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 1. Home
 2. Topics
 3. Inventions & Science
 4. Who Invented Television?


WHO INVENTED TELEVISION?

Multiple inventors deserve credit for the technology, which had its origins in
the 19th century.

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: March 12, 2024 | Original: June 29, 2021

copy page linkPrint Page
Bettmann via Getty Images

The way people watch television has changed dramatically since the medium first
burst onto the scene in the 1940s and ‘50s and forever transformed American
life. Decade after decade, TV technology has steadily advanced: Color arrived in
the 1960s, followed by cable in the ‘70s, VCRs in the ‘80s and high-definition
in the late ‘90s. In the 21st century, viewers are just as likely to watch shows
on cell phones, laptops and tablets as on a TV set. Amazingly, however, all
these technological changes were essentially just improvements on a basic system
that has worked since the late 1930s—with roots reaching even further back than
that.


EARLY TV TECHNOLOGY: MECHANICAL SPINNING DISCS

No single inventor deserves credit for the television. The idea was floating
around long before the technology existed to make it happen, and many scientists
and engineers made contributions that built on each other to eventually produce
what we know as TV today.

Television’s origins can be traced to the 1830s and ‘40s, when Samuel F.B. Morse
developed the telegraph, the system of sending messages (translated into beeping
sounds) along wires. Another important step forward came in 1876 in the form of
Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, which allowed the human voice to travel
through wires over long distances.

Both Bell and Thomas Edison speculated about the possibility of telephone-like
devices that could transmit images as well as sounds. But it was a German
researcher who took the next important step toward developing the technology
that made television possible. In 1884, Paul Nipkow came up with a system of
sending images through wires via spinning discs. He called it the electric
telescope, but it was essentially an early form of mechanical television.

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TV GOES ELECTRONIC WITH CATHODE RAY TUBES

In the early 1900s, both Russian physicist Boris Rosing and Scottish engineer
Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton worked independently to improve on Nipkow’s
system by replacing the spinning discs with cathode ray tubes, a technology
developed earlier by German physicist Karl Braun. Swinton’s system, which placed
cathode ray tubes inside the camera that sent a picture, as well as inside the
receiver, was essentially the earliest all-electronic television system.

Russian-born engineer Vladimir Zworykin had worked as Rosing’s assistant before
both of them emigrated following the Russian Revolution. In 1923, Zworykin was
employed at the Pittsburgh-based manufacturing company Westinghouse when he
applied for his first television patent, for the “Iconoscope,” which used
cathode ray tubes to transmit images.

Meanwhile, Scottish engineer John Baird gave the world's first demonstration of
true television before 50 scientists in central London in 1927. With his new
invention, Baird formed the Baird Television Development Company, and in 1928 it
achieved the first transatlantic television transmission between London and New
York and the first transmission to a ship in the mid-Atlantic. Baird is also
credited with giving the first demonstration of both color and stereoscopic
television.

In 1929, Zworykin demonstrated his all-electronic television system at a
convention of radio engineers. In the audience was David Sarnoff, an executive
at Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the nation’s biggest communications
company at the time. Born into a poor Jewish family in Minsk, Russia, Sarnoff
had come to New York City as a child and began his career as a telegraph
operator. He was actually on duty on the night of the Titanic disaster; although
he likely didn’t—as he later claimed—coordinate distress messages sent to nearby
ships, he did help disseminate the names of the survivors.


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Bettmann via Getty Images
April 30, 1939, New York City: This is the scene viewed on the television
receivers in the metropolitan area, as the National Broadcasting Company
inaugurated the first regular television service to the American public
telecasting the ceremonies marking the opening of the New York World's Fair.
Later, viewers heard and saw President Roosevelt proclaim the fair open.

Sarnoff was among the earliest to see that television, like radio, had enormous
potential as a medium for entertainment as well as communication. Named
president of RCA in 1930, he hired Zworykin to develop and improve television
technology for the company. Meanwhile, an American inventor named Philo
Farnsworth had been working on his own television system. Farnsworth, who grew
up on a farm in Utah, reportedly came up with his big idea—a vacuum tube that
could dissect images into lines, transmit those lines and turn them back into
images—while still a teenager in chemistry class.

In 1927, at the age of 21, Farnsworth completed the prototype of the first
working fully electronic TV system, based on this “image dissector.” He soon
found himself embroiled in a long legal battle with RCA, which claimed
Zworykin’s 1923 patent took priority over Farnsworth’s inventions. The U.S.
Patent Office ruled in favor of Farnsworth in 1934 (helped in part by an old
high school teacher, who had kept a key drawing by the young inventor), and
Sarnoff was eventually forced to pay Farnsworth $1 million in licensing fees.
Though viewed by many historians as the true father of television, Farnsworth
never earned much more from his invention and was dogged by patent appeal
lawsuits from RCA. He later moved on to other fields of research and died in
debt in 1971.

Although the BBC had begun the world’s first regular TV broadcasts in 1936,
Sarnoff used his company's marketing might to introduce the American public to
television in a big way at the World’s Fair in New York City in 1939. Under the
umbrella of RCA’s broadcasting division, the National Broadcasting Company
(NBC), Sarnoff broadcast the fair’s opening ceremonies, including a speech by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt.


THE RISE OF A NEW MEDIUM

By 1940, there were only a few hundred televisions in use in the United States.
With radio still dominating the airwaves—more than 80 percent of American homes
owned one at the time—TV use grew slowly over the course of the decade, and by
the mid-1940s, the United States had 23 television stations (and counting). By
1949, a year after the debut of the hit variety show Texaco Star Theater, hosted
by comedian Milton Berle, the nation boasted 1 million TV sets in use.

By the 1950s, television had truly entered the mainstream, with more than half
of all American homes owning TV sets by 1955. As the number of consumers
expanded, new stations were created and more programs broadcast, and by the end
of that decade TV had replaced radio as the main source of home entertainment in
the United States. During the 1960 presidential election, the young, handsome
John F. Kennedy had a noticeable advantage over his less telegenic opponent,
Richard M. Nixon in televised debates, and his victory that fall would bring
home for many Americans the transformative impact of the medium. 


HISTORY VAULT: AMERICA THE STORY OF US

America The Story of Us is an epic 12-hour television event that tells the
extraordinary story of how America was invented.

WATCH NOW

By: Sarah Pruitt

Sarah Pruitt is a writer and editor based in seacoast New Hampshire. She has
been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005, and is the author of
Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of
history's most famous disappearances.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




CITATION INFORMATION

Article TitleWho Invented Television?
AuthorSarah Pruitt
Website NameHISTORY
URLhttps://www.history.com/news/who-invented-television
Date AccessedDecember 29, 2024
PublisherA&E Television Networks
Last UpdatedMarch 12, 2024
Original Published DateJune 29, 2021


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