What we know today as the television ranges across a wide variety of services, subscriptions, and devices which have its own unique set of features. The word television has undergone a transition for a more digital minded era. Long gone are the days of the box television sets and the old rabbit ears, now they are smaller, sleeker, and optimized for the digital age complete with all of your favorite streaming apps, Full HD resolution, and with more colors than you ever thought possible.
The television is one of those commodities that no one knows how it came to be or who was the man behind it, it wasn’t a thing one day and then it was invented the next with all pieces of history and credit slipping into obscurity.
The idea of being able to transmit images from point A to point be was not unheard of, in fact, such attempts can date back to the mid-1800s. The first still image was transmitted through wires thanks to Abbe Giovanna Caselli in 1862 and later in 1873 scientists discovered that they could transform images into electronic signals. All of this and later discoveries and experiments would set the stage for Philo T. Farnsworth.
He can arguably be credited as the inventor of the television with his successful demonstration on September 7th, 1927. At 21 years old he demonstrated that moving images can be coded onto radio waves and then transformed into a picture on a screen. In that same year, he filed a patent for the first electronic television system that he called an Image Dissector at the time.
Back in that time, people would tune into the radio for news and entertainment so the idea of watching something unfold on a screen to tell a story was a pretty wild and revolutionary concept and the next big leap in how we communicate and share information.
By the late 1930s the first television license was issued, as well as the first broadcast TV commercial and about 200 television sets are in use worldwide. There continued to be improvements to the foundation of the television and its early components, but the next biggest breakthrough was the introduction of color television.
Like before the idea had been in development a few years prior but CBS began color broadcasts in June of 1951 and RCA Laboratories invented the first electronic color television system in 1953 and by the 1980s almost all of the black and white television sets had been replaced with color.
We have come a long way from black and white, from big and clunky and we still have a long way to go, every day we are finding new ways to push the limits of technology to get the best picture, sound, and colors but did you know that even the newest of television still can be plugged into a regular antenna output? No? Well, give it a try, turn off Netflix, and dust off the rabbit ears. Oh, and you will need to buy an analog converter box if you don’t have one lying around since television signals went digital back in 2009. So, while you won’t be able to enjoy tv in all its fuzzy and snowy glory anymore you can at least give your TV its ears back.
