Who invented the TV?

Answer 1

The "smart" television has a long history reaching back three decades and there can be no single person or company credited with an "invention" as such.

The first televisions to have data services added were European domestic televisions with a broadcast text display service called teletext. It made an appearance in the 1970s and remained in use until digital television replaced analog broadcasts.

In 1979, "Viewdata" was launched - an online data service that used televisions to access data services. It used the same display systems as teletext but was an interactive service and used a telephone line for data transfer.

Since those times, television and computing have been moving ever closer. In the 1990s Web-TV was introduced as a television based internet service. Lacking many of the features of PC based internet clients, it had a mixed reception but nonetheless, it represented a fully interactive system although still used telephone lines (the only option for Internet access for most people at the time).

In more recent years, from around 2008 onward, televisions have had network features being added. The current smart televisions feature high speed Internet access with a range of apps, browsers and video on demand services. While significantly more advanced, the latest smart televisions all follow from the early data capable televisions f the 70s and 80s.

Answer 2

John Logie Baird (August 13, 1888 - June 14, 1946) a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first working television system in Hastings, England in 1923. An official blue plaque marks the house where this took place. Hastings Museum hold various pieces of related correspondence. A further demonstration subsequently took place in a department store, Selfridges, in London England, by Mr Baird himself. This took place in 1925. The system was successful enough to become commercialised, and the BBC began the world's first regular television broadcasts, using the Baird system, In 1927, Baird transmitted a long-distance television signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow; Baird transmitted the world's first long-distance television pictures to the Central Hotel at Glasgow Central Station. He then set up the Baird Television Development Company Ltd, which in 1928 made the first transatlantic television transmission, from London to Hartsdale, New York. In 1939, Baird showed color television using a cathode ray tube in front of which revolved a disc fitted with color filters, a method taken up by CBS and RCA in the United States. In 1941 He patented and demonstrated a system of three dimensional television at a definition of 500 lines. On 16 August 1944 he gave the world's first demonstration of a fully electronic color television display.

There are several names that come to mind:

The first public demonstration of television was carried out by John Logie Baird at a department store in London in March of 1925. His "Televisor" system was built on research carried out over two or three decades by several people. Baird was the person that developed the ideas and research to the point of producing electronic moving images. Baird's system was used by the BBC to transmit television programs from 1929 onwards.

Philo Farnsworth also demonstrated a television system that was similar to Baird's in 1927. Both systems were electro-mechanical. It was in 1929 that Farnsworth eliminated the moving parts and showed off the first fully electronic system. Legal challenges to the inventions stopped Farnsworth's system going into commercial use until 1939 when RCA used his technology to begin US television broadcasts to the public.

Like all complex devices, the television had many contributing inventors.

During the 1870s there were several people who worked on photo-electric devices that converted light into an electrical signal.

1876 was the year that Nipkow patented a rotating disc that could be used to capture and display an image using electricity. Although he had the patent, he never developed a useful working system with the disc and the patent expired some twenty years later.

John Logie Baird, a Scot living in England is recognized as the first to demonstrate an operational television in March of 1925. It was a public demonstration held in Selfridges, a London department store. His "Televisor" system showed moving images being delivered via an electrical signal. The system used the Nipkow disc to produce the images so Baird's work was based on research carried out many years before. Despite the use of the disc, Baird was the first to successfully produce an operational television.

The BBC began public television broadcasts in January 1929 using Baird's system from their London television studio. These continued for seven years until they moved to a new fully electronic system in 1936.

Meanwhile, Philo Farnsworth was working on similar ideas in America and in 1927, he also demonstrated an electro-mechanical television system. Just two years later in 1929, he demonstrated a fully electronic system with no moving parts. This was an important development as there were significant limitations with the electro-mechanical systems. Farnsworth's electronic system provided a means to increase resolution far beyond that of the Nipkow method.

Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian American filed a patent application in 1923 for the "iconscope", the first electronic camera tube. The patent was eventually granted in 1933. Zworykin worked with RCA during the 1930s and it was RCA who began the first commercial broadcasts of television in the US in 1939. His Iconscope tube was used for the first few years of broadcasting until it was replaced by more sensitive and higher resolution tubes during the 1940s.

The advent of color

As soon as black and white television was shown to the world, color television became the goal. Baird, supported by his successful demonstration of television in 1925 began work on the color version and gave a demonstration in 1928 of full color television. It was based on the electro-mechanical system used by his Televisor and never went into commercial production. Nonetheless, it proved the concept of using red, green and blue signals to capture, deliver and display color television signals. Those principles are still in use today.

More than a decade later, Baird demonstrated a fully electronic color system that offered a 600 line resolution. The system once again proved concepts of signal handling and processing that were used for the later successful launch of commercial color services.

Later years

By the 1940s, television had become big business and the days of the independent inventor had passed. Future developments of color television were carried out by corporations and standards committees with the great inventors of the 1920s pushed to one side. It should be mentioned that despite the great improvements in quality and resolution of television, even now, television uses many of the principles developed by the great inventors, Baird, Farnsworth and Zworykin along with contributions from many others of the early 20th century.

A Scottish inventor by the name of John Logie Baird

He showed it to the world in March 1925

Not only was his "Televisor" the world's first television, it was also the first flat screen television.

The Televisor system was used for the world's first regular television transmissions in 1929 when the BBC began their broadcasts.

The principle of scanning an image line by line was used in the first television and is still being used today.

Baird demonstrated the first ever color television in 1928. It took a quarter of a century for color to be available commercially.

Baird demonstrated 3D television in 1930. It took eighty years for this to make it to domestic televisions.

Answer 3

John Logie Baird and the invention of the television are part of History. But the idea of the television did not start with Logie Baird in the 1920's. In the late C19th, a number of scientists had made important discoveries that Baird would use in his first version of a television. Henri Becquerel found that light could be changed into electricity and, importantly, Ferdinand Braun had invented the cathode ray tube. By the 1920's there were 50 serious attempts to invent the television from Russia, America, Germany, Britain and Japan. Many researchers had well resourced and staffed laboratories but the man who invented the television did not.