In what year was the first television created? History of Plasma TVs
Today, no one can be surprised by television. This is a box or even a small panel that allows you to display movable pictures. It is difficult to imagine that just a little over a century ago such technology did not exist in principle. It is only thanks to a huge amount of research that we are able to enjoy television.
The people who gave us the ability to transmit images over a distance will be discussed in this article.
At the origins
Who invented television and in what year? Many people asked this question, but not everyone could give an accurate answer.
The question of where television was invented is still open. The answers may not be clear cut. This is because more than one person invented the first television. This is the painstaking work of many people.
Where was television invented? Many countries around the world are fighting for this right, in each of which an entire army of scientists worked on this issue. But first things first.
Where it all started
The very first person to invent television can be considered a Swedish chemist whose name was Jens Berzelius. The scientist carried out many experiments in his laboratory, as a result of which he discovered a previously unknown chemical element, which was called “selenium”.
The importance of this event cannot be overestimated. It was noted that this element conducts electric current depending on the amount of light exposed to it.
Without it, image transmission would be impossible.
From theory to practice
Boris Lvovich Rosing is the one who invented television, historians will say. And they will not be far from the truth.
The biography of this physicist and inventor, who actually gave us the opportunity to spend evenings in front of the blue screen, is worth studying more deeply.
Boris Lvovich Rosing was born in one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine in St. Petersburg.
He devoted almost his entire life to work at the institute. These are the St. Petersburg Technological Institute, the Arkhangelsk Forestry Engineering Institute, and many others, where he was invited as an honorary lecturer. The scientist defended his Ph.D. thesis.
His works were devoted to studies of magnetism, radio engineering, electricity, molecular fields, ferromagnets, quantum physics, and dynamics.
The idea of transmitting an image over a distance came to Boris Lvovich in one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven. He could not imagine his experiments without the cathode ray tube, which had just been invented, as well as the research of Alexander Grigorievich Stoletov.
His success in studying the issue was great. Already in nineteen hundred and seven, the world was introduced to the technology of creating an image using a cathode ray tube with a fluorescent screen and rotating mirrors. The physicist's inventions were patented and recognized in Great Britain and Germany. The experience was a display of gray bars on a black screen. It seems so simple. But for that time it was a huge breakthrough. The talented scientist was talked about all over the world.
Just four years later, the physicist was able to transmit an image over a distance. Most likely, none of the readers have any doubts about who invented television.
In the same year one thousand nine hundred and eleven, Rosing made the transition from mechanical to electronic systems.
Until his death in nineteen thirty-three, the physicist did not stop creating and improving his instruments, developing new methods of modulation, design of tubes and circuits.
First experiments with pictures
Who invented television first was the famous American inventor, Mr. Kerry, many researchers believe. The results of his experiments became the first working system, with the help of which he was able to transmit an unclear, but still image.
The descendants of inventor Paul Nipkow may argue about who invented television. His experiments were much more advanced, although the principle of operation of the device was identical to Mr. Kerry’s equipment. Paul gave his invention the name "expanded image." It was one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four.
New term
The term “television” itself is attributed to the Russian engineer Konstantin Dmitrievich Persky.
Before this, scientists used complex expressions like “far vision” or “electrical telescopy.”
It is believed that he was the first to introduce it into use in August 1900. This was done within the framework of the International Electrotechnical Congress in Paris. The participants really liked the word and quickly spread it among their social circles upon returning home.
The talk “on seeing at a distance” was given in French.
A year earlier, Konstantin Persky received a patent for one of the methods of image transmission. Inspired by his success, the engineer enthusiastically told his European colleagues about the colossal opportunities that his technology could give humanity.
A lot is known about the scientist himself. Konstantin Dmitrievich came from a noble family, his ancestors served the Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy himself.
Before devoting his life to inventions, Persky managed to graduate from the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy, after which he applied his knowledge during the Russian-Turkish War, where he was even awarded the Order of Bravery.
After returning from the battlefield, Konstantin Dmitrievich chose to combine the military path with science and at the same time become an active member of the St. Petersburg technical and electrical communities.
The most striking achievement of his work was an extensive report entitled "The Present State of the Question of Electrical Vision at a Distance", which he successfully presented at various educational institutions at home and abroad.
Although studying physics did not prevent the scientist from improving in the military field. In particular, he received a medal from the Chicago World's Fair for his warning device against attempts to secretly enter the premises.
The inventor died in 1906.
Optimistic results
When asked when John Logie Baird invented television, there will be fans of his talent who will confidently say that it was one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three. It was then that the scientist was able to transmit the image via a cable to his colleague, Charles Jenkins, in the United States of America.
But television is not only about transmitting electrical impulses through wires. In order to run them, you first need a television camera.
Experts will say with confidence: television was invented by a Russian scientist named Vladimir Zvorykin in 1931 at the facilities of his enterprise Radiocorporations of America. But this is a controversial issue, because almost at the same time, another inventor, Phil Farnsworth, was constructing a similar device.
The name of the sponsor of the Russian scientist who believed in his very futuristic and incredible idea has been preserved in history - this is David Abramovich Sarnov, an American signalman and businessman. It was thanks to his financial support that the world saw most of Vladimir Zvorykin’s inventions.
