History of Television

Paul Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1884.

A. A. Campbell Swinton wrote a letter to [Nature] on the 18th June 1908 describing his concept of electronic television using the cathode ray tube invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun. He lectured on the subject in 1911 and displayed circuit diagrams.

A semi-mechanical analogue television system was first demonstrated in London in February 1924 by John Logie Baird and a moving picture by Baird on October 30 1925. The first long distance public television broadcast was from Washington, DC to New York City and occurred on April 7, 1927. The image shown was of then Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. A fully electronic system was demonstrated by Philo Taylor Farnsworth in the autumn of 1927. The first analogue service was WGY, Schenectady, New York inaugurated on May 11 1928. The first British Television Play, "The Man with the Flower in his Mouth", was transmitted in July 1930. CBS's New York City station began broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the U. S. on July 21, 1931. The first broadcast included Mayor James J. Walker, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. The first all-electronic television service was started in Los Angeles, CA by Don Lee Broadcasting. Their start date was December 23, 1931 on W6XAO - later KTSL. Los Angeles was the only major U. S. city that avoided the false start with mechanical television.

 In 1932 the BBC launched a service using Baird's 30-line system and these transmissions continued until 11th September 1935. It was replaced by the world's first regular high-resolution (405 lines per picture) television service, from Alexandra Palace in London on November 2, 1936. The outbreak of the Second World War caused the service to be suspended. TV transmissions only resumed from Alexandra Palace in 1946.

The first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco, California from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference on September 4, 1955.

Programming is broadcast on television stations (sometimes called channels). At first, terrestrial broadcasting was the only way television could be distributed. Because bandwidth was limited, government regulation was normal. In the US, the Federal Communications Commission allowed stations to broadcast advertisements, but insisted on public service programming commitments as a requirement for a license. By contrast, the United Kingdom chose a different route, imposing a television licence fee (effectively a tax) to fund the BBC, which had public service as part of its Crown Charter. Development of cable and satellite means of distribution in the 1970s pushed businessmen to target channels towards a certain audience, and enabled the rise of subscription-based television channels, such as HBO and Sky. Practically every country with the technological capability has developed at least one television channel.