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 to view the transmitted picture on. 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 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 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, has finally 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.

Color TV
World War II ended in 1945, but a nasty battle raged for a decade afterward over color television. But first, TV had to conquer radio.

By 1947 only 250,000 TV sets were in use. At the beginning of 1949, radio boasted 81 percent of all broadcast audiences. By the end of that year, however, TV claimed 41 percent. By the end of the following year, the average daily radio listening session was down from nearly four hours to 24 minutes. By the end of 1951, there were nearly eight million TV sets in use. It was a short fight.

Color had been the holy grail of television almost from its infancy. As early as 1929, Bell Labs had demonstrated color TV transmissions. The original intention was to create a color system compatible with existing black-and-white sets, but this soon proved technologically impossible. All through the initial battles with radio, CBS and NBC were experimenting with competing color TV systems.

The CBS system was mechanically based on the Nipkow Wheel and developed by Hungarian refugee physicist Peter Goldmark, who shepherded the first color TV broadcast for CBS in 1940. RCA presented an alternative, so-called "compatible" system, an electronic system based on Zworykin's and Farnsworth's work and the NTSC standard.

At first, the FCC couldn't make up its mind, but in 1950 it approved CBS' system. The NTSC investigated, formed subcommittees and held hearings. In mid-1953, the NTSC recommended to the FCC that it reverse its earlier decision. In December 1953, the FCC did, approving the all-electronic NTSC color system proposed by RCA that is still the analog television standard today.

Three years later, Zenith created the couch potato when it perfected the first practical wireless remote control, the Space Commander, invented by Zenith researcher Dr. Robert Adler.

Sales of color TVs, however, were slow. Time magazine proclaimed that color TV was "the most resounding industrial flop of 1956." But in the fall of 1959, Sarnoff gave people a reason to buy them. In September, Sarnoff 's NBC premiered "Bonanza," the first new show to be shot and broadcast in color, and by 1964 it began a three-year run as the country's top-ranked show and remained in the ratings Top 20 for the next 10 years. NBC followed-up "Bonanza" in the fall of 1960 with "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color."

Soon color TVs began flying out of the stores. By 1967, as the colorful psychedelic era reached its peak, popular shows such as "Gunsmoke," "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Andy Griffith Show," "Dragnet," "Bewitched," "My Three Sons," "Gomer Pyle" and "The Lawrence Welk Show" that had started in black and white were now being produced in color, and most new shows were being shot in color as well.

The first all-channel VHF and UHF sets were mandated in 1964, expanding TV viewing beyond just 12 channels.