Television is a piece of technology that can be found in a lot of homes throughout the United State. Nielsen, a global an American global information and measurement company suggests that, “there are 116.3 million TV homes in the U.S., and that nearly 296 million persons age 2 and older live in these TV homes.” John Baird and Charles Francis Jenkins can be recognized as the individuals who invented the television and Philo Farnsworth can and David Sarnoff can be recognized as the individuals who furthered the invention of television and struggled to get the television into the homes of the American people.
Baird was always interested in engineering even from the time when he was a kid. Baird showed that he “possessed an inherent genius not only for adapting and developing the inventions and innovations of others, but for originating and pursuing what, at first sight, must have seemed unlikely business enterprises” (Burns, p.16). Baird spent the most of ten years producing failed inventions and therefore, decided to focus all of his energy and time on the invention of the television. In the year 1923, Baird was able to produce the first television, “which included a transmitter and a receiver” (Burns p.34). According to Burns, “ the first image to be displayed on Baird’s television was a cardboard cross with the transmitter and receiver laying a few feet away (p. 35). Baird received a lot of attention from the public due to being written about in the papers, but due to electrocuting himself and causing an explosion in his apartment his landlord had to evict him.
John Baird ultimately had to move to London in 1924 and things started to look up for him. “In 1925 he was able to display his television at the Selfridge’s Department Store. Gatherers were able to view an image of a doll on a flickering screen as they sat in a room and although it wasn’t much, it was considered to be a great success”…
