations. Viewers quickly discovered that UHF stations were much harder to tune in than VHF stations, and for most people the new UHF channels required a special antenna.

To make things even more complicated, some TV markets had all VHF stations; some all UHF; and some had both types. In markets that had both VHF and UHF channels, people tended to just stick with VHF, since it was a lot easier. But, to make matters worse, UHF stations require far more transmitter power to cover a given area, and their signals tend to encounter more reception problems.

All of this, of course, meant that UHF stations had a major disadvantage. Many UHF stations in VHF/UHF markets "went dark" (ceased operations) because they simply couldn't generate enough revenue to stay on the air.

Today, many of these problems have been solved with new types of TV sets and the wide use of cable. (Cable television makes all TV stations equal, regardless of frequency or power.)

When digital/high-definition television was in the planning stage in the 1990s, the FCC decided to take over a large (and mostly unused) chunk of the UHF spectrum for this new technology. Today, there are more than 200 digital/high-definition stations on the air in the United States. 

Television in European Countries and Canada

After World War II, the BBC (British Broadcasting System) launched an ambitious plan for providing television service for 80 percent of Great Britain. In 1949, they completed construction on the most powerful TV transmitter in the world. Eight other BBC stations were completed in 1952. A little more than 25 years later, 98 percent of the population had a TV set in their homes.

In Canada, where experiments in television had started in the 1930's, regular TV broadcasting was launched by CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) station CBFT in Montreal in September of 1952. Only three years later television was available to 66 percent of the Canadian population. Three years after that Canada telecast its first "live," coast-to-coast program on a newly completed television network.

One of the major problems Canada has is producing a full range of programs in both English and French. This means that when both the CBC and the many independent stations are considered, Canada produces more hours of radio and television programming than most any other country.

Although France and the Netherlands also initiated TV broadcasting soon after the war, it was Russia (specifically Moscow) that first initiated regular continental broadcasts in 1948, as a public service to its citizens.

By the late 1980s, more than 90 percent of households in Italy and West Germany had television receivers; and 98 percent of British, French and Russian households had TV sets.

Except for Canada, all of these countries use a different broadcast system than the United States. Starting later than the United States, these European countries were able to devise systems that, in terms of clarity, were superior to the U.S. system — and totally incompatible with it. This also meant that TV receivers (and later, videotape machines) sold in one country often could not be used in another country.

Incompatible television standards also created major problems for selling U.S. TV programs to European countries. (The export of film and TV entertainment programming is one of the largest exports for the United States.)

The Golden Age of Television

The so-called "golden age of television" started in the 1950's when television began its explosive growth. Radio sets, which had dominated living rooms for several decades, had been shuffled to kitchens and bedrooms to make room for the new center of attention: TV.

Television became what radio had been in its golden age — the central medium of entertainment and diversion for almost every home. Much of radio's top on-air talent transferred to TV during this era. However, the visual advantages of the medium weren't effectively utilized for some time. Typically, TV was simply "radio with pictures."

Weekly shows by comedians Jack Benny and Red Skelton made the transition to TV, and were highly successful. New stars also emerged, including Milton Berle, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who starred in the weekly situation comedy "I Love Lucy." Variety shows were especially successful. "Your Show of Shows" with comedians Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca was on Saturday nights, and "Toast of the Town" with host Ed Sullivan was on Sunday nights.

The Wonderful World of Color

Although color film had been around since the 1930's; until the mid-1950's all television programming was in black and white. And, just as World War II had derailed the beginning of television in the 40's, a decade later the Korean War would delay the launch of color television.

CBS in the 40's had developed a mechanical approach to color TV. It used a large color wheel driven by a motor. The whole apparatus sat in front of your TV set and you looked through the rotating color sections at the TV picture behind it. The colors in the wheel were synchronized with alternating video images behind the wheel representing different primary colors in the original scene.

Although it worked fairly well, like the early mechanical approach to television itself, it introduced some problems (not the least of which was the fact that you would apparently have to keep the bearings on the large color wheel and electric motor well oiled to keep them from squeaking or failing.) Not only that, but the CBS system was incompatible with the existing black and white NTSC system (the U.S. standard originally approved by the National Television System Committee). Not only would you have to buy a new TV set to watch color TV, but also once you got it, you couldn't tune into any of the existing black and white stations. This also meant that, in order to serve the large base of existing black and white receivers, each TV station would have both a black and white and a color transmitter, each operating on a different channel. Interestingly, this approach to color TV was approved by the FCC as the new U.S. standard.

Although there isn't much about a war that's good, at least during the Korean War (while manufacturing unrelated to the war was largely suspended) engineers had time to figure out a better approach to color TV. In this case, RCA engineers came up with the logical solution. The approach they came up was all electronic. No squeaky wheels. It was so ingenious, in fact, that it is considered by many to one of the major technological feats of the 20th century.

Rather than require new TV receivers and transmitters, the all-electronic process interleaved all the color (chroma) information into the existing black and white (luminance) TV signal. The fact that this system incorporated a compatible color approach was critical to its success. Compatible color means that black and white sets can ignore the broadcast signal and color sets can show black and white programming.

Everyone was happy with the system, with the possible exception of a few folks over at CBS; even the FCC, which approved the system in 1953.

History of TV - Study Questions KO10

1. Describe the process that made up wirephotos.

2. What were some of the early approaches to transmitting pictures?

3. Who and where were the first all-electronic TV programming launched?

4. Who is most associated with the invention of TV and why?

5. What was the basic element of Farnsworth’s TV camera?

6. What and who officially debuted on TV in the United States?

7. What was the problem concerning licensing TV stations after the war? What ultimately

was the solution to the problem?

8. What were some of the problems of the UHF band compared to VHF?

9. How were these problems ultimately solved?

10. Describe when and how television started in Canada.

11. What are the major problems for Canadian programming?

12. Why do not all countries use the same broadcast system?

13. When did the so-called “golden age of television” start? Provide some reasons in your

own words as to why it grew to be such a success.

14. What did television become during that time?

15. Describe the workings of the mechanical approach to colour TV.

16. What was the approach that RCA came up with to solve the problem of colour?