Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Colour Television

The Color Television is a wonderful thing that hit man kind after bread!!!!. It was a time when there were few thousands television and it a toy for rich and famous in the early 40's and most of things that the Television is used is for close to one hour or two hours a day.  The invention of distributed images made people think why cant they see color in the pictures, even the inventor himself, so when he finished demonstrating the concept and named inventor the next thing he did was to work on the color part of it. He demonstrated the color television with rotating discs and a color wheel to a British Association meeting in Glasgow as early as 1928. A decade later, he demonstrated large-screen color TV in London. But the concept of the rotating disc were very unreliable and it was said his technology cannot be used for day to day broadcast in color. This should have bummed out the inventor himself and he did not proceed with the work.

As in the case of the invention of television itself some one inspired some one continued here too and it was an American named the PETER GOLDMARK did  inspire to design the CBS color system, which also featured a rotating color wheel coupled with electronic scanning. As we all know in the Second world war UK television industry was going nowhere but American television industry had its monstrous growth at that time. The American Television was ruled by two giant broadcasting network NBC (National Broadcasting Corporation controlled by RCA and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System). The NBC had a operation running for it own color system and which as was not quite that impressive of that of the CBS. The CBS had a winning system headed by Peter Goldmark himself. 

During the post color war era, the the CBS has licensed the RCA's monochrome television but the break through came in a rather interesting way and in mid-1940 went to see his first color movie, Gone with the Wind. He left convinced that he should do everything possible to bring color to television, and beat the rival corporation, so he packed his kit and rolled his sleeve to give it a serious go instead of working on the RCA's monochrome television he studied the Baird's  Television system and the flaws in the color version of it rather than inventing a new one bloody from the start. This made him a pioneer and when the took it to the FCC (Federation Communication Commission), the regulatory body of the television of the US, i have to say it was a stoke of luck that he found the chairman very angry about the ruthlessness of the NBC and so it was approved in a jiffy.

The new CBS color system, presented in August 1940, was extremely effective, giving bright, sparkling images that were far ahead of RCA's efforts at the time. But the systems were so different that there was no chance of an RCA TV receiver displaying CBS broadcasts. But the NBC appealed the FCC for a compatible version of the CBS color television and the CBS gave the NBC a system which is compatible but after they had all the market snatched to themselves (Business of CBS)!!!!

It was not until 1955 that the BBC began to experiment with color television and test transmissions began, using a version of America's RCA color system  The the popularly known color war was started and from cockfight it was war from now on..


Sources:
www.screenonline.org.uk
inventors.html.com
With An Independent Air, autobiography of Howard Thomas, head of ABC Television




Sunday, January 16, 2011

The History of Television Stations

Let’s continue the cock fight, after the television was born and sold, then came, the powerful television stations. The story is same as the invention of television, here and there, I did it first was the notion all around but the only good thing is that it’s all properly documented (not properly actually, “not badly” would be the apt word). So the history goes like this

In Jan 26, 1926 on 22nd Firth Street in the City of Westminster, John Logie Baird transmitted the very first television picture from one room to another, during his demonstration many from the Royal Institute of Science was there to witness the extraordinary feat. By 1927, he used telephone wires to successfully send a moving image from London to Glasgow and in 1928, he made the first trans-Atlantic television broadcast.


For the video Check the link below.
In America though it was a different story in America on April 7th 1927, Dr.Herbert Ives and Dr. Frank Gray demonstrated the broadcasting technology from Washington D.C to New York City. A Wireless demonstration is also carrying on from Whippany in New Jersey to New York City. The main part of the broadcast was a speech by Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of commerce. The 50-line pictures were transmitted at 18 frames per second and were received on a 2" X 3" screen.
The actual full fledged television station named WRGB now called as CBS6 in America claims to have started experimental broadcasting from January 13th 1928!!!!, but it still wonders me how on earth is it possible to setup an unknown technology in 10 months and make it working. Many claims that the first practical use of television was in Germany in 1936 when the Olympic Games in Berlin were broadcasted to television stations in Berlin and Leipzig where people could view games live (Awesome)
 
On November 2nd 1936 the world's first public broadcasts of high-definition television are made by the BBC from Alexandra Palace. They used Marconi-EMI's 405-line system and Baird's 240-line system, are installed, each with its own broadcast studio, and are transmitted on alternate weeks until the 405-line system is chosen in 1937.

 For the full History of BBC check the link below
http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/innovation/index.shtml

In 1942 there were 10 stations licensed in the world and the number kept growing ever since.



See you with more interesting news.


Sources
The Moving image, Daily Notion, Telegraph, BBC archives

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Birth of Television


The Birth of the television is a bit tricky, some say John Loge Baird others Vladimir Zworykin and some others say Philo Farnsworth, but the truth as far as the research concluded is that none of them single handedly invented television.  Every other scientist used some others idea to develop their own television system. But the first principle which all these things started was the invention of the Cathode Ray Tube in 1897 by K.F. Braun; he was one who first invented the tube which formed the back bone of television. But it was a crude tube and it needs development over the years and there is someone or the other in west and some in east were involved in improving it. The important contributors and their work are listed below.

1897 ----- Cathode Ray Tube ---- K.F.Braun

Some say that even K.F.Braun got the idea from a German; Paul Nipkow who developed a rotating-disc technology to transmit pictures over wire in 1884 called the Nipkow disk (Try doing the research on this, you might end up knowing someone eventually)

1907 ---- Attempt to build a Television ----- English inventor A.A. Campbell-Swinton 
    Boris Rosing, a Russian scientist

 
Both did it independently since they were no TV to say that someone in the other end of the world was doing the same thing. 

1920 ---- John Logie Baird patented the box which produced a 30-line image and transmitted actual images 

1928 --- First commercially produced Television called Baird Models was sold in Olympia Radio exhibition in England and only a few dozen of them were made and in the United States it was the Octagon made by General Electric in the same year.

So because of this John Logie Baird got the lime light as the television inventor and other stuck their heads in mud. Though many patented the similar technology and many more of them were in the cock fight, which eventually they don’t know that they were in the cock fight, the television which changed the way we live, eat and dress came into existence.

Conclusion: No single man made the Television but one single man did get the credit, and some others show up after intensive research.

Now say you have the television, what about the cable and television station. Keep looking the cock fight gets better and better. ….  

sources : The Birth of Television, Google.co.uk