Development of television

There is still a lively debate about who should get credit for inventing the television. Over the years, several different organisations and individuals have been credited with its invention.

The word itself is believed to have been coined in 1900 by Russian scientist Constantin Perskyi at the Paris World Exhibition's 1st International Congress of Electricity.

Mechanical television

Scottish engineer John Logie Baird demonstrated what is believed to have been the first working television in 1926. This was a mechanical television using rotating discs and mirrors to convert light to electricity.

Baird was able to transmit images using telephone wires, sending a broadcast from Glasgow to London in 1927 and another across the Atlantic Ocean from London to New York in 1928. Some of the mechanical television’s principles survive in modern technologies such as laser printers. However, the mechanical television itself was quickly replaced by the mid-1930s by the more advanced electronic television.

Electronic television

The first prototype electronic television, named the 'Image Dissector' , was demonstrated in the United States in 1928 by Philo Taylor Farnsworth . Using cathode ray tubes to transmit images, this was the forerunner of televisions still used in many homes today.

The technology was also under development by others such as Vladimer Zworykin , who in 1929 demonstrated an all electronic television with no moving parts.

By 1934, Farnsworth was able to demonstrate a more advanced electronic television capable of displaying 30 frames a second, enough to display today’s television programming.

Commercial broadcasts began a few years later, in the United States, in 1936. In Europe the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were the first to be broadcast by electronic television cameras.

However, the television was not adopted in large numbers until the 1950s and 1960s.

The Australian Broadcast Association reports that television was introduced to Australia in 1956 to NSW and Victoria, but did not reach Canberra until 1962. The last territory to receive television in Australia was the Northern Territory in 1971.

Colour television

The first televisions displayed images in monochrome, or 'black and white'. The first colour televisions were introduced in the 1960s; however, it did not reach Australia until 1975.

These television sets rapidly took over the older black and white sets and today, most western countries average more than one colour television per household.