Television means being able to view moving images at distance and video allows us to record and replay picture and sound. Both are part of daily life. TV was invented over 70 years ago but its progress from the first black and white images to colour took little more than 25 years.
The origins of television
The basic principle of television is a little like that of film and works because of the way we see. When we look at a series of still images send rapidly and sequentially, the trace of each one lingers at the back of our eyes even as the next is being seen. Therefore our brains translate the sequence of still images into one continuous moving one. The invention of television meant finding ways to capture movement as a series of still images and then separating them into strips (scanning) to allow them to be transmitted as electrical signals - down wires or over the airwaves.
Baird's public television demonstrations (1925) : see it at Selfridges
John Logie Baird had long been an inventor and entrepreneur when he set out to build a working television system based on the Nipkow disk system.
He began with a personal advertisement announcing his intention in The Times, then used the money raised to build his apparatus, using any materials to hand, including darning needles, hat boxes, a biscuit tin, sealing wax and a bicycle lantern. His Nipkow disk was cut from an old tea chest.
In 1924 Baird started making experimental transmissions in London. His first public demonstration was on March 25, 1925, at the Selfridges department store on Oxford Street. His images were transmitted only 100 feet or so - but it was a world first, because this was a public demonstration.
His experimental television transmissions were broadcast by the BBC and over the next twenty years Baird pioneered many new television developments including the first transatlantic transmission, Noctovision (to help see in the dark) and Phonovision, an early video recording system. However, none of his techniques can be found in the television of today.
Zworykin's TV camera and TV set (1924) : the father of modern television?
The invention of electronic TV was plagued by controversy and legal battles, with several key figures vying for the rewards of promoting television's development and growth.
One of these was Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, sometimes hailed as 'the father of modern television'. He was a Russian-born American inventor whose two inventions lie at the heart of television and video. Zworykin invented the iconoscope in 1923 - a tube for capturing television images. Although later supplanted, the iconoscope laid the foundations for all television camera tubes and set the pace for nearly all development in the 1930s.
Its action was to break down pictures electronically into hundreds of thousands of separate elements. By 1924 Zworykin had also filed a patent application for the display device, a cathode-ray tube that he called his kinescope. The same device still provides the screen for most television receivers and computer monitors today.
The origins of television
The basic principle of television is a little like that of film and works because of the way we see. When we look at a series of still images send rapidly and sequentially, the trace of each one lingers at the back of our eyes even as the next is being seen. Therefore our brains translate the sequence of still images into one continuous moving one. The invention of television meant finding ways to capture movement as a series of still images and then separating them into strips (scanning) to allow them to be transmitted as electrical signals - down wires or over the airwaves.
Baird's public television demonstrations (1925) : see it at Selfridges
John Logie Baird had long been an inventor and entrepreneur when he set out to build a working television system based on the Nipkow disk system.
He began with a personal advertisement announcing his intention in The Times, then used the money raised to build his apparatus, using any materials to hand, including darning needles, hat boxes, a biscuit tin, sealing wax and a bicycle lantern. His Nipkow disk was cut from an old tea chest.
In 1924 Baird started making experimental transmissions in London. His first public demonstration was on March 25, 1925, at the Selfridges department store on Oxford Street. His images were transmitted only 100 feet or so - but it was a world first, because this was a public demonstration.
His experimental television transmissions were broadcast by the BBC and over the next twenty years Baird pioneered many new television developments including the first transatlantic transmission, Noctovision (to help see in the dark) and Phonovision, an early video recording system. However, none of his techniques can be found in the television of today.
Zworykin's TV camera and TV set (1924) : the father of modern television?
The invention of electronic TV was plagued by controversy and legal battles, with several key figures vying for the rewards of promoting television's development and growth.
One of these was Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, sometimes hailed as 'the father of modern television'. He was a Russian-born American inventor whose two inventions lie at the heart of television and video. Zworykin invented the iconoscope in 1923 - a tube for capturing television images. Although later supplanted, the iconoscope laid the foundations for all television camera tubes and set the pace for nearly all development in the 1930s.
Its action was to break down pictures electronically into hundreds of thousands of separate elements. By 1924 Zworykin had also filed a patent application for the display device, a cathode-ray tube that he called his kinescope. The same device still provides the screen for most television receivers and computer monitors today.
