How was television, described as the "entertainment box" invented?
Although today many people, especially young people, prefer internet-based applications on mobile devices to get news, watch movies and listen to music, television still maintains its place in the corner of homes. Moreover, internet-based applications can work in integration with new generation smart televisions. So how was the television, which is described as the "entertainment box", invented?
The word television is formed by combining the ancient Greek words telos meaning “far” and visio meaning “seeing” in Latin. We can briefly define television as a device that enables electromagnetic waves emitted from a transmitter to be seen and heard as images and sounds. In the past, many people from all over the world struggled to bring moving images to distant places. However, the names of John Logie Baird, Vladimir Zworkin and Philo T. Farnsworth come to the fore in the invention of television.
Scottish engineer John Logie Baird built the first mechanical television in 1925, consisting of multiple wheels and parts. Baird used a perforated disk in his design, invented by German engineer Paul Nipkow in 1894, that scans images to transmit them as electrical signals. The signals reaching the television were changing the brightness of the bulb in the device very quickly. Small moving images were created when moving holes and varying brightness were combined in this setup. Lenses were used to magnify the image. But as exciting as Baird's design was, it provided a shaky and blurry image. For this reason, Baird was able to sell only 1000 of the device he called "Televisor".
A few years later, Russian-American inventor Vladimir Zworykin developed a cathode ray tube for displaying images on the screen. Philo T. Farnsworth produced his own image scanner and, together with Zwortkin, played an important role in the transformation of television from a mechanical system to an electronic one.
Initially, televisions only gave black-and-white images, but with the coating of the screen with a layer of phosphor, the images became colorful. In cathode ray televisions, also known as tube televisions, the electron beams emanating from the cathode are directed to the phosphor-coated screen by electromagnets. When the electrons hitting the phosphor layer emit light, an image is formed on the screen. If you look too closely at the television, you will see meaningless images. When you move a few steps away, the images start to become clear. This is because the screen is made up of small squares called pixels. These pixels are illuminated with red, green, blue colors and intermediate colors obtained from these colors. When the pictures created by illuminating the pixels are played back in succession, a moving image occurs.
In today's televisions, new generation electronic systems are used instead of cathode ray tubes. Televisions are produced to be much thinner while providing brighter and clearer images day by day. Smart TVs can now access the internet, watch three-dimensional movies and connect with mobile devices. It is expected that televisions will become much more interactive in the future.
In 1936, RCA demonstrates an all- electronic, 343 line/30 frames per second, television broadcast signaling the arrival of a completely functional television system. That summer lead to the first major broadcast using this new medium, the Berlin Summer Olympic Games, which were televised by Telefunken using RCA equipment. Another major broadcaster rises to prominence as the BBC starts the "world's first public, regular, high-definition Television station" on November 2nd.
First Television Broadcast
Although there were experimental broadcasts in different countries before, the first regular and high-definition television broadcast was started in 1936 by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Although television stations were closed for a while due to the First World War, new techniques such as radar developed during the war made television a much more powerful tool.