The Beginnings of Television

Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius isolates selenium, an element with remarkable photoelectric properties. This metalloid would, sixty years later, sit at the heart of the first photoelectric cells used to “see at a distance.”

Edmond Becquerel describes the photoelectric effect: certain materials produce an electric current when exposed to light. This physical principle would become the theoretical foundation of all electrical image capture.

Alexander Bain patents an electric facsimile machine capable of transmitting still images over the telegraph. Its line-by-line scanning principle remarkably anticipates that of television.

Abbé Giovanni Caselli inaugurates in Paris the first commercial pantelegraph service — a device transmitting facsimiles between Paris and Lyon. It is the first image ever transmitted electrically on an industrial scale.

English telegraph engineer Willoughby Smith, while testing resistors for undersea cables, discovers that the conductivity of selenium varies with the light it receives. This photoconductivity is published in Nature and sends a wave of excitement through the scientific world.

American inventor George Carey draws up the first schematic for a system of “electric vision”: a mosaic of selenium cells, each connected to an electric lamp, reconstructing an image point by point. The concept of the raster — the scanning grid — is born.

Alexander Graham Bell — fresh from inventing the telephone — and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter work on a photophone transmitting the human voice via light. Bell glimpses the possibility of sending images by the same means, and coins the term “telephote.”

On 22 March, Constantin Senlecq, a notary from Ardres in northern France, presents his “telectroscope” to the Société française de physique — the first device described in detail for transmitting moving images electrically. That same year, Irish caricaturist George du Maurier imagines in Punch magazine a “telephonoscope” allowing viewers to watch operas from their drawing rooms — a prophetic vision of domestic television.

A flurry of competing proposals: Ayrton and Perry (Britain), Carey (United States) and Senlecq each publish variants of selenium-cell systems. All their prototypes fail — selenium responds too slowly for moving images — but fundamental research presses on.

Paul Nipkow, a student in Berlin, lays the theoretical groundwork for a mechanical scanning system using a rotating perforated disc. He will file his patent the following year — an invention that would lend its name to an entire era of television.

On 6 January, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow files patent no. 30,105 in Berlin for his “electric telescope disc.” A cardboard disc punched with holes arranged in a spiral, spinning rapidly in front of a photoelectric cell, breaks an image down into successive lines — mechanical scanning, a principle that would remain in use into the 1930s.

Paul Nipkow attempts to build a working prototype. Without electronic amplifiers, the signal produced by selenium cells is too faint to be useful. The patent lapses into the public domain in 1899 — having never been used to transmit a real image.

Heinrich Hertz experimentally proves the existence of electromagnetic waves. While not directly related to television, this is the cornerstone on which all broadcasting would be built — including the future hertzian transmission of television signals.

German physicist Wilhelm Hallwachs precisely describes the external photoelectric effect, paving the way for vacuum photoelectric cells far more responsive than selenium.

German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun invents the cathode-ray oscilloscope tube (the Braun tube), capable of deflecting a beam of electrons using electric fields. This tube — a direct ancestor of the television picture tube — can draw luminous shapes on a phosphorescent screen. Braun would receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909.

Russian engineer Alexander Polumordvinov proposes a television system combining Nipkow discs with colour filters — the first theoretical design for colour television, entirely ignored by his contemporaries.

At the Paris World’s Fair, Russian-French physicist Constantin Perskyi uses the word “television” for the first time in a paper delivered to the International Congress of Electricity. The term, coined from the Greek tele (far) and the Latin visio (sight), enters the global scientific vocabulary.

Ambrose Fleming invents the thermionic diode — the first electronic tube capable of rectifying alternating current. It is the first building block of electronic amplification, without which no image transmission is conceivable.

Lee de Forest invents the triode (the Audion tube), which can amplify weak electrical signals. The component revolutionises radio and opens the door to photoelectric cells capable of supporting image transmission.

Russian physicist Boris Rosing files a patent combining a Nipkow disc at the transmitting end with a cathode-ray tube at the receiving end — the first coherent proposal for a hybrid television system (mechanical capture, electronic display). That same year, Briton Alan Archibald Campbell Swinton publishes in Nature a similar concept, fully electronic from end to end.

Boris Rosing, assisted by his student Vladimir Zworykin, achieves the first transmission of rudimentary still images in his St. Petersburg laboratory. The geometric shapes are crude, but the principle is proven.

The First World War freezes most civilian research but drives rapid development of electronic tubes for military communications. Thousands of engineers train on vacuum tubes — skills that would fuel television research from 1919 onwards.

Vladimir Zworykin, who emigrated to the United States following the Russian Revolution, joins Westinghouse Electric Company. He begins designing a fully electronic camera tube — the future iconoscope — that would change the history of television.

Young American Philo Farnsworth, a high-school student in Idaho, sketches in his school notebook the diagram of a fully electronic television system. He is 16. His notebooks would later be submitted as evidence in a landmark patent dispute against Zworykin.

Vladimir Zworykin files the patent for the iconoscope, a fully electronic camera tube. That same year, Scotsman John Logie Baird begins his experiments in Hastings, Sussex, cobbling together his first mechanical vision apparatus from hatboxes, knitting needles and sealing wax.

John Logie Baird transmits the silhouette of a cross in his Frith Street attic in London’s Soho, across a distance of a few feet. It is the first recognisable object ever conveyed by a televisual process. Meanwhile, American C. Francis Jenkins transmits silhouettes from Washington.

