Journey to the past: how and when the first television

From the earliest times, people dreamed of overcoming huge distances. This desire they displayed in tales and legends. There are a lot of stories about magic mirrors, magic plates and other fabulous means of image transmission. But to make this dream a reality it was possible not so long ago - only at the beginning of the 20th century, and when the first TV appeared - it looked like a real miracle. Modern television is already perceived as something self-evident, and no one is ever thinking about this invention that has turned the world over.

Television: how it all began

The first theoretical and practical research on television began in the late 19th century. In 1880, scientists - American E. Sawyer and Frenchman Maurice Leblanc, proposed the basic principle of the functioning of television, but its final revision was handled by a German engineer named Paul Nipkov, who later patented this technology. Its main principle was as follows:

Each element of the image was scanned quickly and sequentially, line by line and frame by frame. The device, called the disk Nipkova, looked like a rotating disk with a diameter of 50 cm, which were punched holes. Scanning of the image was carried out by means of a light beam, and the subsequent signal transmission was made to the converter. The very first TV was also equipped with a rotating disk with holes, behind which was a neon lamp, but the process of obtaining the image was carried out in the reverse order. With the help of this simple system, the image was projected onto the screen. It was the first TV in the world, based on the design of which Lay mechanic, so the transfer of quality images was impossible. In this regard, mechanical television apparatuses existed relatively short-lived.

When the first TV-set appeared on the electron-beam basis

In 1888, thanks to the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, the world learned about the photoelectric effect. The scientist revealed that light affects electricity, but could not fully explain and reveal the nature of this phenomenon. And it was only in 1905 that Albert Einstein managed to do it. In 1879, the English scientist William Crookes created a cathode-ray tube and discovered substances - phosphors, luminescent when they are exposed to cathode rays. Thus began the era of electron-beam television sets, which eventually spread throughout the world. In 1936, when the first television set appeared on electronics, the American research laboratory RCA was headed by the Russian scientist Zvorykin, that's why he was considered the founder of modern television. In 1939, RCA demonstrated the first television set for mass production, called RCS TT-5. When the first TV appeared, it was a large and weighty wooden box, equipped with only a 5-inch screen. For a while, short-line (mechanical) telesystems co-existed with electronic systems, but by the end of the forties of the 20th century they were completely replaced by electronic devices.