BAIRD DEMONSTRATES TV:

I didn't realize that TV was actually this old. More trivia to fill your mind with............LOL.........PEACE.......................Scott

January 27, 1926

On January 27, 1926, John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor, gives the first
public demonstration of a true television system in London, launching a
revolution in communication and entertainment. Baird's invention, a
pictorial-transmission machine he called a "televisor," used mechanical rotating
disks to scan moving images into electronic impulses. This information was then
transmitted by cable to a screen where it showed up as a low-resolution pattern
of light and dark. Baird's first television program showed the heads of two
ventriloquist dummies, which he operated in front of the camera apparatus out of
view of the audience.Baird based his television on the work of Paul Nipkow, a
German scientist who patented his ideas for a complete television system in
1884. Nipkow likewise used a rotating disk with holes in it to scan images, but
he never achieved more than the crudest of shadowy pictures. Various inventors
worked to develop this idea, and Baird was the first to achieve easily
discernible images. In 1928, Baird made the first overseas broadcast from London
to New York over phone lines and in the same year demonstrated the first color
television.The first home television receiver was demonstrated in Schenectady,
New York, in January 1928, and by May a station began occasional broadcasts to
the handful of homes in the area that were given the General Electric-built
machines. In 1932, the Radio Corporation of America demonstrated an
all-electronic television using a cathode-ray tube in the receiver and the
"iconoscope" camera tube developed by Russian-born physicist Vladimir Zworykin.
These two inventions greatly improved picture quality.The British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) inaugurated regular high-definition public broadcasts in
London in 1936. In delivering the broadcasts, Baird's television system was in
competition with one promoted by Marconi Electric and Musical Industries.
Marconi's television, which produced a 405-line picture--compared with Baird's
240 lines--was clearly better, and in early 1937 the BBC adopted the Marconi
system exclusively. Regular television broadcasts began in the United States in
1939, and permanent color broadcasts began in 1954.