Slashdot Mirror
75th Anniversary of Television
SpiceWare writes "In the summer of '21, Philo T. Farnsworth was struck by an inspiration after plowing a field. He transmitted the first television image six years later on September 7, 1927."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
it was "one channel, and nothing good on."
Things haven't really changed since then.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Well, TV has given us some nice moments. But in between all those nice moments has been a high-volume sewer hose of cultural sludge. So my personal goal today is to convince everyone to not watch TV at all, at least for this day. Let's remind the Content Cartel that there are other options...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Baird came up with a mechanical scanning system that bore little resemblance to what we now think of as television. Farnsworth's invention was fully electronic television, built atop Braun's work. Vladimir Zworykin invented an electronic television system at about the same time, but it only became practical after Farnsworth's ideas were incorporated.
On January 26, 1926 Baird demonstrated a fully working prototype of mechanical television to members of the Royal Institution at 22 Frith Street, Baird's residence and laboratory. This was the world's first demonstration of true television because it showed moving human faces with tonal gradients and detail. Far from perfect, the images flickered quite a bit, but the individuals on screen were fully recognizable.
... at the University of Leeds in the UK demonstrating his video recorder and his stereoscopic television (3D TV to you and me).
Baird's recorder used an alumin(i)um disc rather like an LP running at ~80rpm to record the images. The machine, like his television, was an electro-mechanical affair build from bits including old hat boxes and bicycle parts. His machinery is exhibited at The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television a short way away from Leeds, in Bradford.
Whilst researching the links I found the NMPFT's TV heaven page and top ten list of requested television programs from the archives. The August list is below:
This says something about the visitors although you have to account for it being the school vacation.
This strikes me as being much like celebrating on the anniversary of Hiroshima, considering that tv was pretty much a cultural nuke. Ugh.
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
As an American you are no doubt some fat, ugly overweight child with a penchant for running a machine gun up and down your local school.
.45.
You, sir, are obviously an idiot. The weapon of choice for rampaging through public high schools is the semi-automatic handgun. Its small size makes it easy to conceal under clothing or in a bag or backpack. Weapons that fire 9mm rounds present a good compromise between power and magazine capacity, but for real effectiveness against targets at close range, go for the
What a moron.
hey, in France and the UK we still have quality television.
Dude, France has about 600 broadcast TV stations. The UK has about 250.
The United States of America has more than 2,000, and that's just over-the-air stations. We also have over 9,000 local cable TV systems.
Do the arithmetic. The United States of America broadcasts over 96 million hours of television programming every year. There's enough room in America's cultural output for greatness and crap and everything in between, in volumes that would blow your narrow little mind.
A friend of mine just moved to the US from Australia. Not a small country, Australia. Twice the size of Europe. He and his family are bewildered by the sheer amount of everything we have in this country. Took him to a grocery store the other day. Our city is nowhere near a coastline, but we get seafood by the ton flown in every morning. The produce available in our markets comes from every corner of the world, and it's all fresh and unbelievably cheap.
I think you foreign types often fail to grasp just how big and how affluent this country is. Our culture dominates the world not because it's better or worse, but because there's just so much of it.
This is, of course, a good and righteous thing. Manifest Destiny is no myth, my friends.
Philo, the resident mad scientist of U-62, in Weird Al's movie "UHF" was named after the inventor of the electronic television.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
In my high school, (don't remember the exact class) the teacher had us read this long long article about how the brilliant David Sarnoff, created from scratch, the first cathode ray tube at the technology wonderland company RCA. I don't remember much detail, but it greatly glorified Sarnoff as "the father of television" and RCA as the company that brought moving pictures to every living room in America.
It sounded fishy to me, but I didn't bother looking further into it. As luck would have it, I ran across an article in an old Scientific American a week later that told the truth: Philo Farnsworth invented the cathode ray tube (as well as the tube that the first cameras used, can't remember the name) and RCA tried to steal the invention and patents from him.
I took a copy of the factual article to the aforementioned teacher who said he'd announce a correction to the class. Funny, though, he never did. I guess teachers don't like to be told they're wrong (even though it wasn't exactly his fault.)