History and Social Innovation of The TV

John Rodriguez
702 History and Intepretation of Innovation

SCAD 2015
The Innovative Development of the Television

The television was an innovative achievement that allowed images
to be transmitted through radio waves. This invention developed to
become the primary medium for broadcasting and influencing the
public opinion around the world.
In the early 1920s various experimentations of the moving images
had surged but it was the invention of 21 year-old, Philo T.
Farnsworth that became the first ancestor of the modern television.
He was able to achieve this by using a beam of electrons to create
an image on the screen. (Vlku)
The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) invested $50 million dollars
on Farnsworth invention. In 1939, RCA televised a speech by
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the first president to
appear on television, during the opening of New Yorks world fair.
After this, they started broadcasting regular programs and even
CBS, their biggest competitor, televised two 15-minute news
segments a day in New York. (Stephens)
The first production of the TV was quite rudimentary. The first sets
sold we 5 by 12 in (12.7 by 25.4 cm) picture tubes. All the action at
that first televised baseball game had to be captured by a single
camera, and the limitations of early cameras forced actors in
dramas to work under impossibly hot lights, wearing black lipstick
and green makeup (the cameras had trouble with the color white).
(Stephens) The quality of the image and the size of the TV made it
quite difficult to make out the people and when WWII began RCA,
like many other companies, turned its attention to military
production.
In August 16, 1944; Scottish engineer, John L. Baird introduced the
first demonstration of a colored TV system, but due to his untimely
death in 1946, this development came to an end. After considerable
research, the National Television Systems Committee approved an
all-electronic Compatible color system developed by RCA, which
encoded the color information separately from the brightness
information and greatly reduced the resolution of the color
information in order to conserve bandwidth. This led to the
introduction of colored TV in market place in 1953, but its high value
and the scarcity of color programming slowed its acceptance. It
wasnt until the mid 1960s that colored television started to sell in
high numbers because most of the prime time programming was all
color.(Stephens) A couple of years later the rest of the daytime
programming was converted to full color as well.
The next reinvention of the TV was made possible by the feasibility
of the digital television signal, which would be suited for many more
improvements like the HDTV. This brought upon higher resolution on
newer screen developments like the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD).
John Rodriguez
SCAD 2015
The birth of digital TV led the way for innovations regarding 3D

technology and integrated Internet and web 2.0 features which
turned digital TVs into Smart TVs. These would not only broadcast
digital signals through the web, but would also be used as a network
between devices also connected to the Internet. Although the first
patent for this invention was filed in 1994, it would not be until the
late 2010, that these new technology hit the market, due to further
developments needed in the Internet and network connections
available worldwide. (Stephens)
The development of television followed different patterns is
countries all over the world. In some cases, governments took
control over the major networks, not privately owned corporations.
Organizations like Great Britains BBC, which dominated the radio
broadcast and took over and retained television as well, was praised
worldwide for its reputation on its programming quality. However, as
the rise of cable and satellite TV systems took over the market in
the late 1980s and 90s government funded networks began to
weaken and more countries around the world turned to the U.S
model of privately owned networks supported by advertising.
(Stephens)
Since the 1950s the television has played a pivotal part in society. It
changed the interaction families had in their homes and not
necessarily for the better. Families spent less time having
conversations and playing board games and more time sitting
around the living room watching TV. "And then all of a sudden I
remember becoming suddenly aware of how different everything
had become. The kids were no longer playing Monopoly or Clue or
the other games we used to play together. It was because we had a
television set, which had been turned on for a football game. All of
that socializing that had gone on previously had ended. Now
everyone was sitting in front of the television set, on a holiday, at a
family party!" (Winn). This led to families losing their uniqueness
and become generic. This was primarily driven by the power that TV
had to sway and shape public opinion. (Vlku)
By the late 1990s 98% of U.S. homes had at least one TV set and
this was turned on an average of 7 hours a day or more. (Stephens)
This invention has had a massive affect on the how the world
communicates, with its people and changed the way that most
societies interact with their families and friends. Like much of the
new digital technologies rising as generations pass, its purpose to
maintain us connected to whats happening around a global or even
national scale has led us become less perceptive of who and what is
around us locally.
John Rodriguez
SCAD 2015
References
Vlku, Nick (2002) Television and the Passive Consumer. URL:
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/Sengers/teaching/automaticlifestyl
es02/Projects/Vlku/index.html
Winn, Marie (1980) The Plug-In Drug. New York: Viking Press, (p.
110)
Stephens, Mitchell (2000) The History of Television, Grolier
Multimedia
Encyclopedia, 2000 edition.

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John Rodriguez

702 History and Intepretation of Innovation

The Innovative Development of the Television

The birth of digital TV led the way for innovations regarding 3D

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