Laboratories

Where the hardware was invented and tested. Baird at Frith Street and the Royal Institution, Farnsworth at 202 Green Street in San Francisco, Zworykin at Camden, Takayanagi at Hamamatsu, Rosing, Bell Labs, the University of Illinois plasma work, prototype rigs and the inventors with their apparatus. Thin here by measurement rather than neglect: television patent drawings are scarce on Wikimedia Commons, whose patent category is mostly aeroplanes and machinery.

Part of Television

84 moments in this segment.

  1. - Cathode Rays Figure 1. Figure 1 from J. J. Thomson's paper Cathode Rays, published in 1897. Thomson's work established that cathode rays were streams of particles, which is the physics every later picture tube depended on.
  2. - Vladimir Zworykin and historic TV tubes. Zworykin standing in front of a display of some of the historic television tubes he invented. Working at Westinghouse and RCA laboratories from 1923 through the 1940s, Zworykin invented the first successful electronic-scan television systems, including the widely used iconoscope camera tube.
  3. - 1925 Events Collage V 1.0. Clockwise: Tri-State tornado outbreak Sheikh Said rebellion Mein Kampf Great Syrian Revolt Incident at Petrich St. Nedelya Church assault 1925 Dali earthquake First working television system / John Logie Baird.
  4. - Baird TV 1926a. Television receiving apparatus used by John Logie Baird in the demonstration he gave to members of the Royal Institution. That demonstration, on 26 January 1926, was Baird's first public showing, distinct from the private achievement of 2 October 1925 when he first got a recognisable image of Stooky Bill at 32 lines. Most accounts merge the two events.
  5. - John Logie Baird and Stooky Bill. British inventor John Logie Baird and his first publicly demonstrated television system, with which he transmitted moving pictures March 25, 1925 at the London department store Selfridges. This was one of the first demonstrations of television technology. The selenium photoelectric tubes he used had such low sensitivity that human faces could not be televised due to their low contrast.
  6. - John Logie Baird and television receiver. Scottish television pioneer John Logie Baird (left) and his television receiver. This was one of the world's first television systems, with which Baird demonstrated transmission of moving images in 1925. The transmitter consisted of a spinning disk with 30 lenses in it which focused light from a spot on the image onto a selenium photoelectric cell.
  7. - Baird TV 1926b. A second view of the receiving apparatus Baird used before members of the Royal Institution in January 1926. The receiver is an assembly of exposed mechanism rather than a cabinet, because at this stage nothing about the equipment was intended for a domestic room.
  8. - Baird TV 1926c. Baird's Royal Institution receiving apparatus of 1926 photographed from another angle, showing the scanning mechanism and its drive. The picture was assembled by a perforated disc spinning in front of a lamp whose brightness varied with the signal.
  9. - Baird TV 1926d. Further receiving apparatus from Baird's 1926 demonstration to the Royal Institution. The audience were scientists rather than the public, and the equipment was set up to be examined at close range rather than merely watched.
  10. - Baird TV 1926e. The last of the series showing the apparatus Baird used at the Royal Institution in January 1926. Baird's mechanical system produced a 32 line image, fewer than the 40 lines Takayanagi displayed on a cathode ray tube in Tokyo in December of the same year.
  11. - Ernst Alexanderson with television receiver, 1928 NYT photo. Ernst Alexanderson operating a receiver in 1928, with the picture appearing in the small aperture at the top of the cabinet. The original caption points out the aperture, because a reader in 1928 would not have known where to look.
  12. - Vladimir Zworykin and a cathode ray tube, 1929 NYT. Vladimir Zworykin with the cathode ray tube he developed for receiving television pictures, photographed for the press in 1929. The original caption claims the tube greatly simplifies reception, which was the commercial argument that eventually carried electronic television over the mechanical systems.
  13. - Zworykin kinescope 1929. Vladimir Zworykin with the kinescope, the receiving tube he developed at Westinghouse and later RCA. Zworykin's tubes gave RCA the electronic system that displaced mechanical scanning, though the patent priority fight with Farnsworth ran for years. The photograph is dated 1934 in the archive record.
