What is Television?

Despite its brash and noisy public introduction at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing NY, television was still a rough experimental technology. Scottish inventor John Logie Baird used the Nipkow disk in his early prototype systems. His first televised image was a silhouette of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Russian physicist Boris Rosing and American engineer Vladimir Zworykin improved on Nipkow’s system by using cathode ray tubes both inside the camera that sent a picture and in the receiver that reproduced it. These were the earliest all-electronic television systems.

Definition

A television system, also called a televisor, is a means for transmitting moving pictures and sound over long distances. The word television comes from the Greek word tele, meaning far away, and the Latin word visio, meaning sight. The first televisors were introduced around 1900 and had screens only a few inches high that flickered badly. Despite these limitations, the ability to broadcast moving images over radio waves captured the imagination of many people.

English telegraph worker Joseph May discovered that a selenium wire changed its electrical conductivity when exposed to light in 1872. His discovery led to the development of the first practical hybrid television systems, with mechanical scanning and electronic image capture. The first broadcasts were experimental and only reached a limited audience.

Regular television broadcasting became a reality after World War II with the introduction of color broadcasts. Today, television programs are transmitted over terrestrial radio waves; along coaxial cables (cable TV); reflected off satellites held in geostationary orbit (direct broadcast satellite, or DBS, TV); streamed over the Internet; and recorded optically on digital video discs.

Origins

A television, or telly, is an electronic device that broadcasts entertaining programs for people to watch. It can also be used to transmit information and educational material. In North America, TV is often referred to simply as a TV, while in the UK it’s usually known as a telly.

In 1884, Paul Nipkow developed a system that allowed images to be sent through wires using spinning discs, creating the first mechanical version of television. Nipkow’s work was not widely recognized, and his invention failed to find commercial success.

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird improved upon Nipkow’s design, and on 25 March 1925 he gave the world’s first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion at Selfridges department store in London. Since human faces had inadequate contrast on his primitive system, he televised a ventriloquist’s dummy called “Stooky Bill.”

In 1928, Philo Farnsworth created the world’s first fully electronic television system based on a cathode ray tube, but this was not introduced until 1939, when RCA began regular broadcasts from the New York World’s Fair. Several other companies produced early television systems.

Technology

The technology behind television involves equipment that conveys the signal from the source of broadcasting to a television set, which then displays it as a visual image. The transmission of such a signal typically occurs through radio, but can also happen via coaxial cable, optical fiber, satellite systems, and over the Internet.

A typical TV set consists of a cathode tube with a pair (or more) of anodes and a phosphor-coated screen. Electrons from the cathode pile up at the screen-end, and are directed towards a spot on the screen by a’steering coil’.

This system can display either black and white or color images, but it must be powered by a high-frequency electrical signal. This signal is composed of five-microsecond pulses, or ‘us’ in the diagram above, each at zero volts and sent from a telegraph transmitter or other source. These signals drive the intensity circuit for the electron beam that sweeps across the screen, causing it to display either a black or a white image on the screen. It is this process that gives television its remarkable ubiquity in modern society.

Applications

The television set is a visual display device that receives broadcast signals to be displayed. These broadcast signals may be transmitted over the air by radio transmitters, cable TV systems, optical fiber or satellite systems. The set itself may be a standard analog or digital television or a video monitor that lacks a tuner and is usually called a TV monitor. A standard set has a remote control that allows viewers to select the source of the signal.

The advent of modern cable and satellite television has increased the number of available channels, as well as made possible new types of programming. Some of the most innovative programs now available include sports events, movie rentals on demand, and educational and cultural broadcasts.

Television entertains and informs without requiring much in the way of continuing attention, so it is able to hold its own against competing media such as the Internet. Recent research shows that even in the presence of other forms of socialization, people continue to spend on average three and a quarter hours a day watching television.

Future

Linear TV may still exist for live events, but it is increasingly likely that streaming services will be the dominant way that people watch television. There is already a trend toward unbundling among cable providers and a continuing shift towards over-the-top services like Netflix and Hulu. This will lead to a new world of content consumption with users having more choice and freedom compared to the past.

The future of television will also involve the use of virtual reality and augmented reality. These technologies will allow viewers to get a more immersive experience and be able to see things that they normally could not see. It will help them to feel more connected to the program and to the characters that are being portrayed on the screen.

Another important aspect of the future of television is its educational value. It is an excellent tool for learning, especially for children, because it can teach them a lot of information in a short time and with a lot of visuals. It can teach them about science, history, geography, travel, wildlife, culture, sports and many other topics.