Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, senior writer Jonathan Strickland, and I write
Speaker 1: for how stuff works dot com. That's the company name.
Speaker 1: It is not stuff you should know. It is not
Speaker 1: how things work. It is how stuff works. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: feel it's necessary to remind folks about that. Anyway, today
Speaker 1: we're gonna pick up where we left off in our
Speaker 1: last episode with part two on the history of TVs
Speaker 1: and how they work. So if you don't remember our
Speaker 1: last episode, we spent a lot of time establishing the
Speaker 1: basic science that the inventors of television depended upon when
Speaker 1: they were making their stuff, and we also looked at
Speaker 1: the curious world of mechanical televisions, which were the first
Speaker 1: attempt to bring movie moving pictures to the average home
Speaker 1: and actually had moving parts inside the TV. But now
Speaker 1: it's time to transition over to electronic televisions and the
Speaker 1: insane drama and betrayals that went along with the launch
Speaker 1: of those electronic televisions. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: arguments among historians over whom we should credit as the
Speaker 1: inventor of electronic televisions. There are very passionate advocates for
Speaker 1: two primary individuals, although they're not the only ones. There
Speaker 1: are others as well across the world in fact, but
Speaker 1: the two primary ones both had an idea that would
Speaker 1: transform TVs from these mechanical oddities into the electronic mainstays
Speaker 1: and homes around the world. And it really depends upon
Speaker 1: whom you ask as to which one should get the credit.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna do my best to try and remain
Speaker 1: objective in this, but I do admit I have my
Speaker 1: own opinions on this matter, and they're probably gonna show
Speaker 1: through pretty clearly. So we're gonna pick up our story.
Speaker 1: In Utah, there was a young inventive lad who worked
Speaker 1: on his family's farm, and that lad's name was Filo
Speaker 1: Taylor Farnsworth Filo t. Farnsworth. He was precocious kid. He
Speaker 1: had a keen interest in science and physics and electronics.
Speaker 1: He was born in nineteen o six and according to
Speaker 1: his family, when he was just fourteen years old, and
Speaker 1: at this point I believe they had moved to Idaho,
Speaker 1: he came up with an idea that would lead to
Speaker 1: the invention of the electronic television. So, according to the story, Farnsworth,
Speaker 1: who was already fascinated with the properties of the mysterious electron,
Speaker 1: had been thinking about using electrons to transmit images rather
Speaker 1: than the mechanical methods that were currently in development at
Speaker 1: that time, the ones that depended upon the nip cow discs.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what a nip cow disc is,
Speaker 1: just listen to part one of this series. I go
Speaker 1: into detail about it. Anyway, Farnsworth thought that if you
Speaker 1: could use electrons to scan and transmit images, you could
Speaker 1: do so much faster, with a higher resolution and a
Speaker 1: higher frame rate than the mechanical method could manage it.
Speaker 1: But the question was how would you do that? And
Speaker 1: there's a kind of an interesting story. Don't know if
Speaker 1: it's true or not, but it's how his family told it.
Speaker 1: Farnsworth was pulling a harrow across his family's potato field.
Speaker 1: A harrow, by the way, is a heavy frame that
Speaker 1: has times on it, like a fork, and you place
Speaker 1: the frame on the ground so that the times face
Speaker 1: downward into the ground, and you pull it across the ground,
Speaker 1: typically across ground that's already been plowed, and this helps
Speaker 1: break up clods and remove weeds and uh otherwise prepare
Speaker 1: plowed land. It can also help cover seeds that have
Speaker 1: already been planted. So, according to his family, it was
Speaker 1: while Farnsworth was doing this for his farm and he
Speaker 1: was looking at these neat, straight lines across freshly plowed earth,
Speaker 1: they came up with the idea of creating televised images
Speaker 1: line by line with electrons. So the television screen would
Speaker 1: effectively be a stack of horizontal lines, and the electron
Speaker 1: stream would paint the lines in sequence so quickly as
Speaker 1: to seem like an uninterrupted series of moving images to
Speaker 1: the human eye. And this would be somewhere around the
Speaker 1: year nineteen twenty when he came up with this idea.