  14. - Televisore meccanico, a disco di Nipkow - Baird Televisor.. È composto da un piano con quattro piedi in metallo su cui sono fissati il motore elettrico, lo zoccolo per la lampada al Neon (mancante), il visore con lenti, un potenziometro variabile e una bobina. Il motore elettrico è provvisto di un albero su cui è calettato un disco di Nipkow in alluminio a spirale di 30 fori. Davanti al motore è presente un meccanismo regolabile per il sincronismo delle immagini ricevute.
  15. - 【TBSスパークル】1930年9月14日 高柳式テレビジョン一般公開（昭和5年）. A television broadcaster archive clip dated 14 September 1930, the public showing of the Takayanagi system. Takayanagi is systematically under-credited in Western accounts, and the source itself says he failed to gain much recognition in the West.
  16. - Zworykin1931iconoscope. First diagram of an iconoscope television camera tube, one of the earliest practical video camera tubes, invented by Vladimir Zworykin, from his 1931 US patent. Zworykin patented the tube for use as an ultraviolet video microscope, but applied it to the new expanding technology of television.
  17. - Here’s looking at you.. Here Is Looking At You, the demonstration programme material from the beginning of BBC television. The archive names who claims what and adjudicates nothing, because the question of who invented television conflates the idea, the mechanical demonstration, the all-electronic camera and the commercial system.
  18. - The Workings of the BBC Television Studio, 1930s - Archive Film 1034559. The workings of a BBC television studio in the 1930s, from a film archive. Studio hardware is the other half of the story from the receiver in the living room.
  19. - 1937 coronation television network map RUS. Plan of TV camera placement (yellow blobs) and cable network (red lines) during the May 12, 1937 telecast of the coronation procedure of George VI and Elizabeth Queen Mom. This was the world's first live outdoor telecast. Network plan and technology credited to Alan Blumlein and his R&D team at EMI, working under guidelines set by the Television Advisory Committee.
  20. - Grace Brandt Eddie Albert Grace and Eddie The Honeymooners Show 1937. Photo of Grace Bradt and Eddie Albert in an early NBC television program The Honeymooners-Grace and Eddie Show. The program ran on radio from 1933 to 1936. Movable iconoscope cameras are being used to transmit the program, along with overhead ceiling lighting.
  21. - 1937: The FIRST shows on BBC TELEVISION | Classic Clips | BBC Archive. The first shows on BBC television, from the BBC archive. From 2 November 1936 the BBC alternated Baird 240-line transmissions with the Marconi-EMI electronic system and ceased Baird broadcasts in February 1937, because the Baird intermediate film camera needed developer tanks and hoses and could not move.
  22. - The Blumlein waveform 1938. The Blumlein waveform, the early British video signal standard proposed by A. D. Blumlein and enacted by the Television Advisory Committee in 1936. It stayed in service until 1986, which makes it one of the longest lived specifications in broadcasting.
  23. - Television inventor tells Economic Committee of difficulties in getting patents. Washington, D.C., Jan.. Washington, D.C., Jan. 19. Farnsworth, who conceived the principle of television when 14 years old came before the Temporary National Economic Committee today and told them that his firm, Farnsworth Television, Inc., has taken out 46 patents, has twice as many pending, and that more than 20 patent suits have resulted in which his firm was cleared in each case.
  24. - TestBroadcast-NHK STRL-1939. A record photograph of the first television test transmission by NHK's Science and Technical Research Laboratories in 1939. Japanese television development ran in parallel with the British and American work and was interrupted by the war in the same way.
  25. - Radio and Television 1940 pre II Era CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage - The Best Documentary E. Radio and television in 1940, before the wartime halt. Pre-war, Britain built about 19,000 sets, the United States only 7,000 to 8,000 and Germany about 1,600.
  26. - Tomorrow Television (1945) - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage. Tomorrow Television, a 1945 film made as civilian manufacture was about to restart. The War Production Board halt ran from 22 April 1942 to 20 August 1945, and the American television market really begins in 1946 rather than at the 1939 World Fair.
  27. - RCA Laboratories 1940's Technology, Radio, Television, Vacuum Tube Technology Electronics History. RCA Laboratories in the 1940s, covering radio, television and vacuum tube technology. Zworykin was hired by Sarnoff to RCA Camden in spring 1930; iconoscope experiments began in April 1931 and the tube was named on 23 October 1931.