The first video cameras
The first cameras were called “incoscope” and “image-transmitting tube”.
Over the next fourteen years, the devices will undergo major modifications and will have a structure similar to that used in modern devices.
They are based on a cathode ray tube, thanks to which, in fact, the image is transmitted to the viewer.
Color television
Many people believe that color television was invented by Soviet engineer Hovhannes Adamyan.
Back in nineteen hundred and eight, the inventor received a patent for the signal transmission device he created. The invention could only transmit two colors at that time.
But still, it would be more correct to consider John Logie Brad as the one who invented color television. It was this person who connected green, blue and red light filters in such a way that they could broadcast various combinations.
Black and white television announcers wore green lipstick. The red color on the screen looked very light and faded. After much experimentation and testing, we came to the conclusion that green is the most harmonious for color rendition.
There is some debate about where and which color program was released first. The most common belief is that it was an English league football match.
Full-fledged permanent broadcasting began in nineteen forty in the United States.
The first commercial program was released in 1951 in the USA. It was a celebrity variety show on CBS.
Let's summarize the data
The article contains the names of many great people who worked at different times in laboratories of different countries and continents. Each of them made a significant contribution to the development of television. Without the work of these wonderful, purposeful people, transmitting the picture is impossible.
There is no need to single out just one person. Thanks to all this research, today we have the opportunity to use such an everyday phenomenon as television.
On April 1, 1903, a note appeared in one of the German newspapers, which reported that “tonight in the castle brewery there will be a demonstration of an interesting apparatus called an oculariophone, which is a combination of a telephone, a gramophone and a biographer.” Visitors to the pub were promised to be shown through the apparatus scenes from a comic opera being performed in the city theater. The April Fool's joke was quickly figured out, and the burghers, drinking beer in the pub, talked about the stupidity of the newspaper men who were unable to come up with anything more plausible. There were 8 years left before the invention of the television (or the transmission of the first television image).
At that time, the service of a telemaster was not yet in demand. But if now it suddenly breaks down, you can do it quickly and inexpensively by calling a service center specialist.
TV is a mechanical toy and its history
The history of the creation of the television begins with a report on the transfer of a light spot over a distance, presented in 1877 by the Frenchman Senlec, the Portuguese Adrian de Pavia and the Italian Carlo Mario. A selenium photocell, changing its electrical resistance depending on the illumination, controlled at a distance the glow of an electric light bulb, the brightness of which varied in proportion to the illumination of the selenium photocell. The idea of a precursor scoreboard was instantly born, consisting of 10 thousand light bulbs, arranged in 100 rows of 100 light bulbs in each row, connected by 10 thousand lines with a transmitting chamber of 10 thousand selenium photocells. The idea was not implemented due to technical difficulties.
In 1879an idea was announced on how to do without 10 thousand lines connecting the transmitter and receiving screen. The number of lines was reduced to one - the selenium photocell was proposed to be sequentially passed through all points of the transmitted image, and at the receiving end of the line, a pencil moving synchronously with the photocell was to be pressed against a sheet of white paper with a force proportional to the illumination of the corresponding point at the transmitting end of the line, leaving prints of varying intensities .
In 1880it was proposed to “feel” the points of the picture using a rotating switch, which also made it possible to get by with one communication line. But technical capabilities did not allow moving a single selenium photocell at a speed sufficient to transmit at least 12 frames per second. The technical problem was elegantly solved by the German inventor Paul Nipkow, but, as it turned out, too early, the invention of the television had not yet taken place. According to him, the idea of decomposing an image into dots and lines using a rotating disk with holes printed in an unwinding spiral came to him in 1883.
A selenium photocell collected light leaking through the only hole in the disk that currently covered the image, and converted it into the brightness of a light bulb at the receiving end of the line. 
The light from which, through a disk with holes similar to the disk at the transmitting end and rotating with it synchronously, created a light spot on the screen, the brightness of which corresponded to the brightness of the spot on the transmitting side. When the disks on the screen rotated quickly enough, due to the inertia of human vision, the transmitted image was recreated.
In 1884Nipkov received a patent for an “electric telescope”. Nipkov had a chance to see the embodiment of his idea “in hardware” 44 years later, in 1928, at a communications exhibition. Another 7 years later, in 1935, on the inventor’s 75th birthday, the Telefunken company gave Nipkov a real electronic TV.
The Nipkow disk remained on the television transmitting camera until 1943, but on the receiving side it was replaced by a new miracle device - a cathode tube, which marked a new stage in the history of television.
In the cathode tube, a beam of electrons emitted by a hot cathode was deflected horizontally and vertically by electromagnets, and, falling on a glass screen coated with a fluorescent composition, illuminated a bright point on it. By moving the point synchronously with the rotation of the Nipkow disk, it was possible to transmit the image. However, the inventor of the cathode ray tube, German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun, was not concerned about transmitting images over a distance; he considered his tube a successful means for demonstrating the shape of alternating currents.
In Russia, the possibility of transmitting pictures over a distance was considered by physicist A.G. Stoletov, who discovered the laws of the photoelectric effect (the phenomenon itself was discovered by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz). The device was supposed to be called “Telescope”. The further development of television is also connected with Russia. Physicist Boris Lvovich Rosing was a student of radio inventor Alexander Stepanovich Popov, and from the Artillery School in St. Petersburg he knew the military engineer Konstantin Dmitrievich Persky, obsessed with the idea of transmitting images over a distance. We owe to Persky the enrichment of the vocabulary for the word “television”, and to Rosing the invention of television.
