Evolution Of Television Speech

Have you ever wondered about the technology that makes television possible or the genius that created it? How it is that dozens or hundreds of channels of full-motion video arrive at your house, in many cases for free and in color?

Television was an invention that seems not to surprise most people. It just seems like it has always been there like God and McDonald's.

TV was been based on an 1884 invention called the SCANNING DISK, by Paul Nipkow.

Filled with holes, the large disk spun in front of an object while a photoelectric cell recorded the changes in light. Depending on the electricity transmitted by the photoelectric cell, an a ray of light would glow or remain dark.

Even though Nipkow's mechanical system could not scan and deliver a clear, live-action image, most "WOULD-BE" TV inventors still hoped to perfect this.

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Well in 1922 a 14 year old boy by the name of PHILO FARNSWORTH, working in potato fields in Idaho had a vision of sending picture in waves over the air, just like the sound waves for radio. With virtually no knowledge of electronics when he first sketched his idea for an electronic television device on a black board for his high-school science teacher was were it all beganÐ'... most engineers of the time thought this was impossible.

Farnsworth was very optimistic, creative man who believed he could accomplish anything.

A few years later impatient to realize his plans for electronic television he had convinced 2 California businessmen to invest their life savings a total of $6,000 so he could build TV. Soon after Philo set up a lab in Los Angeles and started to work on a camera tube that could turn an image into a stream of electrons and a television tube that could turn the same stream of electrons into a picture.

Finally after 18 months his creations produced an image the size of a postage stamp.

The first TV sets had small 4-inch screens.

By 1936 Farnsworth's company was transmitting regular entertainment programs experimentally. In 1939 he sold his television patents to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for $1 million. Later that year at the New York World's Fair were they showcased electronic television sets and soon afterwards, the RCA electronic televisions went on sale to the public.

By 1948, there were about 100 TV stations on the air.

Television sets were expensive to buy. For example, a basic model was $400. It was a status symbol to be the family on a block with a television set.

The first color Camera approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was a motor-driven disk in three primary colorsÐ'--red, blue, and greenÐ'--rotated behind the camera lens, filtering the light from the subject so that the colors could pass through in succession. Transformed the images back to their original appearance taken in Color

Between 1954 and 1955, NBC and CBS had only one color studio each on the East and West Coasts - ABC would not have a live color stage until ten years later in 1965.

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