Speaker 1: But there's another inventor who factors into this story, and
Speaker 1: that would be Vladimir Cosmo zorikin Now. Zorakin was born
Speaker 1: in Russia in either eighteen eighty eight or eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: depending upon the the paperwork you look at. It seems
Speaker 1: that eighty nine is the more accurate one, but I've
Speaker 1: seen both listed. He attended school in Russia and in France.
Speaker 1: He studied science. One of his teachers was a guy
Speaker 1: named Boris Rosing, who in nineteen o seven, filed a
Speaker 1: patent for a television system. They used a mechanical scanning
Speaker 1: method similar to the nip Cow disc we talked about
Speaker 1: in Part one, but it used an electronic receiver that
Speaker 1: used a cathode ray tube to transmit electrons to a screen,
Speaker 1: so it was kind of a hybrid between mechanical and electronic,
Speaker 1: and Rosing demonstrated a version of that technology in nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: so uh Zorikin was at least aware of that work
Speaker 1: at the time. Now, during World War One, Zorikin joined
Speaker 1: the Russian Signal Signal Corps, and after the war he
Speaker 1: moved to the United States. He got out of Russia
Speaker 1: just as it was experiencing its own civil war. He
Speaker 1: grew up in Czarist Russia, and then there was the
Speaker 1: Great Revolution in Russia. He got out. His family worked
Speaker 1: for the Czar, so he found work as an employee
Speaker 1: of Westinghouse. After settling in the United States, he actually
Speaker 1: traveled back and forth a couple of times, but ultimately
Speaker 1: decided to relocate to the US permanently, so he started
Speaker 1: working for Westinghouse and in nineteen three he filed a
Speaker 1: patent for an electron scanning tube and it would eventually
Speaker 1: be named the or it would eventually be incorporated in
Speaker 1: an invention called the iconoscope that will be important later on.
Speaker 1: So his work and began to work on this idea,
Speaker 1: trying to create a practical application based upon the notion
Speaker 1: of a scan electron scanning tube. But his early efforts
Speaker 1: weren't terribly successful. In fact, his employers at Westinghouse, sensing
Speaker 1: that Zorikin wasn't making much progress, actually told him he
Speaker 1: should work on something else. They were not impressed at all. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over in the US, Farnsworth was also trying to build
Speaker 1: a practical electron scanning tube. Now he called his version
Speaker 1: the image dissector. And he wasn't the only person to
Speaker 1: come up with this idea. There was also a German
Speaker 1: scientist named Max Nieckman, and also Rudolph Hell who was
Speaker 1: a student of Deacons, who filed for a patent for
Speaker 1: a similar device in Europe. But it seems Farnsworth, who
Speaker 1: was working completely independently and unaware of that work, was
Speaker 1: the first guy to create a working version of this
Speaker 1: particular technology. The tube was meant to replace the mechanical
Speaker 1: scanners used in nip cal discs, and we be inside
Speaker 1: a camera, so the camera lens would direct light to
Speaker 1: an image dissector, which would focus that light onto some
Speaker 1: photo sensitive material that would create a voltage, inducing current
Speaker 1: to flow through a wire. The current strength was proportional
Speaker 1: to the brightness of the image, so darker stuff generated
Speaker 1: a lower current than brighter stuff, and if you used
Speaker 1: magnetic fields or electrostatic plates, you could then direct that
Speaker 1: that actual flow and the image dissector could scan an
Speaker 1: image many times a second, and then the photo system
Speaker 1: material would convert that light energy into electricity. A receiver
Speaker 1: that was synchronized with the scanner could then take that
Speaker 1: current and apply it to a cathode ray tube, which
Speaker 1: would shoot electrons at the back side of a screen,
Speaker 1: and the synchronization allowed the receiver to project the electrons
Speaker 1: in the appropriate order and at the appropriate level on
Speaker 1: the screen, so that you would get an image, a
Speaker 1: moving image, of whatever it was the camera had been
Speaker 1: looking at. Now. The screen itself is essentially a series
Speaker 1: of horizontal lines. Each line is made up of points,
Speaker 1: which we call pixels, that represent a point of light.