Rosing became interested in the idea of transmitting images through a Brown tube in 1902, and already in 1907 he patented the “Electric Telescope”. On the transmitting side, Rosing decomposed the image into elements by means of two rotating mirror cylinders offset from one another, and the current through the windings of the electron beam deflecting electromagnets on the receiving cathode tube was generated by magnets connected to the rotating cylinders.
In 1911Rosing demonstrated his first working example of an image-transfer apparatus. The transmitted image, 4 white stripes on a black background, turned out to be very clear. But Rosing was not satisfied with the mechanical scanning of the image in the transmitting chamber, and he proposed using a cathode tube as a transmitter. This idea was implemented by Rosing’s student Zvorykin.
Creation of the first electronic televisions and image transmission
Since 1913, vacuum tubes began to be produced on an industrial scale, but they did not have much influence on the history of the development of television; television continued to remain mechanical.
In 1925the image of a person was transmitted on television for the first time - Scotsman John Baird, for half a crown, persuaded a 15-year-old clerk apprentice to sit in front of the blinding light of the transmitting camera, and observed a completely clear image of his face in the next room. Baird's devices were assembled from scrap materials found in a landfill, with Nipkow disks in the transmitting and receiving apparatus.
The first television set for the public went on sale in the United States in 1927, which completed the history of the first television. Mass regular broadcasting began in 1934 in Germany, and since 1936 in the UK. In the USSR, the first mechanical television appeared in 1932.
History of TV: Television Goes Fully Electronic
The next stage in the history of television creation is associated with the name of engineer Zvorykin. Murom resident Vladimir Kozmich Zvorykin completed his education as an electrical engineer in 1912, and in 1919 emigrated to America. In 1920, he began working for the Westinghouse company in Pittsburgh. He set ambitious plans - to implement the idea of his teacher Rosing and use an electron beam to decompose the transmitted image. His work resulted in the invention of the iconoscope in 1923, for which a patent was received in 1938. As a receiving tube, Zvorykin used the so-called. "kinescope", or Brown tube. The first purely electronic device was created in the laboratory he headed in 1936, and in 1939 a model for mass production was released. The era of mechanical television is over.
It was a small matter - to increase the sensitivity of the transmitting tubes (with low-sensitive iconoscopes, the temperature in the transmitting studio reached 40-50 ° C due to the operation of the lighting devices), and to improve the clarity of the image. Sensitivity was increased thanks to the effect of secondary photoelectron emission, and image quality was increased by sequential transmission of even and odd lines, which increased the frame rate (half frames) to 50 per second, and the resulting image was already perceived by the eye as stable.
In the USA in 1932, television broadcasting was already carried out from 35 experimental stations, but regular programs were broadcast only in New York. The number of image lines remained low. The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were broadcast at a frequency of 25 frames per second, the image was decomposed into 180 lines. A new impetus for television was given in 1948, when in Germany a television standard with 625 lines was proposed, which was soon adopted in other countries, and has survived to this day.. In the United States, the 525-line decomposition standard was gradually established. By the mid-50s, television sets were already in 27 million American homes.
Zvorykin continued to work on increasing the sensitivity of the iconoscope, and by 1939, together with Harley Yams and George Morton, he invented the supericonoscope. Even later, Harley Yams and Albert Rose created a more sensitive orthicone. All these devices used the photoelectric effect discovered by Stoletov, later called the external photoeffect. 
Since 1949, researchers have been working on the use of the "intrinsic" or semiconductor effect in television.. Invented in 1949, the vidicon already worked in normal lighting conditions. In 1965, an even more modern semiconductor transmitting tube, the plumbicon, was created, which found application in transmitting color television programs. In the USSR, the KVN-49 cathode-ray television for the mass consumer was produced since 1949.
On July 21, 1969, 530 million people around the world watched the first man land on the Moon on their television screens. It was, of course, another triumph in the history of television.
A rainbow appears on the TV screen
The era of color television began in 1954, when, again, the first color television was created in the Zvorykin laboratory. In the 60s, standards for color television systems appeared - NTSC in the USA, SECAM in France and PAL in Germany. In the USSR, color televisions began to be produced in 1967.
In the 60s, vacuum tubes were replaced with semiconductor transistors.. The first all-semiconductor TV was manufactured in 1960 by the Japanese company Sony. Devices are becoming more compact and screens are becoming larger. In the future, the industry is transitioning to microcircuits; all the electronic content of a modern television receiver can be placed in one microcircuit.
And finally, the engineers' dream of a flat screen is coming true - liquid crystal screens and plasma panels have appeared. Currently, analogue television channels are being replaced by digital ones, with the upcoming abolition of analogue television broadcasting soon. The history of television is not over yet - there are still many undiscovered possibilities of this type of communication ahead.
History of our days: common brands of budget TVs
Designed for the undemanding TV viewer who gets acceptable quality for little money. It was Akai that released the world's first models with an on-screen menu and remote control from the remote control.
