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Forum » Chew The Fat » Who Invented Television?
eddstarr
I was a high school freshman when my homeroom teacher asked that question, and nobody knew the answer. 
Turns out the class was right. No one and everyone invented television.

Might as well ask, "Who Invented the Automobile?". Last time I checked some of the first references to a self-propelled vehicle go back to a time before the Roman Empire. Descriptions of Radio and Television were topics that interested Abraham Lincoln. I was born during the height of the teleportation craze, that carried right through to the premiere of Star Trek. My old friend Rod "Twilight Zone" Serling could tell you guys all about that.

Television was an international race and the British want to claim that title in a bid of national pride. But television was also a collaboration. And like the automobile, television was the result of many people around the world.



I have a connection to the 1988 PBS documentary series called, "TELEVISION", hosted by Edwin Newman. (One of these days I'm going to share my story), and you guys should know that Edwin Newman is one of the fascinating personalities that helped shape TV in the United States.

Take a look at the series on YouTube, I start with part two on purpose as part one is an extended intro:




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echidna64
Would Thomas Edison be a good place to start? I know that he did a lot of work with moving pictures
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Mr Magic
Wasn't I Love Lucy the first televised sitcom?
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"Magic can happen to you."

Vaporman87
It's weird to think that what we know as television (mostly electronic components), began as mechanical behemoths using "disks" with holes.
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eddstarr
You guys are way ahead of me. I spent a lot of time as a kid trying to understand when television first reached broadcast standards. The picture is fuzzy since television was localized in only a few cities at first, (bet you can guess which ones). And of course television development was interrupted by WWII.

TV Guide magazine used to have a reporter who's specialty was television history and I take most of my knowledge from him. So the story goes that regularly scheduled TV programming began just after the war, around 1946 in parts of the United States.

The often asked question to the staff of TV Guide was, "what is the first sitcom?".

"I Love Lucy" first aired in 1951, but the first sitcom aired in 1949, it was called:

"The Goldbergs"


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