Television and its technological evolution: Homage to the pioneers

How did this invention of television come to be massified, to which no future was seen? A little more than a century has passed since the German Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, in 1884, invented a light exploration equipment that consisted of a flat disc perforated by a series of small holes placed in the form of a spiral that started from the center of it, and explored the image by rotating it in front of the eye, however, due to its mechanics the Nipkow disc, as it was called, had trouble handling high rotational speeds and getting enough definition in the image.

Phototelegraphy thus gave its beginning, but it took 30 more years for modifications to the invented system to begin to happen. Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the kinescope and iconoscope appeared, invented by the American physicist of Russian origin Vladimir Kosma Zworykin; the dissector tube of images and, as a consequence, the first television camera created by the engineer Philo Taylor Farnsworth who, as a curious fact, created the basic principles of electronic television at the age of 13. Then came the use of selenium cells in the Nipkow Disk by the Scotsman John Logie Baird, creating a television system that managed, among other advances, to transmit images from London to New York, demonstrate the rudiments of color television, in stereo and incorporate infrared rays to capture images in the dark.

In July 1928 the first experimental transmission was made from Washington's W3XK test station that began broadcasting scanned film images with a definition of 48 lines. The following year the British Broadcast Co. (BBC) in London, on September 30, 1929, began the first regular service of transmission of images, although they were not yet very clear about a practical use for the invention. A year later they would be followed in the United States by CBS and NBC. In all cases mechanical systems were used, the equipment averaged 30 lines and used normal broadcasting channels that occupied the entire image without any sound, until December 31, 1930 when the first simultaneous transmission of audio and video was made.

However, very soon mechanical television was displaced by electronics thanks to Zworykin, who in partnership with the Firm Westinghouse had experimented using cathode ray tubes for the receiver and a mechanical scanning system to achieve transmission. Broadcasts began with programming in England in 1936 and in the United States on April 30, 1939, the date of the inauguration of the Universal Exhibition in New York, and shortly after began to talk about color television.

Before World War II, around 1940, Zworykin had the vision of standardizing all television systems that were developed in the world, however, his idea only became effective in North America with the creation of the National Television System Committee (NTSC) whose purpose was to supervise so that the manufacturing standards of televisions were compatible. among all the companies in the country dedicated to the production of equipment. Finally the 325-line system managed to standardize throughout the United States until the war arrived, at which point all scheduled broadcasts were interrupted and resumed later at the end of the conflict.

The television industry began its activities after the war with more impetus. Very soon Europe adopted its own system of 625 lines, France one of 819 lines, England one of 405 lines and the United States standardized its own in 525 lines. The studies carried out for the development of color again question the compatibility of the devices and the big companies pressed to adapt color systems not compatible with each other losing the battle to the large amount of equipment sold. Thus the compatibility system was only achieved in 1953 by taking the name of the regulatory committee: NTSC.

Europe had its own particular development, failed to unify its territorial criteria in terms of television and did not want to standardize the systems developed with the Americans. In this way in Europe gave rise to systems such as SECAM (Sequentiel Couleur A Memorie) developed by France in 1967 and the system developed by Germany thanks to the company TELEFUKEN: known as PAL (Phase Alternation Line), perhaps one of the best according to the opinion of experts.

But the needs grew as each discovery happened. Very soon cable television was created, a relatively recent invention for us but with more than 50 years of having appeared in the television industry. Formerly known as CATV (Community Antenna Television), the cable system was born in the mountains of Pennsylvania in the late 1940s thanks to the ingenuity of Mr. Milton Shapp. It spread to the most remote areas, far from the transmitters of television channels in the cities, but it was only nine years later, in the summer of 1949, that E. L. Parsons of Astoria, Oregon, erected an antenna system to receive the signal from Seattle's KING-TV station and distributed the received signal. through a coaxial cable to twenty-five neighbors or subscribers constituting itself as the first cable installation in the world.

The portable "V" shaped antenna for receivers was invented by Marvin Middlemark with the name of Rabbit Ears while devices such as the famous remote control, subject of dedicated studies such as those investigating the phenomenon of zapping and others not as dedicated as the one that says that in modern relationships the one who has the remote control has the power, appeared in American homes around June 1956, but was developed six years earlier by Zenith Electronics Corporation under the name Lazy Bones: "Sloth Bones" literally.

Satellite television appeared in 1959 when the Soviet space probe Lunik III sent to earth the first images of the far side of the moon; in 1961 the first images of man in space were transmitted and in 1965 the American satellite Early Bird (Early Bird) allowed the transmission of direct programs continuously in both directions between the United States and Europe.

In terms of equipment, the first electronic or tube cameras characterized by their large weight and large lenses, steps have been taken in the development of more practical and lighter equipment until reaching the digital video camera whose first demonstration was made by Sony in 1981, but it is likely that the greatest impact in terms of technological development was caused by the invention of magnetic audio and video recording.

Film was the only available form of content registration for this industry, however, due to the large amount of information that was required to be stored, in the fifties, several American companies began to develop studios in their search for a solution to this problem. Charles Ginsburg took the first step by leading a research team from Ampex Corporation to develop the market's first practical videotape recorder or VTR costing $50,000 in 1956, while the first VCR, home video recorder, was introduced by Sony in 1971.

The advances have continued to happen, the search to improve the quality of the image has not ceased. In recent years the technology has managed to recreate images of excellent definition thanks to resolutions of 1100 – 1200 lines that are reached with the development of hdTV (High Definition Television), invented in 1989, whose success lies in the bandwidth used.

In 1996 the first licenses were established for the experimental HDTV transmission to two stations: wrcHD in Washington and WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina, which have been working on the system since then and although it is not yet widespread, digital television receivers (DTR's) are available to the public. The cinematography market has also set its eyes on HDTV as a means to develop products at reduced costs, Win Wenders has been one of the first to use this technology with results that can be seen on screen, in addition to all the experiences we have recorded in the Latin American industry.

The recording and storage of images also continues to be renewed, the latest created for this purpose is the DVD (Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc), a system that allows you to save up to 4.7 gigabytes on one of its faces or one hundred and thirty three minutes of film. The announcement of the DVD as an industry standard was made in November 1995 and the first equipment appeared in Japan in 1996. Several companies have developed this technology among which stand out: Matsushita, Toshiba, Philips and Sony so that their invention can not be attributed to a single person or company.

We have no doubt that many innovations will continue to appear. Combinations of television, computer and telephone, that inevitable convergence of technologies, is looming on the horizon to continue transforming our habits and creating new ones. Fields such as medicine, education and engineering are increasingly making use of image transmission systems adapted to their respective areas. We talk about interactive television, Warner Cable Corporation already works this aspect through a system that allows its users to choose programs and answer questions that are asked through the television. Innovative applications such as video on demand, e-commerce, among others, are already part of the spectrum of possibilities that interactivity brings. The expected result after all these changes: the dramatic acceleration in the exchange of messages. How will this influence our lives? That's something only the future will tell us.