A typical representative of the inexpensive class, produced mainly for sale in Russia and the CIS countries. Mostly models with LCD screens are produced.
Produced by DNS Holding and sold in the company's retail stores. Both budget devices and those that satisfy the most sophisticated demands are produced, but all models are distinguished by high reliability. Some models support Smart TV - integration of the Internet and digital interactive services into TVs and digital television receivers.
Since ancient times, humanity has dreamed of transmitting images over distances. We have all heard fairy tales and legends about magic mirrors, plates with apples and the like. But more than one millennium passed before this dream came true.
The first televisions suitable for mass production appeared in the late 30s of the last century. However, this was preceded by several decades of persistent research and many ingenious discoveries.
Where it all began
The era of television began after the discovery of the photoelectric effect. First of all, the internal photoelectric effect was used, the essence of which was that some semiconductors, when illuminated, significantly changed their electrical resistance.
The Englishman Smith was the first to note this interesting ability of semiconductors. In 1873, he reported on his experiments with crystalline selenium. In these experiments, selenium strips were placed in sealed glass tubes with platinum inputs. The tubes were placed in a lightproof box with a lid. In the dark, the resistance of the selenium strips was quite high and remained quite stable, but as soon as the lid of the box was removed, the conductivity increased by 15-100%.
Soon, Smith's discovery began to be widely used in television systems. It is known that every object becomes visible only if it is illuminated or if it is a source of light. Light or dark areas of an observed object or its image differ from each other by different intensities of light reflected or emitted by them. Television is precisely based on the fact that each object (if you do not take into account its color) can be considered as a combination of a large number of more or less light and dark points.
In 1878, Portuguese physics professor Adriano de Paiva outlined the idea of a new device for transmitting images over wires in a scientific journal. De Paiva's transmitting device was a camera obscura with a large selenium plate mounted on the back wall. Different sections of this plate were supposed to change their resistance differently depending on the lighting. However, de Paiva admitted that he did not know how to perform the opposite effect - to make the screen at the receiving station light up.
In February 1888, Russian scientist Alexander Stoletov conducted an experiment that clearly demonstrated the effect of light on electricity. Stoletov managed to identify several patterns of this phenomenon. He also developed the prototype of modern photocells, the so-called “electric eye”. Later, many other great scientists were engaged in similar research, including F. Lenard, J. Thompson, O. Richardson, P. Lukirsky and S. Prilezhaev. But only Albert Einstein was able to fully explain the nature of the photoelectric effect in 1905.
In parallel with these studies, many others took place, which ultimately played an equally important role in the history of the creation of televisions. For example, in 1879, the English physicist William Crookes discovered substances that can glow when exposed to cathode rays - phosphors. Later it was found that the brightness of phosphors directly depends on the strength of their irradiation. In 1887, the first version of the cathode ray tube (kinescope) was introduced by the German physicist Karl Braun.
By the end of the 19th century, the very idea of television no longer seemed something absurd and fantastic. None of the scientists any longer doubt the possibility of transmitting images over distances. One after another, projects for television systems are being put forward, most of them impracticable from the point of view of physics. The main principles of television operation were created by the French scientist Maurice Leblanc. Independently of him, the American scientist E. Sawyer also creates similar works. They described the principle that transmitting an image requires rapid frame-by-frame scanning, then converting it into an electrical signal. Well, since radio already existed and was successfully used, the issue of transmitting an electrical signal was resolved by itself.
In 1907, Boris Rosing managed to theoretically substantiate the possibility of obtaining images using a cathode ray tube, previously developed by the German physicist K. Braun. Rosing also managed to put this into practice. And although it was possible to obtain an image in the form of a single fixed point, this was a huge step forward. In general, Rosing played a huge role in the development of electronic television systems.
In 1933, in the United States, Russian emigrant Vladimir Zvorykin demonstrated an iconoscope - a transmitting electron tube. It is generally accepted that V. Zvorykin is the father of electronic television.
Mechanical TVs
The first mechanical scanning device was developed in 1884 by German engineer Paul Nipkow. This device once again confirmed the truth of the statement regarding the simplicity of everything ingenious. His device was a rotating opaque disk, up to 50 cm in diameter, with holes marked in an Archimedes spiral - the so-called Nipkow disk (sometimes in the literature the Nipkow device is called an “electric telescope”).
In this way, the image was scanned with a light beam, followed by transmission of the signal to a special converter. One photocell was enough for scanning. The number of holes sometimes reached 200. On the TV, the process was repeated in the reverse order - to obtain an image, a rotating disk with holes was again used, behind which there was a neon lamp. Using such a simple system, the image was projected. Also line by line, but with sufficient speed for the human eye to see the whole picture. Thus, projection televisions were the first to be created. The quality of the picture left much to be desired - only silhouettes and a play of shadows, but nevertheless, it was possible to discern what exactly was being shown. The Nipkow disk was the main component of almost all mechanical television systems until their complete extinction as a species.
Television is going to the masses
In 1925, Swedish engineer John Baird was the first to achieve the transfer of recognizable human faces. Again using a Nipkow disk. Somewhat later, he also developed the first television system capable of transmitting moving images.
