Scottish engineer who demonstrated mechanical television
Philo Farnsworth
American inventor of an all-electronic system
Vladimir Zworykin
Russian-American engineer who developed the iconoscope camera tube
Paul Nipkow
Patented a scanning disc in 1884
Plate 080
1925–1930s
London, San Francisco, and elsewhere
No photograph is shown for this exhibition. The museum displays an image only where it can show the object honestly.
About this date
John Logie Baird demonstrated mechanical television in London in 1925–26. Philo Farnsworth demonstrated an all-electronic system in 1927. Regular broadcasting began in the late 1930s.
About credit
Television was developed by many people, with patent disputes between Farnsworth and the RCA company. No one person invented it.
Chapter II
The world before
Life before Television
Moving pictures needed cinema, and news came through newspapers and radio.
II
The human achievement
How it came about
Baird’s mechanical system showed crude moving pictures. Electronic scanning, by Farnsworth and Zworykin, gave better images. The BBC began regular broadcasting in 1936 and colour arrived in the 1950s.
III
Understanding the invention
How it works
Television, explained in two steps.
01
Step 01 of 02
Scanning
The image is read line by line and transmitted as a changing signal.
Scanning
Rebuilding
IV
The transformation
What changed for humanity
News
Events such as the 1969 Moon landing were watched live by hundreds of millions.
Culture and politics
Television shaped elections and entertainment.
Television gave societies a shared window on events and became the dominant mass medium of the 20th century.
V
Before and after
Life before and after Television
Before
A newspaper the next day.
After
The event itself, live.
On larger screens, drag the divider (or use the arrow keys) to give more room to the world before or after.
