Being 1 of only 2 people ever to win 3 solo academy awards for Best Screenplay, Paddy Chayefsky had this to say about Television: “It’s the menace that everyone loves to hate but can’t seem to live without”.
After researching many quotes regarding television, it became clear that the majority of them were derogatory toward it. I think that Chayefskys sentiments sum it up perfectly. Whilst Television may be detrimental to our intellect, you don’t see many people banning it from their homes.
In this list we will be looking at some of the 1st things to happen in the history of television.
So get comfy, make sure you have control of the remote and ironically turn your tv off, so that you can concentrate fully on our list (at least for the next few minutes…)
10. First digital TV recorders – 1999
We have tried to mix this list up just a little bit, by adding something a little bit more modern. So here we have it. In 1999 two things happened. 1) The first digital TV recorder was released by TiVo. Due to the release date falling on a Blue Moon, the engineers at TiVo decided to call the first product TiVo DVR: Blue Moon.
Also in 1999, Bhutan became the last country on the face of the Earth to introduce regular TV programming.
9. First remote controller – 1950
The first remote intended to control a television was developed by Zenith Radio Corporation in 1950. The remote, called “Lazy Bones”, was connected to the television by a wire. A wireless remote control, the “Flashmatic”, was developed in 1955 by Eugene Polley. It worked by shining a beam of light onto a photoelectric cell, but the cell did not distinguish between light from the remote and light from other sources. The Flashmatic also had to be pointed very precisely at the receiver in order to work.
8. First colour tv – 1954
NBC made the first coast-to-coast color broadcast when it telecast the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1, 1954, with public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers by manufacturers RCA, General Electric, Philco, Raytheon, Hallicrafters, Hoffman, Pacific Mercury and others.A color model from Westinghouse H840CK15 ($1,295, or $11.2 thousand in today’s dollars) became available in the New York area on February 28, 1954 and is generally agreed to be the first production receiver using NTSC color offered to the public.
7. First reality TV show – 1948
Reality TV is actually quite a broad term which makes it actually quite difficult to pin point exactly when the first show was broadcast.
Allen Funt’s, Candid Camera show, first broadcast in 1948 and showed ordinary people reacting as the victims of practical jokes.
However, if we are to look and define “Reality TV” in a modern sense, then we would have to wait until 1973 and the Broadcast of the 12-part series of “An American Family”.
Broadcast on CBS the programmes showed an average American family going thought the pains of a divorce. It was very much a documentary in style and purpose and led to a British counterpart being broadcast in 1974, simply called “The Family”.
6. First sporting event – 1936
In 1921, a Pittsburgh station Broadcast the first radio sporting event. It was a boxing match between Johnny Dundee and Johnny Ray. No one knows who won/ we didn’t look it up because we know that you don’t care!
Anyway, it would be 15 years before the first sporting event was to be broadcast live on television. And what an event it would turn out to be!
We are talking about the 1936 Olympics. The one in Germany. The one with Hitler and the Nazis. More specifically, we are talking about the 100m final that was of course won by.. Jesse Owen. Maybe the most famous Olympian of all time.
5. First music video – 1930
In 1930, Warner Bros produced and broad cast the “Spooney Melodies”, which we’re a series of live action shorts, around 6 minutes long, that aimed to showcase popular tunes of the day.
Although 5 of these shorts were rumoured to be made, only one has actually survived. The series was replaced in 1931, by the “Merry Melodies”. Both series were produced by Leon Schlesinger, who was the creator of the famous Looney Tunes Cartoons.
In 1981, MTV was launched. Whether it was just fitting or ironic, the first video ever played in On the station, was “Video killed the radio star” by the band, The Buggles.
4. First advert – 1941
Watchmaker Bulova paid a grand total of $9 ($4billion in todays money) on July 1st 1941 to place a 10 second advertisement on New York Station WNBT just before a Baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies.
The ad was a simple one. For 10seconds you saw a clock face, superimposed over a map of America with a voice over stating: “America runs on Bulova time”. A far cry from some of today’s adverts, but hey “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”.
It wasn’t until 14 years later, in 1951 that the first Ad was shown on British television. It was for toothpaste maker, Gibbs SR.
Gibbs SR, is owned by Unilever a soap and toiletry manufacturer, which brings us on perfectly to our next entry… Soap Operas.
3. First soap opera – 1946
The term “Soap Opera” derives from the fact that the early shows, made for radio, were produced and sponsored by companies such as Proctor and Gamble, and Colgate-Palmolive.
“Painted Dreams”, arguably the earliest radio Soap Opera was created by Irna Phillips and broadcast on October 30th 1930 on American station WGN. However, it would be 17 years before the first TV soap Opera was to be broadcast.
“Faraway Hill” ran from October to December of 1946, on American TV station, DuMont Television Network. The Director had a budget of $300 per episode. Unfortunately, none of the footage has survived and neither have any of the scripts.
2. First international broadcast 1927 / 28
In 1927, John Logie Baird, the inventor of the first practical, publicly demonstrated television system,transmitted a signal between Scotland and London, covering a distance of 437 miles. However, for the first truly international broadcast, we had to wait until 1928, when Baird’s television company transmitted a signal between London and New York.
By 1930, Baird, in conjunction with the BBC, was producing a limited amount of programming (5days per week) that was available to the General Public. During this time, there was another 1st in TV History, notably, the first live interview. This occurred in Southampton, England and featured singer, Peggy O’Neil, who was in a band from Buffalo, NY.
1. First broadcast -1928
On January 13 1928, Swedish born Engineer Ernst Alexanderson demonstrates the General Electric System and completes the first broadcast, with the pictures being received on sets that we’re a mere 1.5 inches in size, in the homes of Alexanderson and two other GE board members.
4 months later on May 11th 1928, the first regular scheduling of TV programming began, with broadcasts occurring on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons between 1:30 and 3:30. It is difficult to imagine only having 6 hours of television per week and only one channel!
Posted in: Technology, Uncategorized
Alternalists 
Posted on August 27, 2012
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