How Was the Television Invented?

Long before we had streaming, remote controls—or even screens—television looked more like this: a spinning disk. In 1884 Paul Nipkow created a spinning disk with holes arranged in a spiral—a device he described as an electric telescope. As the disk rotates, light passes through each hole. The idea was to scan images line by line, like the human eye reading a page. At the 1900 Paris Exposition, Constantin Perskyi coined a term for the disk: “television.” “Tēle” means “far off” in Greek, so “television” quite literally means “far sight.” And it was off the races—in the 1920s inventors built upon Nipkow’s invention. In 1922 Charles Jenkins created a TV that transmitted a still picture across radio waves for the first time. And in 1925 John Logie Baird’s prototype transmitted a live human face—the first true moving television image. Then came the first television boom. In 1927 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (better known as AT&T) gave a demonstration of the new technology, and in 1928 the General Electric Company began regular broadcasts. After initial excitement about the new tech, it turned out that people weren’t so impressed: it had a terrible flicker and poor resolution. Plus, the programs were simple, repetitive, and…boring. So how did we get from this, to this? In the early 20th century, an alternative to the spinning disk was suggested: using beams of electrons generated in a vacuum tube, called cathode rays, to generate pictures. These beams were fast and precise, which meant less flickering and clearer images. In the late 1920s Vladimir Zworykin and Philo Farnsworth raced to turn this concept into a product. Zworykin developed a cathode-ray receiver called the Kinescope, and Farnsworth made a camera tube called the Image Dissector. The following years saw a bitter rivalry form between the two inventors and millions of dollars poured into research. Zworykin emerged the victor. In 1931 his team developed the first fully electronic and commercially viable television system. In 1939 RCA introduced its TV at the World’s Fair in New York, where Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to appear on television. Cut to 1950. TV was growing, but still, only 9 percent of American households owned one. The same year, Columbia Broadcasting System released a color TV system using the same cathode-ray tubes but with colored spinning wheels. It didn’t catch on, though—this color system worked with only about two dozen of the 12 million TVs then in use, so it was quickly dropped. The following year RCA introduced a better system. An image was split into RGB signals. Three electron guns—one for each primary color—painted the picture simultaneously. This happened 60 times a second, line by line, creating a full-color image. Best of all, RCA’s system worked like a free add-on: existing black-and-white TVs could still display color broadcasts in black-and-white. In 1954 RCA launched its first consumer color TV set. It had a 12-inch screen and a hefty $1,000 price tag. It marked the beginning of television in American homes: just five years later, 86 percent of American households had televisions. The rest is history.