  28. - The Transistor: a 1953 documentary, anticipating its coming impact on technology. A 1953 documentary on the transistor and what it was expected to change. Transistorisation is what made the portable television possible, arriving in the Sony TV8-301 of 1959.
  29. - Television: Magic in the Air - 1955 - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage. Television: Magic in the Air, a 1955 educational film explaining the system to a lay audience. National curricula reliably pick the claimant who shares their passport: Britain teaches Baird, America teaches Farnsworth, Russia teaches Rosing and Zworykin, Japan teaches Takayanagi and Germany teaches Nipkow.
  30. - Story Of Television (1956). The 1956 Story of Television held on a 16mm archive channel. The film exists in many prints, which is itself evidence of how hard RCA pushed its version.
  31. - "THE STORY OF TELEVISION" 1956 RCA TV DEVELOPMENT DAVID SARNOFF & VLADIMIR ZWORYKIN GG38545. The Story of Television, a 1956 RCA film featuring David Sarnoff and Vladimir Zworykin. Zworykin filed his television systems application on 29 December 1923, but the equipment it described was never successfully demonstrated, and patents issued only in 1931 and 1938. That eight-year gap between the paper claim and the working device is the entire substance of the priority dispute.
  32. - 1956 RCA Educational Documentary: The Story of Television (1956) - CharlieDeanArchives. The 1956 RCA educational film on the story of television, from a film archive channel. Mechanical versus electronic is a category dispute rather than a factual one, and which claimant leads depends entirely on the definition chosen.
  33. - The Story of Television 1956 | RCA Promotional Film David Sarnoff | Full Documentary. The full 1956 RCA promotional documentary on television with Sarnoff. It is a corporate account of its own priority and should be watched as an argument rather than a record.
  34. - Transistors (1958). A 1958 British Pathé newsreel item on transistors, aimed at a general audience. Rosing had transmitted geometric shapes to a cathode ray tube in 1911, which is the crucial structural step: the display goes electronic before the camera does.
  35. - 電子の技術　テレビジョン. A Japanese science film on the technology of television, from a science film preservation body. Patent drawings and lab notebooks are the rights-clean, high-yield source for this part of the story, and they map directly onto the apparatus.
  36. - Petran-Patent-Figure2-cutout. A figure from a United States patent filed in 1967 and granted in 1970, with a red bar added to mark the Nipkow disc in the drawing. The scanning disc was still being patented into the 1960s, decades after it had lost television, because it remained useful in scanning microscopy.
  37. - Culte: Les 1ères images de la télévision couleur en France le 01/10/1967 | Archive INA. The first colour images on French television, 1 October 1967, from the French national audiovisual institute. The claim that SECAM was chosen by the Soviet bloc to stop citizens watching Western television has no documented support; East Germans simply bought PAL decoders. The standards war was substantially a patent royalty war.
  38. - 1968: The Whole World in a Box | Towards Tomorrow | BBC Archive. The Whole World in a Box, a 1968 BBC programme about television itself, treating the set as the subject. The archive names who claims what and adjudicates nothing, because the question of who invented television conflates the idea, the mechanical demonstration, the all-electronic camera and the commercial system.
  39. - High contrast cathode ray tube Engineering report - Figure 16 - Page 29. A cross sectional drawing of cathode ray tube faceplate construction, from an engineering report on high contrast tubes. The faceplate is where contrast is won or lost, because the glass has to pass the picture while rejecting reflected room light.
  40. - Pictures with and without wires - Geoffrey G. Gouriet's 1972 Christmas Lectures 4/6. Pictures With and Without Wires, part of Geoffrey Gouriet 1972 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on television and image transmission. A lecture series by a named engineer to a general audience is exactly the register this facet wants.
  41. - Vision of the future - Geoffrey G. Gouriet's 1972 Christmas Lectures 6/6. Vision of the Future, the closing lecture of Gouriet 1972 Royal Institution series on television. National curricula reliably pick the claimant who shares their passport: Britain teaches Baird, America teaches Farnsworth, Russia teaches Rosing and Zworykin, Japan teaches Takayanagi and Germany teaches Nipkow.