On 2 October, in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street, London, John Logie Baird obtains the first moving image of a recognisable human face: that of “Stooky Bill,” a ventriloquist’s dummy, transmitted in 30 lines at 5 frames per second. Baird rushes to fetch an office boy, William Taynton, who becomes the first living human face ever transmitted by television. In the United States, C. Francis Jenkins achieves the first public transmission of moving silhouettes the same year.

On 26 January, John Logie Baird presents his system to 50 members of the Royal Institution in London — the first official public demonstration of a working television. The image is blurry and flickering, but faces are recognisable. The British press is captivated. The same year, Philo Farnsworth, now 21, secures his first funding in San Francisco to develop his fully electronic system.

Bell Telephone Laboratories and AT&T stage in New York the first inter-city television demonstration: Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover delivers a speech in Washington, transmitted live to New York. “It is possible to see as well as hear,” the engineers remark. Baird also transmits an image from London to Glasgow — 700 kilometres — over telephone cable.

On 7 September, Philo Farnsworth transmits in his San Francisco laboratory the first image produced by a fully electronic television system — with no moving mechanical parts whatsoever. The image: a line drawn in pencil on glass. His backing from George Everson and Leslie Gorrell proves decisive.

John Logie Baird achieves the first transatlantic television transmission: an image sent from London is received in New York. He founds the Baird Television Development Company and begins experimental work on colour television and Noctovision (infrared imaging). In the United States, station WGY in Schenectady (General Electric) launches the first regular television broadcasts — three times a week, in 48 lines.

The BBC agrees to lend its transmitters to John Logie Baird for late-night experimental broadcasts — the beginning of a turbulent collaboration between the inventor and the public broadcaster. Vladimir Zworykin, now at RCA, presents an improved iconoscope to management and secures substantial funding. In Germany, the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG) begins its own television experiments.

In France, René Barthélemy, an engineer at the Société française radioélectrique, conducts his first mechanical television experiments in Montrouge. He will soon be transmitting images from the CSF laboratory in Levallois. France enters the race.

On 30 September, the BBC airs the first television broadcast for a general audience in Britain, using the Baird system (30 lines, 12.5 frames per second). Comedian Sydney Howard becomes the first performer to appear on camera in an official BBC television programme. Receivers are sold to a few hundred enthusiasts.

In France, René Barthélemy stages on 14 April the first French public television demonstration from the Montrouge laboratories. The image — an operator’s face — is transmitted in 60 lines, a quality well beyond the Baird system. The French press hails the event. In the United States, CBS begins its own television trials in New York.

Vladimir Zworykin presents a refined iconoscope at the IRE conference, capable of producing images in 240 lines — incomparably sharper than any mechanical system. David Sarnoff, president of RCA, commits to massive investment: “ten million dollars” to make television a commercial reality.

The BBC opens a regular studio at Broadcasting House, London, for experimental television broadcasts. Baird, refusing to concede defeat to electronics, presents an improved 120-line system. In Germany, the RRG launches a regular schedule of experimental transmissions in Berlin at 90 lines.

Philo Farnsworth patents the image dissector, an electronic camera tube rivalling Zworykin’s iconoscope. RCA, fearing defeat in the patent battle, opens negotiations — which would collapse several times before a final agreement in 1939. In France, Barthélemy’s experimental broadcasts advance to 180 lines.

Nazi Germany makes television a propaganda priority. The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft inaugurates a regular Berlin service at 180 lines. In France, under the impetus of Georges Mandel (Minister of Posts and Telegraphs), parliament votes credits for a national television service. René Barthélemy is tasked with establishing an experimental service from the Eiffel Tower.

Young engineer Henri de France (1911–1986), freshly graduated from the École Supérieure d’Électricité (Supélec), steps into the nascent world of television. Convinced that image quality is the decisive challenge, he begins working on problems of definition and technical standards. These early reflections on compatibility and colour transmission would lead him, twenty years later, to conceive SECAM — the French colour television system adopted in dozens of countries.

On 25 April, France launches the first regular television service in continental Europe from the Eiffel Tower transmitter, broadcasting in 180 lines. René Barthélemy oversees operations. Receivers are scarce and the audience tiny — a few dozen sets in Paris. In Germany, television is screened in public Fernsehstuben (television parlours) in Berlin, serving as a vehicle for regime propaganda.

On 2 November, the BBC inaugurates the world’s first high-definition public television service from Alexandra Palace, London, broadcasting in 405 lines. Two competing systems alternate weekly: Baird’s (mechanical, 240 lines) and EMI-Marconi’s (fully electronic, 405 lines). By February 1937, Baird’s mechanical system is definitively abandoned. Electronic television has won. London can now watch the world.

The Berlin Olympic Games are televised for the first time in history by German Telefunken teams. Images in 180 lines are screened in public venues across Berlin, reaching an audience of around 150,000 viewers. It is the first major televised live sports broadcast in history.

Henri de France (1911–1986), Supélec graduate, publishes his first critical analyses of existing definition standards, arguing that high-definition imaging is the only acceptable foundation for a mass television audience. Convinced that the “line count battle” is merely the opening round, he turns his attention to the problem of colour transmission. This early work leads him to join the Compagnie Française de Télévision (CFT), where he will later develop the concept of sequential colour storage that becomes SECAM — Séquentiel Couleur À Mémoire — patented in 1956 and adopted by France, the USSR and some forty countries.