Of the numerous inventions that people enjoy today, television set was said to have had the most influential effect in modern society. In America alone, a total of 98% of its population has access to the television, a very big difference from the mere thousands that were recorded to have had TV before 1947. Today, surveys indicate that a normal American spends at least two-and-a-half to five hours a day in front of the television. Along with the many benefits it has offered, people have also seen the negative effects of television in the passing of time. Despite this reality, people continue to tune in to their television sets for specific reasons that fit their lifestyle. Truly, the invention of the television has revolutionized the lives of the people all over the world, and will continue to for so many years to come.
The advent of television set can be traced back to the brilliant young mind of the 21-year-old American inventor Philo Taylor Farnsworth. He grew up in a household that had no access to electricity until he was 14, and with such influence, he started conceiving a system which is able to “capture moving images in a form that could be coded onto radio waves and then transformed back into a picture on screen.” Although Farnsworth’s idea was not the first, as Boris Rosing in Russia has already worked on experiments that would transmit images in 16 years earlier, as well as John Logie Baird and Charles Francis Jenkins in England and the United States, respectively, during the 1920s. Despite its predecessors, it was the system invented by Fornswarth which became a success. While the mechanical television first created by Baird and Jenkins, which scanned images through the use of a rotating disc with holes laid out in a spiral pattern, it was Farnsworth’s invention which “scanned images using electrons” that started what was going to be an important household item. Eventually, in 7 September 1927, the first electronic television was sucessfully demonstrated in San Francisco.
Many other designs came out after Farnsworth’s, and some of these had their ideas anchored on Nipkow disc. The said disc was proposed and patented by a 23-year-old German university student named Paul Julius Nipkow. The disc was also called a ‘spinning disc’ that had a spiral pattern of holes, each scanning a line of the image. This technology was the same one that was studied and tested by Ernst Alexanderson of the General Electric company through the process of his invention. Instead of using the Nipkow disc, Alexanderson used a rotary perforated disc or mirror drum in making the transmitter and receiver. Like the transmitters and receivers that can be found in television sets today, Alexanderson’s television set also had
“strong light source, a lens system, a rotary perforated disc or mirror drum, microphone, amplifiers for sound and picture signal and an antenna system on the transmitting side.” The receiving side had picture signals received by an antenna that goes to an amplifier that was then transformed to make a neon lamp work. This light from the lamp will pass through the mirror drum which was also found in the transmitter. The mirror drum was adjusted for it to rotate with the transmitter’s disc at the same speed and resulted to a light intensity that was launched as a pattern of line on a cloth or paper display. This will then be magnified for pictures to finally reach the eyes of the spectators.
With several investors looking at the prospect of television in the near future, several companies have invested huge sums of money for the development of the television. RCA company, for instance, invested $50 million to support the advancement of what was going to be the electronic television. RCA was the dominant company in terms of the radio business in the U.S. with its two NBC Networks. In order to fully realize the vision, the company hired Russian scientist Kosma Zworykin as he was a participant in Rosing’s experiment then. As a result, RCA was able to launch the first mass-produced TV, the RCA 630TS, and was able to broadcast on TV the opening of the New York World’s Fair, which included the speech of then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first U.S. president to ever appear on television. A year after their first television broadcast, RCA purchased a license that would allow them to use the television patents created by Farnsworth. From then on, RCA started selling their television units which had a 5x12 inches picture tubes.
The first television sets were naturally primitive and had humble beginnings. The first televised baseball game was captured by a single camera, while the actors were forced to work under extremely hot lights while wearing black lipstick and green makeup. These earlier stages were only to be expected from new inventions, but despite the many challenges, society came to embrace and invite into their homes the television set. From then on, “Television was left on, running a tap, from morning till night” in houses. However, during the Second World War, BBC switched off its television signals due to national security. After the war, television started spreading across the country and in some parts of the world where the signal could reach. A statistic in in Britain in 1971 exhibited how the society has embraced television, such that “contemporary homes still had no indoor lavatory or bath, 31% had no fridge, and 62% had no telephone, but only 9% had no TV.” As seeing is believing, television has become a tool that could eliminate doubt. Today, every major happening is broadcasted on television, and every household is there to fulfill the “communal confirmation of experience.”
Almost 10 years since television set was invented, it continues to enter homes and take part of everyone’s time everyday. While some pushes/touches the button to get updates on world events or to get news delivered, others watch fantasy, learn about geography and other unknown things, experience culture, enjoy dance or music, and many others, the functions of television continue to grow and evolve. As such, it has become pervasive in the lives of man and while numerous good things have been generated from it, there are also several which are not. In a speech delivered by M. Russell Ballard in a general conference in April of 1989, he expressed his concerns about how “images, fantasies, and models which are repeatedly exposed to in advertisements, entertainment, novels, motion pictures and other works of art can doaffect the self-image and, later, the behavior of nearly all young people and adults too.” Like any other invention, television sets have reached its ultimate high and have therefore very limited direction to go to in terms of improvement. Today, the issue has centered on what is seen on TV, and according to renowned psychologist Dr. Victor B. Cline, “the violence is because of violence in our entertainment.” Children continue to get exposed to the violence portrayed on television masked as entertainment, and along with other issues in the society today, people believe that television is an influential factor. When before, television was able to show images of family ties, heroes in bright primary colors, and a society which promotes permanence and belonging, it has now reverted from being “a mere window on our world” to being “the value-setter itself.”
Television has come a long way from its inception and introduction in 1927. As it stubbornly remains a part people’s lives, mirroring the society, incubating social trends, among many others, there will also be a positive side and negative side to it. From then until now, there will always be “good television, bad television, too much television and even, for some cultural puritans, no television.” The fact remains that television is one, if not the greatest, invention of all time.
Bibliography
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Ballard, Russell M “The effects of television,” lds.org, https://www.lds.org/general-
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Huxley, Aldous Leonard, Brave New World, 2002,
http://www.idph.com.br/conteudos/ebooks/BraveNewWorld.pdf
Stephens, Mitchell, “History of television,” nyu.edu,
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