TV Turns 90 (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A live webcast today will celebrate the transmission of the first electronic TV signal on Sept. 7, 1927, and the man behind it, Philo T. Farnsworth, per AP: The webcast is set for 6 p.m. ET from the original location of Farnsworth's San Francisco lab. It'll be repeated at 9 p.m. and midnight. Veteran producer Phil Savenick created the site to detail the medium's history and the contributions of Farnsworth and other TV pioneers.

Comments

And after 90 years...

[bobbied]

There is still nothing worth watching on...

Re:And after 90 years...

[Kjella]

And after 90 years there is still nothing worth watching on...

And all mainstream music is shit and Hollywood sucks right? The more I learn about snobs of all varieties - not just the classic intellectual snobs but also the anti-intellectual counter-snobs and even the grumpy everything was better before-snobs the more I realize they're just shooting themselves in the foot by not enjoying what other people enjoy in order to somehow feel superior to them. Take the serious for what it is. Take the silly and fun for what it is. If you go to the opera, enjoy the opera. If you go to a barn dance, enjoy the barn dance. Things get a lot more fun when you stop comparing to the things it is not.

Re:And after 90 years...

[avandesande]

And those counter-snob-snob-snobs are the worst! You should be ashamed!

Re: And after 90 years...

[spun]

No, thinking your standards are superior and using them to insult and belittle people with different standards is a bad thing. It's the kind of black and white thinking that you see in a lot of recovering addicts and people on the spectrum. Their brains can't handle nuance very well, and ambiguity makes them uncomfortable.

Please, do have some personal standards. Just shut the fuck up about them and live your life. If people want to know why you are so happy and successful, they will ask, and then you can tell them all about your standards.

fake news, Philo tried in 1930s to be recognized

[iggymanz]

John Logie Baird in 1926 sent television images by radio.

If sending by wire instead of free space is acceptable as criteria, television was invented in the mid 19th century.

Wait a moment

[rossdee]

I thought John Logie Baird invented TV

Re:Wait a moment

[jabuzz]

He was the first person to successfully transmit a moving image over radio waves, which is what most people would consider to be what television is. I seem to recall that JLB coined the term television too,

However American's don't like to think any bit of modern technology was not invented by themselves so because Farnsworth system was the one initially widely used they like to think that Farnsworth invented the TV.

Thing is none of the TV's in my house look like either a JBL or Farnsworth system, so the idea that it was Farnsworth that invented it because his system is the one in widespread use is now looking somewhat of a feeble argument because CRT based TV's are basically yesterday's technology, with the number of CRT based TV's in use rapidly declining.

Further Farnsworth method of capturing the image for transmission went ages ago, it's all CCD or CMOS devices today and has been for a long time now.

Of course getting an American to actually admit that is like getting the truth out of Trump.

Re:Wait a moment

[utahjazz]

For most of the history of television, Americans believed a Russian named Zworykin invented television. RCA poured a lot of money into convincing people of that, while simultaneously using their monopoly power to relegate Farnsworth to obscurity. They were very successful at that. Farnsworth's key contributions to the technology that made television feasible on a large scale were not widely recognized until relatively recently.

An excellent book on the topic...

[QuietLagoon]

... Tube: The Invention of Television, by David E. Fisher, Marshall Jon Fisher

imo, well worth a read. I bought the book when it first came out, and have reread it a couple of times.

Re:An excellent book on the topic...

[fropenn]

I'll just wait for the TV-movie version of the book.

Re:fake news, Philo tried in 1930s to be recognize

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but Baird was not American, so the Americans picked someone else. Many Americans think the car was invented by Henry Ford...

Re:actually...

[dtmos]

I'm pretty sure Philo T. Farnsworth wasn't the guy who invented TV, though.

Nobody claims that he did. However, he did invent electrically scanned TV, which was a big advance over the Nipkow disk and other mechanically scanned TV schemes that came before him -- including those of John Logie Baird.

Re:fake news, Philo tried in 1930s to be recognize

[iggymanz]

bullshit, the information was transmitted by electronic means. scanners and fax machines have electomechanical parts too, they aren't electronic devices?

And false dichotomies

[fibonacci8]

1984 is about a lot more than just TV. It's about a government attempting to control reality by adjusting perceptions. Examples that aren't just TV: thoughtcrime, the ministries, newspeak, Winston's job altering records and photographs to fit the narrative. The fact that we have politically correct names for these (terrorism, TLAs, memes, and "alternative facts") means some people took 1984 as a guidebook rather than a warning.

Good news everyone!

[Terko]

As the professor would say...

The real question

[Rick Schumann]

The real question here is: if Philo T. Farnsworth were alive today to see what's become of television, would he be happy or sad?

Re:The real question

[thegarbz]

That's not a question about TV, you're talking about the material broadcast in the USA as a specific and very tiny subset of the "television" that Farnsworth helped invent.

What's there to be sad about in a device:
- Which brings joy to millions.
- Which allows wide spread discemination of information.
- Which provides methods of entertainment as well as information both broadcast as video and as data.
- Which has a critical role in protecting people during emerging emergency situations.

If he sees his invention in a sad light then he's either narrow minded or suffering some form of severe clinical depression.

Farnsworth?

[DontBeAMoran]

Wernstrom!

Re:fake news, Philo tried in 1930s to be recognize

[ploppy]

Again a completely Ameri-centric viewpoint. High definition television in Great Britain (as opposed to Baird's mechanical system) was developed by EMI in the early 30s, in parallel and independently of Farnsworth or RCA (i.e. Zworykin). The EMI developed Emitron camera (patented 1932) and 405 line-system was used to start the worlds first high definition television service by the BBC in November 1936 (to the London area).

The incandescent light bulb was developed in parallel and independently on both sides of the Atlantic. Edison in the US and Joseph Swan in the UK, with Swan patenting in the UK first.

Re: Of course he did

[JBMcB]

Farnsworth invented video tubes; Baird invented television.

So what exactly did Baird invent? He got the spinning disc contraption from someone else (it was pretty old technology by the time Baird was using it) He used the image processing and signal amplification circuits from Arthur Korn. He used already available photo cells. There were papers detailing the possibility of transmitting moving images dating back to the 1910s and theories on how to implement it.

Baird was the first to transmit moving images electronically. I wouldn't say he invented television, the same way I wouldn't say the Montgolfiers invented the airplane.