  42. - Bell Labs' Henry Feinberg Demonstrates Ways of Using Light to Transmit Sound Waves, 1978. Bell Labs Henry Feinberg demonstrating ways of using light to transmit sound in 1978. Bell Labs ran television experiments from the 1920s and its 1927 demonstration is part of the pre-history.
  43. - 1980: The Microelectronics Revolution | The Silicon Factor | BBC Archive. The Silicon Factor, a 1980 BBC documentary on the microelectronics revolution. Solid-state construction is what killed component-level television repair, and this is the moment it was being explained to the public.
  44. - 1981: Inventor CLIVE SINCLAIR on the ZX80 and TV80 | Pacesetters | Retro Tech | BBC Archive. Clive Sinclair on the ZX80 and the TV80 in 1981, from the BBC archive. The TV80 used the Sinclair flat CRT, a genuinely strange piece of tube engineering that reached the market and failed.
  45. - 1986: The Search for a Superior Screen | Micro Live | BBC Archive. The Search for a Superior Screen, a 1986 BBC Micro Live item. Flat panel research was already a decade old in 1986 and still nowhere near a television.
  46. - NHK's This Is Hi-Vision (1987 Analog HDTV Sony HDV-1000 HDVS 1" Master Tape Demonstration Footage). This Is Hi-Vision, an NHK analogue high-definition demonstration tape from 1987 shown on Sony HDVS equipment. Japan was pushing analogue HDTV a decade before the digital standards fights, and almost none of that hardware survived commercially.
  47. - 1988 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - The Home of the Future BBC 2. The 1988 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on the home of the future, including the domestic screen. Rosing had transmitted geometric shapes to a cathode ray tube in 1911, which is the crucial structural step: the display goes electronic before the camera does.
  48. - 1125 Productions / HBO Analog HDTV Demo 2 (1988 1080i Sony HDVS Video USA Demonstration Disc). A 1988 analogue HDTV demonstration produced for American distribution, showing 1080i on Sony HDVS hardware. Mechanical versus electronic is a category dispute rather than a factual one, and which claimant leads depends entirely on the definition chosen.
  49. - Sony HDL-2000 Demonstration Disc (1988 Analog HDTV 1080i HDVS Video BGV). A Sony HDL-2000 demonstration disc from 1988, made to sell analogue high definition to professionals. Patent drawings and lab notebooks are the rights-clean, high-yield source for this part of the story, and they map directly onto the apparatus.
  50. - HDVS Business Applications [August 1988 Ver.] (Analog HDTV 1080i HDVS Video Demonstration Disc). An HDVS business applications demonstration from August 1988, aimed at industrial buyers rather than broadcasters. The archive names who claims what and adjudicates nothing, because the question of who invented television conflates the idea, the mechanical demonstration, the all-electronic camera and the commercial system.
  51. - Sony's Coral Story (1989 Analog HDTV 1080i HDVS Video Demonstration Disc). A 1989 Sony analogue HDTV demonstration disc shot underwater, made to show off resolution. National curricula reliably pick the claimant who shares their passport: Britain teaches Baird, America teaches Farnsworth, Russia teaches Rosing and Zworykin, Japan teaches Takayanagi and Germany teaches Nipkow.
  52. - This is Sony (1989 Analog HDTV 1080i HDVS Video Demonstration Disc). A 1989 Sony analogue HDTV demonstration disc. HDVS was Sony 1125-line analogue high definition system, an entire parallel television hardware ecosystem that lost.
  53. - Sony's Metamorphosis (1990 Analog HDTV HDVS High-Definition Dolby Surround Demonstration Videodisc). Sony Metamorphosis, a 1990 analogue HDTV demonstration with surround sound. Mechanical versus electronic is a category dispute rather than a factual one, and which claimant leads depends entirely on the definition chosen.
  54. - AT&T Archives: Live From Bell Labs (1992). Live From Bell Labs, 1992, inside the laboratory that produced the transistor and much of the physics behind modern displays. Rosing had transmitted geometric shapes to a cathode ray tube in 1911, which is the crucial structural step: the display goes electronic before the camera does.
