The television picture invention

A 14-year-old farm boy named Philo Farnsworth looked out over freshly plowed potato fields and saw something no one else had: a blueprint for the future of television. In 1922, he sketched a system where images could be broken down into lines of light and transmitted electronically—an idea that mirrors exactly how TVs operate today.

By 21, Farnsworth built the first fully functional electronic television. When RCA, the biggest name in radio and technology, tried to steal credit for his invention, Farnsworth’s high school teacher brought out his original sketch as proof. In 1935, the young inventor defeated the corporate giant, securing his place as the true father of television. 📺🚜

Sources: Philo Farnsworth, Television’s Birth: My Story; RCA patent trial records; Smithsonian National Museum of American History
#PhiloFarnsworth #InventionOfTelevision #TechHistory

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

1884 - First scanning-disc system invented, by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow (Germany). It describes the image in line form set by a single-turn spiral of holes in a rotating disc. Regarded as the primary patent precursor to television - so Farnsworth was effectively spotting something others had already realised.

1926 - World's first electro-mechanical TV, using the motor-driven Nipkow Disc scanner; by John Logie Baird, in Scotland.

His company went on to develop colour TV and the first viable colour picture "tube".

1927: April - AT&T achieved a 225-mile long, telephone-wire TV transmission between New York and Washington.

- May: Baird responded with a similar demonstration, now over 430 miles, London-Glasgow.

1928: Baird's company achieved the first trans-Atlantic TV transmission. Baird also demonstrated the world's first colour TV, using a Nipkow Disc with three sets of holes, one for each primary colour, and a collimator.

1929 - First BBC TV transmissions, though still of very low definition.

John Baird also seems to have been involved in early infra-red, opto-electronics; and possibly precussor radar research that for some reason has never been officially acknowledged. He devised a system that could detect objects but not calculate their range and 3D location.

......

A 1930s film version of George Orwell's 1984 shows the two-way television on the wall of the central character's flat. Although obviously a scene "prop", it is clear by the continually-circling dot of light that the camera section is based on the Nipkow Disc scanner.

Nowadays, although audio only, we have 'Alexa' and her sisters.... for those gullible enough to buy them. In 1984 the surveillance was compulsory.