Television transmits a moving image as an electronic or electromechanical signal for reconstruction on a receiving screen. Philo Farnsworth achieved the first fully electronic transmission of an image on September 7, 1927, the technology that became the modern standard. John Logie Baird had already given the first public demonstration of a working television system in January 1926 using mechanical scanning, and RCA engineer Vladimir Zworykin separately filed an unreduced patent concept in 1923 that RCA later used to challenge Farnsworth's priority.
Farnsworth is credited as the inventor of electronic television, the lineage that became the industry standard; the 1934 patent office ruling and its 1936 appeal both went against RCA and Zworykin's earlier filing date, finding it had never been reduced to practice. Baird's earlier mechanical system was a genuine first working demonstration but a technological dead end, discontinued commercially by the late 1930s.
Facts
Patent or First-Use DateGrant date of US1773980; the application (Serial No. 159,540) was filed 7 January 1927, the same year already recorded as this entity's year fact for Farnsworth's image-transmission demonstration. RCA filed a patent-interference claim against Farnsworth in 1932 on behalf of Vladimir Zworykin's earlier-filed application; courts ruled for Farnsworth in 1935, and RCA agreed to pay him licensing royalties in 1939, the first outside royalty RCA had ever paid. SignificanceTelevision became the twentieth century's dominant mass medium for news and entertainment, and its underlying camera and display technologies underpin video communication, recording and display devices generally. 2 Connections
Associated With
In Field
Source Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica editors
Held Differently
John Logie Baird, Engineers Why this is disputed. Baird's mechanically scanned system was the first working television demonstrated publicly, in January 1926, a genuinely earlier and independent line of development that lost out commercially to electronic television by the late 1930s.
Source Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica editors
Vladimir Zworykin, Engineers Why this is disputed. RCA backed Zworykin's 1923 iconoscope patent filing as prior to Farnsworth's, but a 1934 United States patent office ruling, upheld on appeal in 1936, found the 1923 filing had never been reduced to practice and awarded priority to Farnsworth.
Source Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica editors
Invented By
Source Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica editors
Preceded By
Radio, Inventions Early television broadcasting used radio frequency transmission developed for sound broadcasting.
Sources
1. Farnsworth Television System Patent US1773980 (Google Patents)
Google Patents / United States Patent Officebibliographic panelQuote, bibliographic panel
Filing date 1927-01-07; Publication date 1930-08-26 (Serial No. 159,540).
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
Who is credited with inventing television?
Baird showed mechanical television in 1926; Farnsworth achieved the first fully electronic transmission in 1927.
Credit is divided. John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of a working television system in January 1926 using mechanical scanning. Philo Farnsworth achieved the first fully electronic transmission of an image on 7 September 1927, the technology that became the modern standard, and his patent application was filed on 7 January 1927 and published on 26 August 1930. Vladimir Zworykin filed a patent concept in 1923 that RCA later used to challenge Farnsworth's priority.
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