Television Broadcasting, History Of

Television Broadcasting, History Of

The first flickering shadows of television were already in the ether before radio was well established. In 1923, Vladimir K. Zworykin, an employee of Westinghouse, patented the icono-scope television picture tube. Four years later, at about the time when NBC was organizing its radio network, Philo Farnsworth improved the system and patented the dissector tube. While others had experimented with ways to broadcast an image, these two independent inventors share credit for the birth of all-electronic television transmission.

The Great Depression of the 1930s slowed down television development, but the 1939 World's Fair in New York gave Americans their first look at the medium that would dominate the second half of the twentieth century. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), owner of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and its radio networks, sponsored a Hall of Television that gave fairgoers a glimpse of the future. Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president to appear on television when NBC broadcast the opening of the fair. The only viewers were the lucky few who gathered around a handful of sets in the New York area. A few weeks later, the first sports event was telecast when a New York station showed the Princeton-Columbia baseball game.

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