History of television

Mechanical television was started back to 1873 by the discovery of photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith. In 1884, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow invented the scanning dick, and 1926 when John Logie Baird demonstrated television by moving imagery. The first electromechanical television system was proposed by Paul Nipkow. Nipkow was a 23 year old university student from Germany, interested and fascinated by the development of television. Nipkow had never built a working model before, however his scanning disk was becoming very common; (in use until 1939) he proposed this electromechanical television with the visions of building it himself. Constantin Perkskyi had used television in a paper of his in 1900, mentioning the existing electromechanical technologies, Nipkow’s work and proposal also mentioned.Back in the 1900’s, in 1908 to be precise, it was A.A Campbell-Swinton that gave proposals of a television electrical system. He was the first man to envisage this sort of electronic device; he opened the first radiographic lab in Britain in 1896. Swinton studied radiography at Fettes College; he was one of the first in the world to study this unusual topic. In 1911, Swinton attended a presidential lecture and expanded on his proposal for an electronic television device. It wasn’t then until 1915 that Swinton’s television system was featured in Hugo Gernsback’s magazine, ‘Electrical Experimenter’ Back in 1926, the B.B.C broadcast television transmissions to experiment with the transmitting devises, they were broadcast back to their own devices and machines, as the public didn’t have the equipment essentially needed, to receive the signals. The broadcasting experimentation meant that the B.B.C now knew they could transmit signals to broadcast. The experimentation progressed and development commenced. In 1932 the BBC starts 30-line tests using Baird’s system. After three years of experimental transitions within The Baird Studios, the B.B.C took of the studio side of the work. In 1934 the British government selected a committee to query the feasibility of setting up a television service. The committee also looked at the conditions that would have to be set with such a service. A report was filed, and the results were issued as a government white paper in January 1935. The BBC was then given the responsibility of developing television, transmitting a minimum of 240 lines with no less than 25 pictures per second.

When television was first created the video technology was developed for cathode ray tube television systems. As television has urbanized and developed over the years, so have new technologies for video devices, television set standards, and computer monitors also. Digital video formats for moving image have also evolved. Video can now be recorded and transmitted using different formats, in magnetic tape when recorded as; PAL or NTSC on video cameras. Or in an MPEG-4 or DV format when recorded on digital cameras.

The quality of the video is dependant on the format used. Different parts of the world use different formats when recording moving imagery.

PAL, SECAM, and NTSC are all video formats that are used around the world.

PAL stands for, Phase Alternating Line, it is a video analogue encoding system. PAL is used all over the world.

NTSC (national television system committee) is also used all over the world. NTSC receivers have a colour tint control to enable people to control and change the colour manually to suit their own choice. The PAL standard however doesn’t have a tint control, the system cancels hue errors automatically leaving a tint control unessential.