Television

The term “television” has changed in meaning since its earliest representations in the press. I found the first mention of the word in a 1907 edition of the New York Times. The article is titled “PHOTOGRAPHS BY TELEGRAPH: TELEVISION NEXT?: Successful Test of Prof. Korn's Remarkable Invention Indicates the Possibility of Another Field for the Scientific Discoverer. If Pictures Can be Flashed by Wire from One Country to Another, Why Not Transfer Views in the Same Way?” The article discusses the research behind looking into sending pictures via telegraph, i.e. being able to see the person on the other end of the line.

Not much was revealed about the progress of the television until a 1923 edition of the Scientific Monthly, where Alfred Lloyd touches on the promise of “television” by Ed   ouard Belin as a means for broadcasting. Parallel to this article was a 1925 announcement by the Chicago Tribune that Belin achieved the transmission of images of people talking via telegraph. The Los Angeles Times published an article a year later claiming “TELEVISION TO BECOME RADIO EYE”, and in 1927 the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote: “TELEVISION SOON TO BRING WORLD TO YOUR FIRESIDE”.

These last two headlines are the most indicative of what the television serves in today’s society. Before the television, radio brought news, music and entertainment to the broadcast public. Today, TV brings breaking news, live events and fictional stories to the consumer’s home at any second. As of August 2013, approximately 114,200,000 American households own at least one television set and there are over 15,000 television channels in the world. TV has come a long way from its origin over a century ago, where images were discovered to be able to be sent through telegraph. Today, it is a staple in the modern Information Society.