Television has become an imprescriptible part of the daily routine and the most significant electronic media. There is no single state that is not covered by TV-broadcasting. The development of this technology took more than a century. The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed November 21 as the official day of telecasting. The paper discusses the most influential personalities that contributed to the development of television technology.
Giovanni Caselli plays an essential role in the origins of technologies that brought television into existence. In the 1850s, Caselli invented the first pantelegraph – a device that could transmit not only lines, dots and characters, but also small images. In other words, Casellis invention made the conversation of pictures into electronic signals possible. Thus, the working methods of pantelegraph affected the further development of television.
The most important events in the sphere of broadcasting happened in 1925 when John Baird, the Scottish engineer, for the first time, demonstrated the working television. The transmitted image was a monochrome mannequins head called Stooky Bill. Three years later, Baird managed to show an unprecedented color transmission. The world community became aware of televisions ability to demonstrate colors due to the inventions of Baird.
Television became a profitable business, and the period after World War II was marked by the production of radio and TV equipment for consumer use. This process was the most apparent in the US, where per families possession of domestic television sets was rapidly growing. From 1947 to 1953, the number of TVs there increased in 450 times (Geiger, 2019). The mass production of televisions affected society because since those times TV is a must-have.
One of the first personalities of TV that influenced popular culture is Charlie Chaplin, an English comic actor and filmmaker. In spite of the fact he was performing in the age of black and white, silent cinematograph, he managed to popularize this entertainment among people. Consequently, he made people like and value movies, which led to the subsequent development of the film industry and television.
In conclusion, it is crucial to notice that substantially more people than it was described in the paper contributed to the development of television technologies. Still, the mentioned personalities are the most significant ones since they created the foundations of the further elaboration of broadcasting. Modern television is impossible to imagine without the contributions of engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and actors of the two previous centuries.
References
Geiger, L. (2019). TV: A Forgotten History. Web.