GENERAL BROADCASTING OF TELEVISION IN BRITAIN, 1936 Term paper

Scientists and interested laymen began to talk about the possibilities of transmitting pictures in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The use of the telegraph and the telephone to transmit sound suggested the analogous possibility of a machine to transmit images.

The first important development came in 1883 when Paul Nipkow invented a mechanical scanning device. Although he abandoned the idea, others later used it in the first efforts to develop television. By the 1920s both John Logie Baird in England and Charles Francis Jenkins in the United States were using the Nipkow disk to transmit and receive images. By the late 1920s Ernst Alexanderson, a Swedish American scientist at General Electric, was also broadcasting. In 1928 he broadcast an announcement by Governor Al Smith of New York that he was running for president. Alexanderson also broadcast a play that year. Despite his successes, he never attracted the major financial backing he needed. Also in 1928, Baird successfully sent a television signal across the Atlantic Ocean and demonstrated color television. In the 1930s he worked with the BBC in Britain and participated in the first official television broadcasts in 1936. Probably fewer than 1,000 television sets were available in Britain to receive the transmissions. The real contest to make television commercially feasible involved three Americans: David Sarnoff, Vladimir Kosmo Zworykin, and Philo Taylor Farnsworth. Farnsworth, whose breakthrough idea came to him as a teenager while he was plowing, probably had the strongest claim to be considered the father of electronic television. Zworykin had the advantage of support from Sarnoff and RCA (Radio Corporation of America). His cathode-ray picture tube, the Kinescope, “was the most important single technical advancement ever made in the history of television,” according to one historian of the medium. Farnsworth, always strapped for cash, in the meantime developed a superior camera in his Image Dissector (he used magnetized beams of electrons to scan line by line at electronic speed; the image produced was far sharper than one produced by mechanical scanners). Sarnoff visited Farnsworth in 1931 and offered to purchase his ideas for $100,000, but Farnsworth declined the offer. Farnsworth actually was awarded the key patents for electronic television. Sarnoff seemed ready to concede defeat and pay royalties, but World War II caused television to be set aside for the duration of the war. After the war, with Farnsworth’s patents about to expire, RCA, Sarnoff, and Zworykin turned television into a commercial success. By the 1960s, television had become a major factor in American life.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Although the United States successfully developed television as a commercial enterprise, the invention of television was an international effort. Investigate the early history of television, beginning with the coining of the word by a Frenchman in 1900, and write an essay on the international origins of television.
2. Organize a group project to explain the physics of television. This might include building working models of some of the early devices such as the Nipkow disk used in the development of television, or it might result in a television documentary on the physics of television.
3. Philo Farnsworth was a great American original, the self-taught inventor. Examine his life, especially the period after World War II when Sarnoff and Zworykin became known as the fathers of television, and write a short biography of him.
4. What kind of working relationship did John Logie Baird have with the BBC in the 1930s? Why was he unable to make a commercial success of television in the 1930s?
5. Develop a time line for the development of television after World War II including such milestones as color television broadcasts, the development of videocassette recorders, commercial telecommunications satellites, and high-definition television.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The Invention of the Computer, 1944–1946” (#39) and “The Internet in the 1990s” (#99). Search under BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Baird, John Logie. Sermons, Soap and Television. Croydon, England: Royal Television Society, 1990. Baird’s autobiography.

Farnsworth, Elma G. Distant Vision—Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier. Salt Lake City: Pemberley Kent, 1990. The memoirs of Farnsworth’s wife.

Kisseloff, Jeff. The Box: An Oral History of Television (1920–1961).New York: Viking, 1995. More concerned with television broadcasting than the invention of the process, it nonetheless contains many fascinating and relevant interviews.
Secondary Sources

Abramson, Albert. The History of Television, 1880 to 1941. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1987. A useful discussion of the development of television.

———. Zworykin: Pioneer of Television. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995. The definitive biography of one of the most important figures in the development of television.

Baird, Margaret. Baird of Television. Cape Town, South Africa: Haum, 1973. A biography of Baird by his wife.

“Big Dream, Small Screen.” PBS, 1997. Part of the American Experience series. This is an excellent biography of Philo Farnsworth.

Burns, R. W. British Television: The Formative Years. London: P. Peregrinus, 1986. A standard work on the topic.

Fisher, David E., and Marshall Jon Fisher. Tube: The Invention of Television. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996. A solid, readable history of the invention of television, concentrating mostly on the 1920s and 1930s.

McArthur, Tom, and Peter Waddell. Vision Warrior. Orkney, Scotland: Orkney Press, 1990. A useful biography of Baird with much new information.

Norman, Bruce. Here’s Looking at You: The Story of British Television, 1908–1939. London: BBC and Royal Television Society, 1984. An official history of the period.

Ritchie, Michael. One Moment Please: A Prehistory of Television. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1994. A good introduction to the topic.

Smith, Anthony, ed. Television: An International History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. An authoritative collection of essays.

World Wide Web

Baird, Malcolm H.I. “Eye of the World: John Logie Baird and Television” [Part II]. Kinema, Web edition, Fall 1996. arts.uwaterloo.ca/FINE/juhde/baird962.htm. Baird’s career from 1926 to his death in 1946. The author of the article is Baird’s son.

Hills, Adrian R. “Eye of the World: John Logie Baird and Television” [Part I]. Kinema, Web edition, Spring 1996. arts.uwaterloo.ca/FINE/juhde/hills961.htm. An excellent overview of Baird’s early life.

“Big Dream, Small Screen.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/technology/bigdream. The Web site for the PBS production. Several valuable features including the transcript of the program.