Television Turns 100 (blogspot.com)
- Reference: 0180660392
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/01/26/1810242/television-turns-100
- Source link: https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2026/01/tv100.html
On January 26, 1926, small groups of visitors climbed to 22 Frith Street and watched fuzzy images of a ventriloquist's dummy called Stooky Bill appear on screen, followed by each other's faces transmitted from a separate room. One visitor got too close to the spinning discs and ended up with a sliced beard. The Times [2]published a short account two days later.
Baird had built his first transmitting equipment in Hastings in 1923 using a hatbox, tea chest, darning needles and bicycle light lenses. A 1000-volt electric shock and a displeased landlord pushed him to London, where Gordon Selfridge soon invited him to demonstrate the device during the store's Birthday Week celebrations. The building at 22 Frith Street now carries three plaques commemorating the invention.
[1] https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2026/01/tv100.html
[2] https://www.bairdtelevision.com/the-televisor-successful-test-of-new-apparatus-1926.html
Ahead of its time (Score:5, Funny)
Sadly, his business failed because his television lacked any internet connectivity that would have enabled him to monetize his users' personal info.
Re: (Score:3)
And there wasn't any porn available on it.
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Which explains why there wasn't any porn. But doesn't change the fact that porn has made a lot of new technologies successful.
Just in time to be basically dead. (Score:2)
As long as you are referring to broadcast. Still used as monitors for various streaming methods.
Phonovision recordings (Score:5, Informative)
This site goes into some detail and includes the recovered recordings (which weren't playable at the time of recording) - it gives you an idea of the quality of even 30-line pictures: [1]http://www.tvdawn.com/earliest... [tvdawn.com]
[1] http://www.tvdawn.com/earliest-tv/phonovision-experiments-1927-28/
Re: (Score:2)
He chose the creepiest image he could find, seemingly.
Technically True, but just barely. (Score:3)
Electromechanical television systems are technically still TVs. I mean the word is even in its name.....
Yet they were only really such in the most generous definition of the word television. Everything has to start somewhere.
Philo T Farnsworth is the inventor of the television in a form that was actually functionally adequate for transmitting images that people could actually easily make out what the images were supposed to be. September 3, 1928 was the first public demonstration. And on August 25, 1934 a much more public demonstration was held at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Those dates, or the day in the garage, lab, or wherever it first actually worked should be the birthday.
This is akin to the wax drum, giving way to 78s, then eventually vinyl. The first version of the invention which was appealing to the masses. Farnsworth's invention was television's vinyl. But it did have to start somewhere. So hats off to John Logie Baird.
You kids with your scanning cathode-ray-tubes... (Score:2)
The mechanical Nipkow disk will come back, you'll see.
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Just the opposite--the article says: "It rapidly became clear that the Marconi system was far superior and Baird's was dropped after just three months."
Re:yea but (Score:5, Informative)
The Baird system was just an evolution of the Nipkow disc from the 1880s. It took more than 40 years for someone to make it even somewhat viable for some reason, but if you include mechanical transmission, I'd argue that it was invented in 1883.
But practically speaking, I would say that the 100-year anniversary of TV is in 2027, 100 years after Farnsworth transmitted the first electronically scanned TV signal.
The Marconi system (1930s) was an improved version of Farnsworth's system from 1927 (as proven by patent lawsuits).
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Not quite the "invention" of TV, but my boomer Dad was just writing about this for some reason... he lived in an upper-middle class household but remembers when they got their first TV, about $4000 in today's money. And color TV was not widespread until he was in college.
[1]https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
So that's how young TV is. Analog transmission stopped in 2009, 3 years after google bought youtube, and on-demand viewing started to dominate within 5 or 10 years. So the effective lifetime of "TV"
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Tv-penetration-us-households.jpg
Re: (Score:3)
> I would say that the 100-year anniversary of TV is in 2027, 100 years after Farnsworth transmitted the first electronically scanned TV signal.
Good news, everyone!