History of Television

The history of television can be traced back to a 14 year old farm boy in 1922. Philo T. Farnsworth loved building electric motors and came up with the idea to transmit pictures just as you could sound over the radio. At Brigham Young University, he learned about things he needed to make his idea of television work, including vacuum tubes and cathode ray tubes. It was only when Phil’s boss put up $6,000 that he was able to begin testing his ideas. On January 7, 1927, he changed the history of television when he applied for his first patent.

The development of the television was a long, slow process as they had to keep testing and making revisions. The first program broadcasted was the Disney film Steamboat Willy. At the same time, RCA was also developing its own television and fighting to get a patent for it. The patent office finally declared Farnsworth the inventor, but RCA would continue its legal fight for years.

The public finally got the see this new invention in 1935. At the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, people lined up to walk through a door, past a camera filming them and see themselves on the receiver at the end of the line. It was not until the 1939 World’s Fair in New York that the first American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, would appear on television.

Until the 1950s, television was only broadcast in black and white. Because of NBC’s close ties to RCA, they began programming in color first, another breakthrough in the history of television. ABC did not produce a color series until 1962. In the early 60’s, color televisions were still quite expensive, but by 1972 they had become more affordable and over fifty percent of the households had color television sets.

For his inventing the television and thus beginning the history of television, Philo T. Farnsworth was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Greatest Scientist and Thinkers of the 20th Century. Today we continue to evolve and new techonologies are introduced, including satellite tv, cable television and more.