How does a television work?
Just as a radio and a telephone are devices for converting acoustic energy into electrical and vice versa, the television receives wirelessly transmitted electromagnetic waves and converts them into acoustic and light energy for viewing. Although the initial inspiration for the television existed as early as the 1830s, when inventor Michael Faraday demonstrated the relationship between light and electricity, the television did not become practical for mass-production until more than a century later – in the 1940s. The history of the television is marked by a series of devices that were progressively more effective at sending or receiving wireless electronic patterns containing light and sound information. The first “televisions”, like the first computers, made use of mechanical media to store information. In 1883, German engineer Paul Nipkow introduced a device using a rotating scanning disk that was perforated with small holes in a spiral pattern. Images could be “broken down” through
