Statement
John Logie Baird invented the first television in the early 1930s.
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Everyone knows that Scotsman John Logie Baird invented the first television: in the early 1920s, he made a basic television which transmitted pictures, but he didn’t develop his idea further. But not many people know that Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian inventor, invented the first ‘electronic’ television in 1929. People often call him ‘the father of television’ as his invention became the basic of all modern televisions.
The BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) made its first TV programmes in 1936. Most people didn’t watch, as there were only about 100 television sets in Britain at that time. There were programmes for only two hours a day - except Sundays when they didn’t show any programmes at all! As well as news and sports, cookery programmes were popular even in the 1930s: Frenchman Marcel Boulestin became the first TV chef in 1937. The first TV advert, in 1941, was for a Bulova clock: it lasted 20 seconds and the company paid just $9 to show it during a baseball game in New York. Technology started to develop faster and faster in the second half of the 20th century. Colour TV came to the USA in the 1950s, to Japan in 1960 and to Europe and South America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Meanwhile, in 1967 people all over the world watched as The Beatles sang on the programme Our World, the first ever satellite TV programme. The word’s first video recorders came from Japan in the mid-1970s, but DVD players didn’t appear until November 1996, also made by Japanese companies.
From 2005, it became possible to watch TV on your mobile phone, thanks to 3G technology. The first country to change from analogue to digital television was the USA in June 2009. Canada and Japan did the same in 2011. People watched the first TV programme nearly 80 years ago. After the huge chantges in television broadcasting in the 20th century, who knows what the next 80 years will bring?