Speaker 1: These are all side by side in those horizontal lines.
Speaker 1: So the backside of a television screen also has a
Speaker 1: phosphorus coding on it, and the coding will fluoresce or
Speaker 1: light up when it is struck by an electron at
Speaker 1: high velocity. So the cathode ray tube sends electrons shooting
Speaker 1: out at this phosphorus coating on the back side of
Speaker 1: the screen, and when the electron collides with the phosphorescent atoms,
Speaker 1: it causes them to jump up in energy levels. And
Speaker 1: when the electrons come back down from those excited energy levels,
Speaker 1: that's when they give off light when they fluoresce. The
Speaker 1: brightness of the light depends upon the amount of energy
Speaker 1: that hits the the atoms, so it depends on how
Speaker 1: fast those electrons are going, or rather the current that's
Speaker 1: coming from that cathode ray too, So all of that
Speaker 1: is dependent upon how much light came into the camera
Speaker 1: in the first place. It's a really elegant kind of situation,
Speaker 1: and you might wonder, all right, well, how does the
Speaker 1: catholice ray tube actually paint the backside of a television screen?
Speaker 1: And it's all done with magnets. So let's consider the
Speaker 1: anatomy of an old fashioned CRT television set. This is
Speaker 1: what it would look like if you took one apart
Speaker 1: by the way, do not take one apart. If you
Speaker 1: puncture something, you could end up causing a bit of
Speaker 1: an explosion, and it is messy and potentially dangerous, so
Speaker 1: don't do it. You've got capacitors in there too that
Speaker 1: can hold onto a charge. Uh, it's not safe, but
Speaker 1: this is what would happen if you could, you know,
Speaker 1: do an exploded view. So I mentioned that the screen
Speaker 1: represents a series of horizontal lines. We're gonna be a
Speaker 1: bit us centric in this part of the episode, so
Speaker 1: I can just describe our CRT television's work, but just
Speaker 1: know it works the same way in other places. It's
Speaker 1: just the actual number of horizontal lines and frames per
Speaker 1: second are a little different. So in the United States
Speaker 1: with old CRT sets, the screen was a stack of
Speaker 1: five twenty five horizontal lines of pixels, and it's the
Speaker 1: cr te's job, the cathode ray tubes job, to paint
Speaker 1: each of those lines multiple times per second to refresh
Speaker 1: the image on screen and transmit that that sense of movement.
Speaker 1: So you've got your CRT and that's shooting electrons at
Speaker 1: a very tightly controlled beam on the back side of
Speaker 1: the television screen. So how do you steer the electrons
Speaker 1: use magnetic fields because remember, electrons are negatively charged particles,
Speaker 1: so you can push them with similar similar negative charged
Speaker 1: or negative magnetic fields, or you can attract them. You
Speaker 1: can pull them with positive magnetic fields, so you can
Speaker 1: actually change the flow of electrons by applying magnetic fields
Speaker 1: in a very controlled way. Also, the magnetic fields are
Speaker 1: a great band, and you should listen to them, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of tangential to this discussion, so I don't
Speaker 1: know why you brought it up now. Using magnetic fields
Speaker 1: generated by a coil of copper wiring, the television paints
Speaker 1: each line of phosphorescent material on the back side of
Speaker 1: the screen one by one in a row from top
Speaker 1: to bottom, so it goes top left or right down
Speaker 1: to bottom. Uh, And it doesn't line by line. The
Speaker 1: electron beam sweeps across the first horizontal line at a
Speaker 1: blinding speed. It slams electrons into the phosphores to generate
Speaker 1: the light you see on the other side, and there's
Speaker 1: also an electron absorbing layer so it catches all those electrons.