  55. - 2000: Television... On Demand?! | Tomorrow's World | BBC Archive. Tomorrow World in 2000 asking whether television will be on demand. The hardware consequence, a set that is a networked computer, arrived later than predicted.
  56. - 2002: The Biggest Change in TV History? | Tomorrow's World | BBC Archive. Tomorrow World in 2002 on what it calls the biggest change in television history, at the point when flat panels were about to displace the tube. Patent drawings and lab notebooks are the rights-clean, high-yield source for this part of the story, and they map directly onto the apparatus.
  57. - Early TV experiment by Takayanagi. A recreation of Kenjiro Takayanagi's pioneering transmission experiment at the NHK Broadcasting Museum in Minato, Tokyo. On 25 December 1926 Takayanagi displayed the katakana character イ on a cathode ray tube at 40 lines, more than Baird's 32, and the source records that he failed to gain much recognition in the West. It is a museum display.
  58. - Takayanagi TV shows "イ". A reconstruction at the NHK Museum of Broadcasting in Tokyo showing the katakana character イ on the tube, the image Takayanagi displayed on 25 December 1926. The single character was chosen because it was the simplest shape that would prove the system resolved a picture. It is a museum display.
  59. - Father of Japanese television Kenjiro Takayanagi. Kenjiro Takayanagi, who lived from 1899 to 1990 and is called the father of Japanese television. On 25 December 1926 he displayed the katakana character イ on a cathode ray tube using a 40 line system, more lines than Baird's 32. The source itself records that he failed to gain much recognition in the West.
  60. - Takayanagi television system. Takayanagi's television system, displayed at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. His 1926 apparatus used a mechanical disc to scan the subject but a cathode ray tube to display it, which is why it is claimed as the first all-electronic receiver.
  61. - President Obama Watches Space Station Video - Flickr - East Asia and Pacific Media Hub. President Barack Obama watches a video message from the International Space Station with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and students during his visit to the Miraikan (the National Museum of Emerging Science & Innovation). [State Department photo by William Ng/.
  62. - 1938 Kinescope. A 1938 kinescope at the Early Television Museum. Zworykin filed for the improved receiving tube he named the kinescope in November 1929 and demonstrated it to the Institute of Radio Engineers.
  63. - How a Teenager from Idaho Invented TV. A Smithsonian Channel piece on Farnsworth. He was awarded priority in February 1935, RCA lost its appeal in 1936, and RCA eventually agreed to pay him royalties. His dissector had no charge storage and needed brutal light, so the iconoscope displaced it: the man who won the patent case lost the product category.
  64. - Stan Lebar at the Early Television Museum. Stan Lebar speaking at the Early Television Museum. Lebar led the team behind the Apollo lunar television camera, which is television hardware built for an environment nothing else had to survive.
  65. - Interview with Frank Keith. An interview with an RCA engineer recorded by an RCA heritage project. First-hand recollection from inside the company is thin on the ground and worth having.
  66. - What did BBC TV look like in 1936? BBC News. What BBC television looked like in 1936, from BBC News. The Marconi-EMI system that won was 405 lines, developed under Isaac Shoenberg at EMI Hayes.
  67. - Philo Farnsworth and the Invention of Electronic Television. Technology Connections on Philo Farnsworth and the invention of electronic television. On 7 September 1927 at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco, the image dissector transmitted a simple straight line from a backlit glass slide to a receiver in another room. Not a face, not a moving scene: a line. Farnsworth lived 1906 to 1971.
  68. - How Analog Color TV Works: The Beginnings. How analogue colour television began, from Technology Connections. The FCC approved the CBS field-sequential system as the American colour standard on 11 October 1950, CBS suspended broadcasts on 20 October 1951, formally abandoned the system in March 1953, and NTSC was approved on 17 December 1953. Suspension and abandonment are two separate events.
  69. - Analog Color TV Wrap-Up--Some extra info. Additional material on analogue colour television from the same series, filling in the parts the main films skip. The archive names who claims what and adjudicates nothing, because the question of who invented television conflates the idea, the mechanical demonstration, the all-electronic camera and the commercial system.
