|
 In
1897, a German scientist by the name of
Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the cathode ray tube. It was this
invention that was to form the basis around which, until
recent years,
the television
was to evolve.
It
was an engineer from Scotland who first saw it's potential for
transmitting pictures. His name was John Logie Baird and he built the
first mechanical television
around 1925. Baird continued to work on his
system until he was able, with the help of the BBC and it's medium wave
transmitters, to transmit very low-definition pictures between
1928 and
1935 in Britain. These pictures comprised of only 30 lines so only bold
details could be distinguished.
This first rudimentary system
worked through a series of spinning discs and mirrors which scanned,
transmitted and in turn re-assembled the image at the other end. However, the first electronic
television,
the type around which most of today's TV's are
based, was
developed by a talented young man called Philo T. Farnsworth.
At the tender age of just 14 years-old, Farnsworth had allready come up
with the idea of a scanning system that could be used with an
all electronic system and by 1927, when he was just 21 years-old, had
developed a working prototype. At that time, RCA was also working on
developing the television
but young Farnsworth managed to successfully
sue the company for patent infringement.
Not satisfied with the low-definition pictures of the early years, the
BBC trialed two high-definition systems in late 1936. On alternate
weeks the BBC tested Baird's system, which by now was transmitting
pictures made up of 240 lines rather than the original 30, and an
electronic system developed by Marconi-EMI using 405 lines. At the end
of the trial in 1937, the winner was declared as
the Marconi-EMI system. In 1964 the BBC launched
it's second television
station with an improved 625-line system. This
became the standard around the world, allowing for programs to be
exchanged between countries.
Despite Baird tinkering with the concept of colour television
as early
as 1925, it wasn't until 1929 that the first serious experimentation
began when American Herbert Ives unveiled the first colour system. It
was a clumsy affair which transmitted three pictures of the same image,
each in a different colour. Red, green and blue. Each one of these
pictures had to be transmitted seperately using it's own transmitter
and received by a cumbersome array of receivers to combine
the three back into a single image. As the wrinkles were ironed out,
the first regular colour TV service
was launched in America in 1954,
followed by Japan in 1960 and in Britain and some other European
countries in 1967.
As with most gadgets, smaller televisions
began to be developed and
between 1979 and 1983, several patents for pocket-sized TV's were
applied for. As usual, the Japanese moved to the cutting edge of
technology by being the first to develop an even higher-definition
system containing 1125 lines and a widescreen format.
This brings us to the digital age and many countries, including Britain
and America are planning to shut down the old analogue systems
completely within the next few years in favour of better
quality digital high-definition services.
|
