Art, obsession, and identity
One of the great moments in television history was the airing of the first Nixon-Kennedy debate, which took place on September 26, 1960. This was the first presidential debate held on television.
This is the first known photograph of a moving image produced by Baird's televisor, reproduced in The Times newspaper on January 28, 1926.
Baird also invented the first publicly demonstrated color television system, and the first purely electronic color television picture tube.
Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator John Logie Baird is credited with demonstrating the world's first working television system, the "televisor," on January 26, 1926.
The greatest single broadcast in television history was the mesmerizing coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. An estimated 650 million viewers worldwide watched Neil Armstrong take his small step and giant leap on July 20, 1969.
In one of the largest-scale satellite linkups and television broadcasts of all time, an estimated audience of 1.9 billion, across 150 nations, watched the 1985 live broadcast of the Live Aid music concerts held in London and Philadelphia. That was nearly 40% of the world population back then!
The first color broadcast in the US occurred on July 8, 1954, when the first episode of the live television show 'The Marriage' was aired. During the same year, Disney launched its family-friendly variety program 'Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color,' the first major film producer to venture into television. Pictured in 1954 is Walt Disney standing by a plan and model of Disneyland while chatting with staff in Los Angeles.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963 set a new standard for how breaking national news stories could be delivered on television. Over the next four days, a period that included the moment when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, and the caisson carrying Kennedy’s body to Arlington National Cemetery, US citizens were riveted to post-assassination TV news coverage, as indeed was the rest of the world.
The 'Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite' music concert that was headlined by Elvis Presley was broadcast live via satellite on January 14, 1973, and aired in over 40 countries across Asia and Europe. Despite the satellite innovation, NBC did not broadcast an edited version of the concert in the United States until April 4, 1973 because the concert took place the same day as Super Bowl VII.
The Beatles' iconic live debut on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' on February 9, 1964 was witnessed by just 728 people in the studio—but an estimated 73 million viewers sat down in 23 million homes in the United States to watch the Fab Four perform. It comfortably smashed the record for television viewing figures up until that point.
The horrors of the Vietnam War were beamed into households in America and across the world throughout the 1960s and '70s due to the unparalleled access given to television news crews by the military during the conflict. News media was later blamed for the US loosing the war.
Few people were fortunate to own a television set in the early 1950s. However, you could always nip down to your local TV dealer to window-watch a major event, like the crowds pictured here gathered outside a store in Los Angeles in 1952 to watch a televised atomic bomb test take place.
Television allowed audiences to watch major events taking place in other countries. Here, New Yorkers watch the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on a display television. This was the first British coronation to be fully televised. As previously mentioned, television cameras had not been allowed inside Westminster Abbey during her father's coronation in 1937.
Television was still in its experimental phase in 1928, but the medium's potential to advertise goods was already predicted by this magazine cover from that year.
'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' was the world's first film production made especially for the small screen, what we call today a television movie. It was first shown by NBC on November 26, 1957, and was made in Technicolor, a first for television.
The cover of the May 7, 1937 edition of the Radio Times, marking the televised Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth—the first coronation to be broadcast, and partially televised, live.
The first large-scale outside broadcast in the United Kingdom was the televising by the BBC of the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in May 1937. The image seen here is a still photograph. Television cameras were not given interior access to Westminster Abbey.
A German technician checks the television cannon, a huge electronic camera built by Telefunken and placed in the Olympic Stadium on August 1, 1936, which broadcast live for the first time, eight hours each day, the Berlin Olympics Games in Germany.
Super Bowl XLIX is currently the most watched US television broadcast, with an average 114.4 million viewers. Played out in 2015 between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, audience numbers peaked to a whopping 120.8 during New England's stunning fourth-quarter comeback.
This live image of actress and racing driver Eirane Redmond Naismith was used to demonstrate John Logie Baird's first all-electronic color television system in 1941, which used two projection cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) combining their image onto a screen.
On September 6, 1997, an estimated 2.5 billion people around the globe tuned in to television broadcasts of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died at the age of 36 in a car crash in Paris the week before.
Pictured: motorists stop and wave as police cars pursue the Ford Bronco driven by Al Cowlings and carrying fugitive murder suspect O.J. Simpson on a 90-minute slow-speed car chase during the evening of June 17, 1994 on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. Some 95 million people watched the chase that night, gathering in groups in front of televisions in their homes, bars, restaurants and other public places.
The digital television transition process, in which older analog television broadcasting technology is converted to and replaced by digital television, began as early as 2000. Major benefits of this revolutionary move included lower broadcasting costs, as well as improved viewing quality for consumers. But it also saw millions of sets consigned to the scrap heap as new TV screens were developed.
Flat screen television with cinema-screen quality is today standard in homes across the globe. WiFi connectivity means that channels—hundreds of them—can also be viewed on digital tablets and other mobile devices.
Source: (CBS News)
One of the tiniest TVs was actually developed in the 1980s. Seiko's groundbreaking LVD B&W TV watch was unveiled in 1983. You needed a receiver that fit in your pocket to actually tune into channels, and a set of earphones for sound. Oh, and it told the time too.
MTV was launched on August 1, 1981. The first music video shown on MTV was The Buggles' 'Video Killed the Radio Star.'
Modern digital television is transmitted in high definition (HDTV) with greater resolution than analog TV. It typically uses a widescreen aspect ratio in contrast to the narrower format of analog TV.
According to CBS, a study by the Sony Electronics and Nielsen television research company concluded that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center is the most memorable moment shared by television viewers during the last 50 years.
Commonplace today, of course, but the first TV remote controls ever designed appeared in the 1950s in the USA.
Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. It's estimated that virtually all households in the developed world now own a TV set, and in developing countries around 69% own at least one. That's a lot of viewing!
Switch on and click through the following gallery for a look at how television has evolved over the last 100 years or so, and be reminded of some of the small screen's memorable moments.
Tuned-in: Switching on the small screen
Today is World Television Day
LIFESTYLE Television
Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. It's estimated that virtually all households in the developed world now own a TV set, and in developing countries around 69% own at least one. That's a lot of viewing!
Switch on and click through the following gallery for a look at how television has evolved over the last 100 years or so, and be reminded of some of the small screen's memorable moments.