The first electronic TV suitable for practical use was developed at the American research laboratory RCA, headed by Zvorykin, at the end of 1936. Somewhat later, in 1939, RCA introduced the first television designed specifically for mass production. This model was called RCS TT-5. It was a massive wooden box equipped with a 5-inch diagonal screen.
At first, the development of television went in two directions - electronic and mechanical (sometimes mechanical television is also called “low-line television”). Moreover, the development of mechanical systems occurred almost until the end of the 40s of the 20th century, before it was completely replaced by electronic devices. On the territory of the USSR, mechanical television systems lasted a little longer.
USSR
In parallel, the development of televisions took place on the territory of the Soviet Union. The first experimental television broadcast took place on April 29, 1931. From October 1 of the same year, television broadcasts became regular. Since no one had televisions yet, collective viewings were held in specially designated places. Many Soviet radio amateurs are starting to assemble mechanical models of televisions with their own hands. In 1932, when developing the Second Five-Year Plan, television received a lot of attention. On November 15, 1934, a television program with sound was broadcast for the first time. For quite a long time, there was only one channel - the First. During the Great Patriotic War, the broadcast was interrupted and restored only after its end. And in 1960, Channel Two appeared.
The first Soviet TV put on stream was called B-2. This mechanical model appeared in April 1932. The first electronic TV was created much later - in 1949. It was the legendary KVN 49. The TV was equipped with such a small screen that for more or less comfortable viewing, a special lens was installed in front of it, which had to be filled with distilled water. Subsequently, many other, more advanced models appeared. However, the build quality and reliability of Soviet televisions (even the latest models) were so low that they became the talk of the town. The production of color televisions in the USSR began only in mid-1967.
Color television
Although the color television system was developed by Zworykin in 1928, it was only by 1950 that its implementation became possible. And even then only as experimental developments. It took many years before this technology became generally available.
The first commercially available color TV was created in 1954 by the same RCA. This model was equipped with a 15 inch screen. Somewhat later, models with diagonals of 19 and 21 inches were developed. Such systems cost more than a thousand US dollars, and therefore were not accessible to everyone. However, if desired, it was possible to purchase this equipment on credit. Due to difficulties with the widespread organization of color television broadcasting, color television models could not quickly replace black and white ones, and for a long time both types were produced in parallel. Common standards (PAL and SECAM) appeared and began to be implemented in 1967.
Development of television
The rapid development of television in the second half of the 20th century led to the fact that several generations have already grown up who cannot imagine life without a television. The quality of broadcasting has increased significantly and has become digital. TVs themselves have ceased to be perceived as “boxes”, because flat LCD and plasma models have appeared. Screen sizes are no longer measured at a couple of tens of centimeters. Television has become the norm.
At the beginning, radio tubes were replaced by semiconductors - the first TV based on semiconductors was developed in 1960 by Sony. Later, models based on microcircuits appeared. Now there are systems where the entire electronic content of the TV is contained in one single microcircuit.
"The Evolution of Things": The History of TV
A TV today cannot be called a luxury item, as it was 50 years ago. This device is now in every home. The whole family gathers around it in the evenings and on weekends, and it is a real center of entertainment and receiving the most up-to-date information about events in the country and in the world. This piece of furniture has become so familiar that it seems as if it has always existed. But this achievement of scientific and technological progress has its own history. It would not be amiss to note the names of its creators and remember the long path of its development.
The history of the discovery of television
The appearance of television was preceded by several very important and interesting events in the world of science and technology. It was they who made this invention possible, which very soon became a very important achievement that completely transformed our lives.
We list only the most important discoveries in science that influenced the creation of this device:
- the creation of the theory of light waves - the physicist Huygens, who went down in history, managed to understand the nature of light;
- discovery of electromagnetic waves - Maxwell;
- discovery of the ability to influence the parameters of electric current by changing the resistance - it is this discovery of the scientist with the popular name Smith that is associated with the very first experiments in creating television systems;
- discovery of the influence of light on electricity - Alexander Stoletov.
By the way, it was Stoletov who had the honor of creating the “electric eye” - that’s what the prototype of a modern photocell was called at that time. True, the photoelectric effect was first discovered by Heinrich Hertz, but he could not figure out how to use this phenomenon in practice. Stoletov did it for him, which is why he is considered the discoverer.
It is also important to remember that it was studied (at approximately the same time) how light affects the chemical composition of certain substances. As a result, the photoelectric effect was discovered, and it became clear to the scientific community that a picture can not only be “drawn” using electromagnetic waves, but also transmitted over a certain distance. And the invention of radio, which at that time had already become famous, spurred the interest of scientists and technicians. Now nothing could hinder progress. The creation of the first television was predetermined.
Speaking about who invented the television, which after some time became the most popular and important means of distributing and receiving information, it is impossible to name any one name - a lot of people participated in its creation.
It all started with the work of the German technician Paul Nipkow, who in 1884 created a device that performed line-by-line scanning of any picture that could be transmitted to the screen in the form of an optical-mechanical scan. The device was mechanical and was called the “Nipkow disk”. It was on its basis that the first electromechanical device was designed, which can already be called a TV. Television systems based on the Nipkow disk were known until the 30s of the twentieth century.
The very first kinescope was created by Karl Brown. It was called the “Brown tube” and became the prototype of modern picture tubes, which were used until the advent of liquid crystal and plasma panels.
