Who invented the televison?

Answer 1

Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow, graduate student Robert Willson. When newly-minted Ph.D. Don Bitzer, along with fellow University of Illinois professor and senior research engineer Gene Slottow and graduate student Robert Willson, developed the first plasma display, they had no concept of high-definition TV. Bitzer, Slottow and Willson were merely trying to help solve the illiteracy problems in inner city schools. Bitzer became an assistant professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UIUC, and was asked by Daniel Alpert, director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois, if he thought computers could be used as private tutors. Within a few months, Bitzer had produced the first computer-based instructional system, PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations), which presented computer graphics with overlaid slides on a television set viewed by the students. As the system expanded to several terminals, it was clear that using storage tubes for memory and a television channel per terminal would not be economical and digital memory was too expensive to use in large quantities at the terminals. A display that was bright, had high contrast, was transparent, and had inherent memory was needed. These were needs that drove Bitzer to recruit Slottow and Willson to invent the A.C. plasma display panel, which they finished in July 1964. The original panels of these early plasma displays were orange and found early use for computer graphic displays. But by 1966, Bitzer, now an associate professor, along with Slottow and Willson demonstrated multicolor panels using a gas discharge rich in ultraviolet light and color phosphors. In 1967, the plasma display was given the Industrial Research 100 award, presented to the most important inventions of the year and Bitzer was made a full professor.
There is no such thing as a plama television.

Answer 2

Philo Taylor Farnsworth was the inventor of electronic TV in 1921 (at age 14), US Patent 1,773,980. There had been many mechanical TV systems earlier. RCA first put TV sets on sale to the public in 1939 (only 5 channels on tuner).

Answer 3

Well, the inventor depends on the type of technology, incandescent LED, OLED, LCD, and Plasma currently all of these support flat panel television designs. There are many unmentioned variations of each of these as well.

I will speak for some history behind the LED television concept, and a little about the LCD, in 1977 I invented a monochromatic display using an array of MV50 LEDs, a multilayer board and several breakthrough MSI (medium scale integrated circuits), memory addressing circuits and a proprietary A/D. Together this technology enabled a unique television display having the potential of being more compact, lighter weight than the existing high-voltage, heavy weight CRT dinosaurs. My working model was accompanied with a scientific paper illustrating schematics and a system description. This paper (1978) described a unique NTSC driven dot matrix X,Y scaned circuit array as having potential application to a future LCD array too. Remember the earliest LCD TV product (Sharp perhaps - portable) did not show up until nearly 5 years later. The working LED matrix model was proposed as a "building block" for a larger display mosaic. The larger system mozaic concept was illustrated by a very large schematic and it was presented with the working LED display model.

This design (exhibit 635) won a state "first grand award" and ISEF (29th International Science and Engineering Exposition) awards from NASA, General Motors, Westinghouse Science Talent Search and Navy. The working model was tuned to local channels in the Anaheim area. This system was on display in the Anaheim convention center (hung on the wall) exhibited with hundreds of other ISEF projects. This invention was also made available for public for viewing (including international cos.). Professors of area colleges from the LA area, witnessed and signed the project log.

Additional details may be found under Wikipedia using LED Flat Panel as search words. More to come - including pictures.

Thirty-two years after the invention no "pure LED" (semiconductor) technology has found it's way into the living room, however LED displays for Television and Video may be found everywhere including large settings such as stadiums and billboards. The X,Y scanned array did in fact prevail (regardless of today's technology... LCD, Plasma), displacing the clunky old high-voltage CRT and it's mess of color convergence boards and collapsing the several foot CRT tube into just couple of inches - now you know what my excitment was like 32 years ago!!

It is likely, that the process for building ultra-low cost LED arrays for home flat panel displays will someday arrive. - Jim Mitchell

Answer 4

Sharp was the first company to sell LCD televisions.
Sharp was the first company to sell a flat-panel LCD television.

Answer 5

Nikolas Tesla invented the plasma ball, but bill Parker designed the modern one.

Answer 6

The very first prototype for a plasma display monitor was invented in 1964.