Some Unknown Facts about Television

BENGALURU: Televisions became a core part of daily life offering entertainment and keeping us updated about the daily happenings around the world. Philo Farnsworth, Charles Francis Jenkins, and John Logie Baird contributed to the invention of television. John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television and he is the inventor of the first colour picture tube. The history of television is full of different facts and figures. William Hartston listed a few unknown and unimaginable facts about television for the Daily Express.

You may not be aware about, but United Nations declared 21st November as the World Television Day. In December 1996, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution to declare a day as the World Television Day. An amazing fact is that no country voted against this resolution by the United Nations. However, the US delegate commented that World Television Day will be a doubtful expenditure of energy and time.

John Logie Baird invented the television in 1926, but the word “television” was first used long before. A Russian scientist, Constantin Perskyi was the first person to coin the term television. He presented a paper at the First International Electricity Congress, organised on 18-25 August 1900 during International World Fair, Paris. In 1907, Boris Rosing was the first person to use Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) for the experimental video signal to form a picture. The abbreviation “TV” for television records back to 1948.

A survey conducted in 2015 reported that about 95 percent of homes in UK have a working television set. In UK, an average person with the age above four watches 3.36 hours of TV in a day. A survey by Nielsen reported that an average American citizen watches 4.3 hours of TV daily.

The first television set by John Logie Baird was made from an old hat box, darning needles, sealing wax, scissors, bicycle lights, and a tea chest. William Tayton was the first person whose face was first aired on the TV screen. He was an office boy to Baird and was paid two shillings and six pence per week to only sit in front of the TV transmitter. Before Tayton, Baird used a dummy to place in front of the transmitter and named that dummy as Stooky Bill.

The first external broadcast on UK television was in 1937 for the Coronation ceremony of George VI. The television shows in UK receives annual revenue of more than £1billion. The highest viewership UK ever attracted for any programme is for the 1966 Football World Cup Final. The audience for the final was more than that for the funeral of Princess Diana.

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