Speaking about the first device that can already be called a television, it is necessary to remember the name of the Scotsman John Bird. He created a mechanical device operating on the basis of a Nipkow disk and put it into production. Bird turned out to be a very enterprising man, and his corporation flourished in the complete absence of competitors. True, his televisions did not have sound, but despite this, they were noticeably popular. The signal was transmitted over a fairly long distance - in 1927, communication was established between London and Glasgow at a distance of about 700 kilometers. However, the future of television lay with the vacuum tube invented by Brown.
Who invented the modern television
After its appearance, Brown's pipe did not become widespread. However, a few years later, the Russian scientist Boris Rosing became interested in it, and in 1907 he patented a similar device. His systems had no mechanical parts, and therefore can be called the first fully electronic devices.
And the date of appearance of the first television with an iconoscope (as the tube was called by its creator Vladimir Zvorykin, a student of Rosing) is considered to be 1933. The TV was assembled in the American laboratory of a scientist who left Russia after the revolution. It is Zvorykin who has the honor of being called the creator of modern television. Zvorykin's TV went into mass production in 1939. The device had a screen measuring 3x4 cm.
The first device to replace the mechanical Nipkow disk was created by the American Fransworth Philo Taylor and was called an image dissector. The device scanned an image like a Nipkow disk and divided it into electrical signals that could be transmitted. He also built the first fully electronic system, which was presented to the public in 1934.
After this series of inventions, experiments in the creation and development of television systems spread throughout the world.
Color TV
At first, scientists and technicians were faced with the task of transmitting images. Naturally, the first more or less high-quality images were transmitted in halftones; few people thought about color reproduction. And yet the idea of transmitting a color image over a distance did not leave the minds of scientists and technicians. The very first experiments were carried out at a time when mechanical Byrd receivers dominated the market. The first studies were presented to the scientific community by Hovhannes Adamyan. At the very beginning of the 20th century, he patented a device that worked in two colors.
In 1928, the first device was introduced that was capable of transmitting a color image sequentially behind three color filters. This device became the prototype of the modern full-color TV.
Real progress in this area began after World War II. All the countries' resources were used to restore the war-damaged economy and improve the quality of life of the population. Waves in the decimeter range began to be used to transmit images.
The basis for further research in this area was the American Triniscope system, which was presented to the public back in 1940. It worked on the basis of three picture tubes, each of which received only the color intended for it. The result was a color picture.
After this, progress in the field of color television could not be stopped.
Creation of television in the USSR
The Soviet Union lagged somewhat behind other advanced countries in the development of television and research in image transmission. This was facilitated, in particular, by the difficulties in the country's economy caused by the Great Patriotic War.
The first experiments in transmitting television images took place back in 1931. The very first TV was assembled on a Nipkov disk. It was produced at the Leningrad Komintern plant and was not an independent device, but an attachment that had to be connected to a radio receiver. The TV had a screen measuring 3x4 cm.
Engineers in all corners of the country assembled the devices themselves. For this purpose, detailed instructions were even published in the Radiofront magazine. The assembly process was extremely simple, so the first televisions of this type appeared in Soviet families.
How did the first television appear?
More or less regular television broadcasting appeared in the USSR in 1931 after the launch of a broadcasting station on medium waves. At first, only three dozen mechanical devices received the signal, but the audience was significantly expanded by “homemade” devices. Here are the main milestones in the development of television in the USSR:
- 1949: mastered the production of mass-produced KVN televisions with a cathode ray tube;
- 1951: creation of the Central Television Gosteleradio;
- 1959: experiments with color television broadcasting;
- 1965: The first satellite broadcasting a signal to the entire country.
Television studios began to appear not only in Moscow, but also in other large cities of the country. A whole range of television programs of various directions has appeared. The industry produced increasingly modern television receivers. And all of this led to the modern television environment we have today.
For several decades, televisions—whether black-and-white or color, tube or transistor—used a cathode ray tube called a kinescope. And if the dimensions of the TV needed to be reduced, then the size of the screen was simultaneously reduced. Until plasma and liquid crystal panels began to be used instead of picture tubes, which made it possible to make televisions thin and flat.
The appearance of such televisions - large and flat - was predicted by some futurist writers. Even Nikolai Nosov, in his 1958 book “Dunno in the Sunny City,” wrote:
“The next day Klyopka and Kubik picked them up early, and they all went together to the television and radio factory. The most important thing they saw here was the production of large flat wall-mounted widescreen TVs.”
How did television develop and who had a hand in creating the “cinema killer”? In the new series of articles “,” the site recalls the vibrant history of devices that transmit moving pictures.
Read also the previous materials in the series:
Plasma for huge and expensive TVs
The fundamental possibility of creating plasma TVs was described by the Hungarian engineer Kalman Tihanyi back in 1936. In plasma - an ionized gas - under the influence of electrical discharges, ultraviolet rays appear, which cause the phosphor of the screen to glow. But it took almost forty years for the first plasma panels to go into production.
The panels were small, expensive ($2,500 for a matrix with a resolution of 512x512 pixels) and displayed information in orange. In the seventies they were already installed in computers. In 1983, IBM introduced a large plasma panel - 48 centimeters diagonally, also orange-monochrome. But plasma panels in computers lost competition to LCD displays.
