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The First Television
In the late 1800s, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a student in Germany, developed the first ever mechanical module of television. He succeeded in sending images through wires with the help of a rotating metal disk. This technology was called the ‘electric telescope’ and had 18 lines of resolution. -
Upgrading
Around 1907, two separate inventors, A.A. Campbell-Swinton from England and Russian scientist Boris Rosing, used the cathode ray tube in addition to the mechanical scanner system, to create a new television system. -
Advent of the Elecrtic Television
The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, an inventor who had conceived of a system that could capture moving images in a form that could be coded onto radio waves and then transformed back into a picture on a screen. Farnsworth's invention, which scanned images with a beam of electrons, is the direct ancestor of modern television. -
The First Television Company
RCA, the company that dominated the radio business in the United States with its two NBC networks, invested $50 million in the development of electronic television. The RCA televised the opening of the New York World's Fair, including a speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the first president to appear on television. -
Commercial Television
Full scale commercial television is created. By 1949 Americans who lived within range of the growing number of television stations in the country could watch numerous types of channels. -
Television Spread through the Nation
The number of television sets in use rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951. No new invention entered American homes faster than black and white television sets; by 1955 half of all U.S. homes had one. -
Anchorman
The term "Anchorman" is coined to descripe person with a central role in the brocasting of a channel. -
The "Golden Age" of Television
Between 1953 and 1955, television programming began to take some steps away from radio formats. A single program could atract 60 million viewers. -
Television gets Political
The first televised debate for presidency, between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, is aired -
the Rise of Cable
Large antennas erected in high places gave everyone connected the chance to receive all the channels available in the nearest city. By 1960 the United States had about 640 such CATV (community antenna television) systems. -
Videocassettes
In the 1980s, home videocassette recorders became widely available. Viewers gained the ability to record and replay programs and, more significantly, to rent and watch movies at times of their own choosing in their own homes. Video games also became popular during this decade. -
Veiwer Discretion is Advised
The ratings were designed to indicate the age groups for which the programs might be suitable: TV-G (for general audiences), TV-PG (parental guidance suggested), TV-14 (unsuitable for children under 14), and TV-MA (for mature audiences only). -
HDTV
In 1997 the federal government gave each U.S. television broadcaster an additional channel on which to introduce high definition television, or HDTV. Initial transmissions of this high-resolution form of television, in which images appear much sharper and clearer, began in 1998.
