History of Projection Television, HD TV, and Cable essay

Today, television sets are one of the most common appliances owned by every household. Thanks to the marvel of science and to people who had been devoted to its exploration, we can now see videos either coming from a taped scene or from a live video feed. It was past 100 years since the television was first conceptualized. Starting from our grandparent’s bulky yet small screened black and white TV up to our generation’s High Definition Flat screen TV, with the addition of available cable networks, what more could we taught of then in the future for this amazing invention?

Looking ahead… Background: History of the Standard TV It was in the decades of 1880s and 1890s when the idea for the television first spread out. Black and white sketches of the depiction of 20th Century flat screen, home-theatre television were made by Albert Robida in the 1880s. Robida used back then the word telephotoscope to refer to the television. Two of his drawings depicted the use of television, as an educational aid (Mathematics for debutantes of the ‘80’s – taught by telephotoscope) and as a method of easy shopping (Shopping for Silks by the Telephotoscope).

Television History – The First 75 Years had presented several existing color lithograph concept drawing of television in the form of online copy of Victorian Trade Cards particularly of the “One Hundred Years Hence” Series. Trade Cards were used as a form of product advertisement during 1876 to 1900. In the Paris exposition of August 1900, the “Year 2000” trade cards were sold as souvenirs. One of these trade cards resembles a future 20th Century invention of a videophone wherein a person gets to have a glance of a distant person he was talking with.

Another trade cards presented in it was a telescope giving a larger projection of the moon for scientists to study. At the same exposition coincidentally, Constantin Pyerski (Russia) had read to the International Electricity Congress a paper about the conceptualization of a device called “Television”. This was the first time people had heard the word television. In the years 1922 to 1927, early experiments on how to make television a reality took place. The product was a mechanical scanning disc system that permits to transmit a picture from a TV station to a distant place via electric waves.

The system has the special neon lamp called a “Kino Lamp” and the rotating aluminum disk to work. The disk has square pinholes near the outer edge and when this disk rotates, the square pinholes decode the picture coming from the neon Kino Lamp. This was the first ground breaking discovery for the history of television, but the problem was the color of the TV picture produced was neon orange and very small to see. Different experiments had continued and then in between the years 1926 to 1935, the All Electronic cathode ray television, the basic system we have today, was born.

Several countries began broadcasting. England was one of the pioneer countries in television broadcasting by supporting the experimental study of John Logie Baird. Baird had successfully demonstrated the first mechanical television transmitting a live, moving image in grayscale, a notable improvement from having a small neon-orange image. Baird had dreamed back then of inventing a colored television in spite of the ongoing World War at that time. From America on the other hand, Philo T. Farnsworth had achieved the first fully electronic television picture in his private laboratory he, his wife Elma G.

Pern, his brother Cliff Gardner had set up. Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, Russian that immigrated to America and Leslie E. Flory had teamed in their company, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to work with improving television. Charles Francis Jenkins, a contemporary of John Logie Baird, had invented the radiovisor. Ernest Frederick Werner Alexanderson, a Swedish immigrant had designed a high-frequency alternator for broadcasting instruments at his first job in General Electric (GE). Reginald Aubrey Fessenden made the first voice transmission over radio waves through that alternator.

RCA (Radio Corporation of America), upon recognizing the work of Alexanderson, had hired him as their chief engineer. He had worked with home television receiver, trans-atlantic facsimile, television system composed of a camera and a transmitter, a projector that allows a picture to be shown on a theater screen. The competitor of RCA, CBS Corporation has their engineering genius counterpart in the person of Peter Carl Goldmark. He was best known for his long playing phonograph discs, also had contributed to the development of colored television, Peter Carl Goldmark.

Russia also must not be left out in the television history scene because this is the country of Konstantin Pyerski who had coined the word television, The globally recognized word ‘television’ was invented by Russian scientist. David Sarnoff, founder of RCA, is also of Russian origin. Zworykin would not be an acclaimed inventor without his mentor Boris Rosing who had continued working in Russia in spite of better opportunities outside his country. Sadly, Rosing’s study was halted because he was exiled by his country’s government before he died.

Other persons from the United States that had also their contributions in the perfection of television were Hollis Semple Baird and Ulises Armand Sanabria. From other countries were Edouard Belin and Barthelemy (French), Denes von Mihaly (Hungarian), Karolus (German), Kalman Tihanyi (Hungarian) and Kenjiro Takayanagi (Japanese). Projection TV: The New Television Projection TV as the words imply is a TV that uses project image from a source such as a film, onto a screen (Accurate and Reliable Dictionary). Projection TV allows people now to have a high definition images in flat screen.

Projection TV is not a totally new idea because it had been taught to be rooted with the emergence of television during the 1940s but because Cathode Ray Tube Television were the one that was first explored to be economical, they were the ones commonly used up to day. To know more what projection television how projection television works, we should first have a comparison to the conventional CRT TV. CRT TV makes electron beams at a phosphor coated screen. Electron’s contact with a part of the screen called pixel causes that particular part to glow.

CRT TV is called direct-view displays because we watch directly to that screen. Today, CRTs are reliable and have a good picture quality. But the problem was CRT TV screen is made of glass and size is limited. Since CRT is made of glass, it is not appropriate for manufacturers to make a big one because it would be heavy, bulky, and cumbersome to store. Now to solve the problem, here comes Projection TV. It is the TV that creates a small picture and then makes use of light beams to make a picture projection at a much larger size. Projection TVs comes in to two configurations.

These were the Front Projection System and the Rear Projection System. A front-projection system makes use of a projector and a flat screen. Having a front-projection TV will give a feeling that you have a theater right at your house. A Rear Projection System on the other hand looks more like owning a traditional television. Rear Projection Systems display images at the back of the screen rather at the front. It looks like a conventional television because they were usually self-contained, though you may opt to set up a rear projection system with a flat screen and a projector.

Even though Projection television cost more than the conventional television, people who can spend more and looks for a better movie experience right at their house would prefer more the projection television. It also has a more sleek design as compared to the conventional one Manufacturers had made projection television with more designs than the conventional one to attract more costumers. Some of the names projection televisions of the leading electronic manufacturers were the Panasonic PT-61LCX70, Olevia 565H 65-inch and Sony KDS-R60XBR2.

Works Cited

How Projection Television Works. 2006 HowStuffWorks, Inc.13 October 2007 <http://electronics. howstuffworks. com/projection-tv. htm> Peter Carl Goldmark. 2007 Encyclop? dia Britannica, Inc 13 October 2007 <http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-9037271/Peter-Carl-Goldmark> Projection. 2006. Accurate and Reliable Dictionary. 13 October 2007 <http://ardictionary. com/Projection/12526> Television History – The First 75 Years. 2006. TVhistory. tv 13 October 2007 <http://www. tvhistory. tv> The globally recognized word ‘television’ was invented by Russian scientist. 2006. Pravda. Ru 13 October 2007 <http://english. pravda. ru/science/19/94/377/16010_television. html>