History Fact Finder | Science and Invention - Who Invented The Television?

Who invented the television?

The television was developed over a period of many decades by several international inventors. As early as 1873, British engineer Willoughby Smith (1828–1891) imagined a system of "visual telegraphy." His concept was inspired by his experiments with rods made of selenium, a nonmetallic byproduct of copper, which he planned to use for conducting photographic images. Selenium turned out to be too weak to respond rapidly enough to variations in light intensity. Five years later German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918) invented the cathode-ray tube, a vacuum tube in which a beam of electrons (subatomic particles) is projected on a fluorescent screen. The cathode-ray tube would eventually make television technology a reality. A television method was also developed by German inventor Paul Nipkow (1860–1940), who received a patent (exclusive right to make, sell, and use) in 1884 for a...

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