It is generally believed that television is a technology of the 1950s, springing fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus in the period of prosperity following World War II. But while television exploded in those years, it is actually an old idea–or rather, dream–that survived a long, and relatively violent, birth.

Once radio became a familiar technology, it was a natural step to imagine sending pictures as well as sound through the air. However, advancements in TV seemed to come in well-spaced bunches.

In 1884, 24-year-old German engineer Paul Nipkow started playing with a spinning wheel with perforated holes that a thin beam of light passed through to scan an image that could be transmitted. The Nipkow Wheel was the first example of mechanical television technology. For 40 years, it was the only television technology.

Television however required not only transmission but also something on which to view the transmitted picture. In 1897, German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the cathode ray tube, primarily for use with an oscilloscope. The CRT would be improved by a succession of researchers and inventors, including future TV network mogul Allen DuMont in the late 1930s.

But it was a 15-year-old Idaho farm-boy named Philo T. Farnsworth, who made the first broad leap into all-electronic television. Farnsworth, fascinated by radio technology, made a sketch of a system in which a "gun" shot electrons onto the inside of Braun's cathode ray tube. That sketch, which he gave to his high school physics teacher, would prove the precedent for Farnsworth's later television patent claims.

Farnsworth was not alone in devising a television scheme. In 1925, John Logie Baird, a Scottish engineer, produced the image of a recognizable human face and actually got his Nipkow-based system temporarily accepted by the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) after a series of successful public demonstrations.

Russian émigré and Westinghouse employee Dr. Vladimir Zworykin also filed for a patent on an electronic color TV system almost identical to Farnsworth's, developments helped along after Zworykin visited Farnsworth’s San Francisco labs. By 1928, several companies, including NBC and the BBC, started broadcasting television pictures, each picking its own favorite technology.

It was Farnsworth’s and Zworykin's almost identical all-electronic systems, however that seemed the most intriguing. By the late 1920s, Zworykin was developing his system for Westinghouse and then, after a visit and tour of Farnsworth's San Francisco labs, for RCA. Zworykin and Farnsworth each were racing to perfect the necessary technologies. A long legal and business battle followed to see who owned the patents–a battle Farnsworth ultimately won, thanks to his early sketches, but much too late to be of practical use. It was Zworykin, backed by RCA's massive research facilities and the power of Sarnoff 's corporate, marketing and publicity muscle, which were cited as the father of television. Recent scholarship, however, finally has given Farnsworth his due.

Even though the BBC began the first regular television broadcasting in 1936, even though Adolph Hitler's speech opening the 1936 Berlin Olympics was televised, and even though Farnsworth actually had a working TV studio in a Philadelphia suburb that same year, it was Sarnoff who is credited with initiating the age of television. At the New York World's Fair in April 1939, NBC, owned by RCA, began the first regular broadcasts in the United States, starting with the address by President Franklin Roosevelt officially opening the exhibition.

It took two years, however, for a single TV broadcast standard to be adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) was formed in 1940 by the FCC and was comprised of dozens of companies with stakes in the battle to come up with a single set of standards. On July 1, 1941, the first so-called NTSC standard television pictures were broadcast.

But World War II interrupted further commercialization of broadcasting of any kind, as all civilian production of television and radio sets was suspended. Postwar prosperity would see the real growth, not only in these industries, but also the entire consumer electronics industry.