Experiments before audiences
Television did not begin with a broadcast service. It began with demonstrations. In the 1920s John Logie Baird in Britain, Charles Francis Jenkins in the United States and others showed moving images transmitted by mechanical scanning, and in 1927 Philo Farnsworth transmitted an image with an all-electronic system built around cathode ray tubes. These devices were curiosities. The few people who owned experimental receivers were mostly hobbyists, and programs, where they existed, were short tests transmitted by small stations.
A television set is only useful if there is something to watch, so a service needs a transmitter, a studio, program makers, a supply of receivers, and enough viewers to justify the cost. All of these took time to assemble, and the earliest attempts to put them together came in the 1930s.
The first regular services
Several countries launched public television services in the 1930s, and the choice of which was “first” depends on definitions.
- Germany began a limited electronic service in Berlin in the mid-1930s, and public viewing rooms allowed people to watch, including during the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Receivers were scarce in private homes.
- Britain’s BBC started a high-definition service from Alexandra Palace in London in November 1936. For a few months it alternated between a Baird system and the Marconi-EMI electronic system before settling on the latter in 1937. Estimates of how many sets were in homes by 1939 are modest, in the low tens of thousands.
- In the United States, experimental stations operated through the 1930s. RCA showed television at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, along with a broadcast of the opening ceremony with President Franklin Roosevelt, and regular programming started around that time. In 1941 the Federal Communications Commission approved commercial standards, and the first commercial licenses followed.
- France, the Soviet Union and others also ran experimental services.
Television was an advanced, expensive technology, and these early audiences were small. Programming covered news items, short plays, variety and demonstrations, much of it live.
War and the freeze
World War II interrupted the growth. Factories turned to military production, including radar detection equipment, and broadcasting was reduced or suspended in many countries. Britain closed its service in 1939 and restarted in 1946. In the United States, only a few stations remained on the air.
After the war, the American industry expanded quickly, and so many new stations applied for licenses that interference became a concern. In late 1948, the FCC froze new station licenses to rethink allocation of channels. The freeze lasted until 1952, and in the meantime many large cities had one or two stations while some areas had none. When it was lifted, a new plan added ultra-high-frequency channels and cleared the way for hundreds of additional stations.
The postwar boom
Television spread rapidly in the late 1940s and 1950s. Falling prices and rising incomes helped, as did the arrival of popular programs such as comedies, game shows, sports and children’s programs. In the United States, a small fraction of homes had a set in 1948, and a large majority did by the end of the 1950s, according to widely quoted figures. Britain’s growth was boosted by the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953, which many people watched on televisions in their own homes or those of neighbors. The number of licenses rose sharply around that time.
Other countries launched services through the 1950s and 1960s, often under state control, and sets arrived in homes at different speeds depending on income and the extent of the transmitter network. In Japan, public broadcasting began in 1953 and the 1959 wedding of the crown prince boosted sales, according to common accounts.
A new place in the home
As sets became common, the household changed around them. The living room was arranged to face the screen. Families watched in the evenings, and meal times, bedtimes and social visits adjusted to the broadcast schedule. Cinema attendance fell in many countries, and radio shifted away from drama and variety toward music and news. Some critics worried about television’s effects on children and on reading, and others praised its educational possibilities. Researchers have debated the evidence ever since.
Television also changed public life. Politicians learned to speak for the camera, and news events from coronations to space launches gained shared audiences. Advertisers moved money into the new medium, which in the United States supported the commercial networks, while in many European countries public broadcasters were funded by license fees. The business side, in which stations were linked into national networks, grew alongside the technology.
Entertainment and technology together
The invention of television is often told as a series of technical milestones, and it was. But the move to a household entertainment medium depended on more than engineering. It needed regulation, studios, programs, advertisers, set makers and, finally, customers. Technical advances in cameras, picture tubes and transmission made the picture possible. The industry and public tastes made it a part of everyday life.