  70. - テレビの生みの親　高柳健次郎. A Japanese science film archive on Kenjiro Takayanagi, described as the father of television. On 25 December 1926 at Hamamatsu Industrial High School he transmitted the katakana character イ at forty scan lines, using a Nipkow disc to scan and a cathode ray tube to display. Forty lines beats Baird thirty-two, in 1926.
  71. - Mini Star 416 - cathode ray tube-2140. A small cathode ray tube removed from its set, showing the long neck, the flared funnel and the flat screen face. The proportions explain the depth of every cabinet built around one.
  72. - Mini Star 416 - cathode ray tube, deflection coils-2146. The deflection coil assembly of a small cathode ray tube, seen separately from the glass. Two sets of windings at right angles pull the beam horizontally and vertically to build the raster.
  73. - Mini Star 416 - cathode ray tube with deflection coils-2210. A small cathode ray tube with its deflection coils still fitted around the neck. The coils steer the electron beam across and down the screen, and their position on the narrow neck is what makes the scan possible.
  74. - Тайна отечественного телевидения с 1930 по 2020/ Дисковое, механическое! Как все начиналось. A Russian account of domestic television from 1930 to 2020, beginning with the mechanical disc period. Boris Rosing filed a Russian television patent on 25 July 1907 and an improved version with magnetic deflection coils on 2 March 1911, combining a mirror-drum transmitter with a cathode ray tube receiver, and demonstrated simple geometric shapes in 1911. Zworykin was his student.
  75. - PAL-NTSC-SECAM (TV-8) 019/2019 KPSC Lecturer in Electeonics. A lecture comparing PAL, NTSC and SECAM as engineering systems. SECAM was developed by Henri de France at Compagnie Française de Télévision from 1956 and France launched it on 1 October 1967.
  76. - CBS Color Camera. The CBS colour camera at the Early Television Museum. The CBS system used a disc of red, blue and green filters spinning at 1,200 rpm inside the camera, and it was not compatible with existing black and white sets.
  77. - Historian Benjamin Gross Shares the Surprising History of LCDs at RCA. Historian Benjamin Gross at the Science History Institute on the history of liquid crystal displays at RCA. RCA invented the liquid crystal display and then failed to commercialise it, which is a neat inversion of the iconoscope story where RCA held on and won.
  78. - 機械式テレビジョン. A Japanese explanation of mechanical television. Takayanagi system was a hybrid, mechanical at the pickup and electronic at the display, which is exactly why it breaks the usual Baird versus Farnsworth binary.
  79. - 【テレビの歴史1】カラーテレビが普及するまで｜昭和の日本の大発明. A Japanese account of the history of television up to the spread of colour, treated as a national invention story. Takayanagi lived 1899 to 1990, later built a two-head helical scan video recorder and became vice president of Victor Company of Japan.
  80. - Prototype RCA color television at the Early Television Museum June 2022. A prototype RCA colour receiver held by the Early Television Museum in Ohio. RCA's electronic colour system was approved as the American standard on 17 December 1953, after the rival mechanical CBS system had held the legal standard for fourteen months.
  81. - How BBC television first went live - BBC News. How BBC television first went live, from BBC News, on the Alexandra Palace beginning. National curricula reliably pick the claimant who shares their passport: Britain teaches Baird, America teaches Farnsworth, Russia teaches Rosing and Zworykin, Japan teaches Takayanagi and Germany teaches Nipkow.
  82. - How Analogue Colour Televisions Works: the Coding and Decoding Process. The Cambridge Museum of Technology on how analogue colour television encodes and decodes. PAL reverses the phase on alternate lines so that errors cancel, converting a hue error into a much less objectionable saturation error, which is why a PAL set needs no tint control and an NTSC set does.
  83. - John Logie Baird's original experimental television apparatus with Stooky Bill. Baird's original experimental television apparatus with Stooky Bill, in the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. The museum holds the most important surviving collection of Baird material and British television hardware.
  84. - The John Logie Baird Lecture - 100 Years of Television. A short trailer for the Institution of Engineering and Technology centenary Baird lecture. Mechanical versus electronic is a category dispute rather than a factual one, and which claimant leads depends entirely on the definition chosen.
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