Plato V computer with monochrome plasma screen. Photo: Wikipedia.
After another ten years, “plasma” had a rebirth: in 1992, the Japanese company Fujitsu introduced the first color plasma panel with a diagonal of 21 inches (53 cm).
Panasonic is joining the race for plasma. At first, this race was a joint Japanese-American one: Fujitsu collaborated with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Panasonic collaborated with the American company Plasmaco.
In 1995, Fujitsu, and two years later Philips, introduced 42-inch (107 cm) plasma TVs. In the US, the TVs go on sale for $14,999 including installation.
Perhaps for the first time since the distant fifties, a TV should be installed by a master. And, perhaps, for the first time in everyday life, the TV must be mounted on the wall. Before this, the only electronics that were hung on the wall were speakers, light music, and some models of record players. However, in the mid-2000s, televisions will become several times thinner and desktop models will enter the market.
Photo from HighlandTitles.comThe first flat-screen TVs in Belarus
In the late nineties and early 2000s, plasma TVs appeared in Russia and Belarus. They have fallen a little in price, and in some places they use the “eight by eight” formula to describe such equipment: eight centimeters of thickness and eight thousand dollars price.
It is curious that, per square centimeter of area, plasma panels turned out to be cheaper than liquid crystal panels, which by that time had begun to gain momentum. But for economic reasons, making small-sized “plasma” is unprofitable, and gradually a race of diagonals begins, which lasted throughout the 2000s.
Death of "plasma"
Plasma panels are produced by two dozen manufacturers around the world, in the “diagonal war” all new conquests: 71, 76, 80, 103, 145, 150 inches... In the end, Panasonic wins: in 2010 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the company presents the model TH-152UX1. Almost all of its indicators are mind-blowing: diagonal - 152 inches (386 cm), weight - 580 kg, price - 500 thousand dollars. The panel provides a resolution of 4096x2160 pixels and can display 3D content.
The record model is also the swan song of the technology: despite the rosy forecasts of marketers, the largest manufacturers are beginning to curtail the production of plasma panels.
In 2013-2014, Samsung, Panasonic and LG cease production. The last manufacturer of plasma TVs in the world was the Chinese concern Changhong Electric in Sichuan province, but it also “cut off the gas” (ionized, of course) shortly after 2014.
One of the reasons for the decline was also some features of the technology itself.
Plasma panels produced distorted images in areas above 2000 meters above sea level, consumed several hundred watts of electricity (compared to about 60 W for CRT panels), and interfered with radio receivers.
In addition, there was a legend among consumers that if the same bright image is constantly shown on some part of the screen (for example, the logo of a TV channel), then the screen burns out in this place.
In fact, the survivability margin of plasma TVs was more than sufficient: the brightness was reduced by half only after 100 thousand hours of operation. Working five hours a day, a plasma TV will reach this half brightness degradation only after fifty years.
Plasma TVs stopped being produced almost two years ago, but still sometimes in colloquial speech a large TV is called the word “plasma”, even if it is made using a completely different technology.
Liquid crystals for small and large
The first development of liquid crystals was started by the Austrian scientist Friedrich Reinitzer back in 1888. But it was only in the early seventies of our century that liquid crystals were embodied in the first devices - screens for wristwatches and calculators.
Over time, it became possible to use LCD matrices in laptops and televisions, but the first such matrices were made using “passive” technology, and even when simply scrolling a text document, almost only noise was visible on the screen. Since 1972, they began to produce matrices using “active” technology, and the moving image on the screen became more stable.
In June 1983, Casio introduced the world's first liquid crystal television, the TV-10. It has a screen with a diagonal of only 2.7 inches (6.8 cm), the device runs on three AA batteries, and it costs $299.95. Electronics reviewers noted the TV's low brightness and contrast.
Image: YouTube And two years later, the same Casio released the first color TV on liquid crystals - TV-1000. In 1988, it also released a 14-inch thin-film transistor (TFT) LCD TV. Finally, TVs can be made, if not completely flat, then at least thin, without sacrificing screen size. Very flat models also appear: for example, the Casio TV-70 (1986) has a thickness of only 13 mm.
Japanese corporations are rushing into the miniaturization race: LCD TVs are first desktop, then carried by a handle or strap, and finally pocket-sized. A joke appears:
Two Japanese engineers meet. One asks the other:
- Guess which hand I have the TV in.
- On the left.
- Right. How many are there?
In the summer of 1982, Seiko, a famous watch manufacturer, released the TV-Watch model - a TV in a wristwatch case. True, only a monitor is built into the wristwatch - and the receiver itself is enclosed in a case the size of a cassette player, which is connected to the watch with a cable. It is assumed that the cable is running inside your sleeve, the receiver is in your pocket, and you listen to the sound through headphones.
Photo from guenthoer.de The 1.2-inch diagonal screen (25.2×16.8 mm) displayed 10 shades of gray; the TV could last up to 5 hours on one set of batteries. The watch visor cost 108 thousand yen, or approximately $450; in the US the recommended price was $495. The model appeared in the films “Network of Evil” with Tom Hanks and in the James Bond series “Octopussy”, where she was depicted on a color screen.
