History of Television

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History of Television

Television has become a major industry all over the world, especially in the industrialized nations, and a major medium of communication and source of home entertainment. Television is used in many industries. A few examples are for surveillance in places inaccessible to or dangerous for human beings, in science for tissue microscopy, and in education. Today you can find a television in almost every home. This is why I decided to research the history of the television.

The first television devices were based on an 1884 invention called the scanning disk, patented by Paul Nipkow. This device was a large disk with holes on it, which spun in front of an object while a photoelectric cell recorded changes in light. Depending on the electricity transmitted by the photoelectric cell, an array of light bulbs would glow or remain dark. But Nipkow’s mechanical system could not scan and deliver a clear, live-action image. Many inventors hoped to perfect this.

In 1921, a 14-year-old Mormon from Idaho named Philo Farnsworth came up with an idea. While mowing hay in rows, Philo realized an electron beam could scan a picture in horizontal lines, reproducing the image almost instantaneously. Philo was not the only one with this idea. At the same time, Russian immigrant Vladimir Zworykin had also designed a camera that focused an image through a lens onto an array of photoelectric cells coating the end of a tube. The electrical image formed by ...

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