Who is the true inventor of the first television?

Answer 1

There are many people who contributed to the first television. Inventors and researchers in the 1800s developed many of the building blocks that the first television used. Names such as Edison, Maxwell, Bell and Marconi all developed electrical science required to build the television. A few key people are mentioned here:

A Russian inventer in Germany called Nipkow invented and patented the Nipkow disc. The disc had perforations to allow light to pass through and he saw it as a means of capturing a still image to an electronic signal. He never developed a practical application and the patent lapsed in the 1890s.

Some thirty years later, John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor living in London used the disc to produce the world's first electro-mechanical television. Called the Televisor, he demonstrated it in Selfridges department store in London during March 1925. The same system was used for the first public television broadcasts by the BBC when they began transmissions in 1929. The Televisor was somewhat limited with a poor resolution and small screens. Despite the limitations, it was still a real television, carrying moving images electronically from one place to another. The principles used are still in use today, almost a century on from that time.

In America, Philo Farnsworth was also working on television. He demonstrated another electro-mechanical television in 1927. Two years later he showed off a fully electronic television with no moving parts. This development paved the way to improved resolution and less cumbersome receivers.

Baird and Farnsworth were seen as rivals but in the early 1930s they worked together to develop improved systems. They represented the last of the independent inventors of television. Progress from that time onwards was driven by large corporations and the great minds that have contributed to television we know today are largely anonymous.