Photo from TheLegendOfQ.co.uk And in the early to mid-nineties, companies developed and improved IPS in-plane switching technology. Thus, Fujitsu presents the MVA (multi-area vertical alignment) system, Samsung presents its own vision of the same system - PVA.
The matrices display full color depth (up to 8 bits per channel), they have large viewing angles (up to 178 degrees) - now you can make full-fledged, indoor TVs.
IPS and PVA screens are beginning to dominate the LCD TV market, liquid crystals are steadily growing and are slowly catching up with plasma. True, LCD TVs are considered small, almost kitchen-sized, and if you want to use them in the living room, then only plasma ones.
Plasma TVs attract buyers with a large screen size, LCD TVs have not yet reached a diagonal size of over 42 inches (very expensive), but by the mid-2000s they are beginning to attract consumers with higher resolution. As a result, an interesting picture emerges: LCD TVs have a smaller diagonal than plasma ones, but the price of both is comparable.
Horizon's first LCD TV
LCD TVs are fighting on two fronts: both with plasma panels and with CRT models. At the end of 2007, CRT TVs were losing to LCD models in terms of global sales. Corporations are beginning to reduce or completely curtail the production of kinescope models.
For example, in March 2008, Sony closed the last plant that produced the well-known line of Trinitron televisions. The Minsk Gorizont plant produced its first LCD TV in 2004, and decided to abandon CRT models only in the fall of 2012.
During the war with “plasma”, liquid crystal televisions are also being drawn into the “diagonal race”. In October 2004, Sharp announced a 65-inch panel, in March 2005, Samsung presented a TV with a diagonal of 82 inches, in August 2006, LG reached the 100-inch mark, in January 2007, Sharp demonstrated the LB-1085 TV with a diagonal of 108 inches. inches (2.73 m).
In the summer of 2008, this “box” went on sale at a price of 11 million Japanese yen (at that time - approximately 103 thousand dollars). In the same 2008, Horizon released the largest LCD TV in Belarus - 42 inches diagonal; in 2012, the company assembled a 70-inch TV costing 13 thousand dollars. However, today in the Horizon and Vityaz catalogs the largest LCD TV has a diagonal of only 50 inches.
Photo from TheFutureOfThings.com LEDs for curved TVs
Another promising technology for creating television screens is organic light-emitting diodes (OLED). True, OLED is often confused with the marketing term LED TV (or simply LED).
The latter means that a matrix of LEDs is used to backlight the screen, rather than the more familiar fluorescent lamps placed along the edges of the monitor. Organic LEDs are elements that do not need backlighting, because they themselves act as the light source.
OLED screens have long been used in cell phones and cameras, but for a long time they could not make a television panel from organic light-emitting diodes. The fact is that blue LEDs have a much shorter lifespan than red and green ones.
Therefore, the service life of the entire screen actually depended on the blue diodes alone. They began to burn out (and this could happen after just three years of work) - and the expensive TV was considered damaged. It took time to overcome these difficulties, and at the beginning of the 2000s, companies began to compete for primacy in bringing OLED TVs to the market and for the largest screen diagonal.
In May 2003, at the Society for Information Display exhibition in Baltimore, International Display Technology presented a 20-inch OLED display, and Sony presented a 24-inch one; a year later, Epson showed a 40-inch monitor. In 2005, Samsung demonstrated 21- and 40-inch panels designed specifically for televisions, but for almost two more years the televisions themselves from any company would not be presented to the public.
And only in 2007, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony showed the world's first OLED TV. It had a modest diagonal of only 11 inches (28 cm) and a resolution of 960x540 pixels. But the thickness of the matrix was only 3 mm, so there was no place to place connectors in its frame.
Therefore, the screen was mounted on a stand, where the controls, ports and speaker are located. The TV, designated XEL-1, went on sale in December 2007 at a price of approximately $1,700.
Photo from Biglobe.ne.jp We cannot fail to mention the “war of diagonals”. True, in the case of OLED TVs, the gains were not as loud as in the case of plasma and LCD TVs.
In the fall of 2008, Samsung demonstrated a 40-inch TV with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels; in January 2012, Samsung and LG almost simultaneously intrigued the public with a 55-inch model (the device from LG is priced at $7,900, and it is declared the largest commercially available TV ).
Samsung ES9000. Photo: geeky-gadgets.com In the summer of the same year, Samsung showed the ES9000 model with a 75-inch diagonal matrix and costing $17,500, and in the fall of 2013, at the IFA exhibition in Berlin, LG responded with a curved TV with a screen diagonal of 77 inches (196 cm). The race appears to have stopped, but probably only temporarily.
And even though the final figure is almost one and a half times less than the maximum diagonal of an LCD TV and two times less than the record diagonal of a “plasma”, this device with a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels still costs a lot of money. On the LG website, the model 77EG9700 is labeled “estimated price: $24,999.99.”
Another 77-inch model - LG 77EC980V - is also sold in Minsk; the store has set a price tag of 69,908 rubles and 98 kopecks (or approximately $35,760). TVs that have become flat-panel require very plump wallets.
The new generation of Samsung SUHD TVs convey images as accurately and realistically as possible. Thanks to advanced quantum dot technology, even the smallest details and dark areas in an image are visible in any light.