Speaker 1: They don't just keep on shooting outside the TV screen
Speaker 1: and getting involved in all your business. They stop at
Speaker 1: the screen because of that absorbent layer. Now, the beam
Speaker 1: follows a pattern that's called a raster scan. So this
Speaker 1: is where we paint that first line from left or right,
Speaker 1: and when it gets to the end of the line,
Speaker 1: it jumps back to the beginning of the next line.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't go left to right and then right
Speaker 1: to left. It goes left or right, jumps back down
Speaker 1: to the beginning of the next line. It goes left
Speaker 1: or right again. Sort of more on that in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: that is called the horizontal retrace. When it it's to
Speaker 1: the end of the line and moves to the beginning
Speaker 1: of the next line. Uh, then you've got it going
Speaker 1: all the way down the entire length of the screen
Speaker 1: until it gets to the bottom right corner. At that point,
Speaker 1: the beam switches off and it relocates it to the
Speaker 1: top left part of the screen. That's the vertical retrace.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a diagonal line from bottom right to
Speaker 1: top left, so it gets it ready to start painting again. Uh.
Speaker 1: And now I've got to explain that sort of I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. You know, I said it it's sort of
Speaker 1: goes to the next line. It's because of interlacing. See
Speaker 1: the whole screen is refreshed sixty times per second. At
Speaker 1: least that's the idea. You want a sixty time per
Speaker 1: second refresh rate. That's not what the earliest electronic televisions did,
Speaker 1: but ultimately that was the goal for us television's uh,
Speaker 1: except that you really are doing thirty frames a second
Speaker 1: because you're alternating lines. So I mentioned there are five
Speaker 1: twenty five of these horizontal lines, and I mentioned that
Speaker 1: the electron beam paints that horizontal line went after together.
Speaker 1: Only it takes a lot of work to paint five
Speaker 1: lines of pixels sixty times every second. And our human
Speaker 1: vision really doesn't need the screen refreshed that frequently to
Speaker 1: experience what seems to be movement to us. You could
Speaker 1: have that and you still have convincing movement. Uh. So
Speaker 1: film works at twenty four frames a second, television works
Speaker 1: at thirty frames, although they're not really frames, it's more
Speaker 1: like fields per second. Uh. But it alternates. It's kind
Speaker 1: of weird. So the first time the electron beam goes down,
Speaker 1: it will paint every other horizontal line, and then the
Speaker 1: second time it will paint all the even numbered pixels
Speaker 1: in a horizontal line. You know what this is gonna
Speaker 1: require a lot more explaining, but before I jump into that,
Speaker 1: let's take a little break right now and thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Al Right, So instead of painting the entire screen sixty
Speaker 1: times a second, let's just paint half the screen thirty
Speaker 1: times a second and the other half thirty times a second.
Speaker 1: And then we do that just by alternating the lines.
Speaker 1: That's what interlacing is. So CRT the cathode ray tube
Speaker 1: would shoot electrons at the left top corner on line one.
Speaker 1: At the end of line one, it would go to
Speaker 1: the horizontal retrace. Only instead of starting at line to
Speaker 1: it actually starts on line three. It skips line too.
Speaker 1: It goes down line three, goes down to line five,
Speaker 1: down to line seven, etcetera, until it gets all the
Speaker 1: way down to In theory, not all television broadcasts actually
Speaker 1: used all lines, but that doesn't really matter. It gets
Speaker 1: down to the bottom, it's time for it to go
Speaker 1: to the vertical retrace. Only instead of going back to
Speaker 1: line number one, it actually goes to line number two,
Speaker 1: and it starts to do the same process while all
Speaker 1: the even numbered lines. So it goes to the end
Speaker 1: of line two. Horizontal retrace brings it to line four,
Speaker 1: goes to the end of line four, horizontal retrace brings
Speaker 1: the line six, and it does that through that next sequence.
Speaker 1: It does both of these things thirty times every second
Speaker 1: for each thirty times each for every second that goes by.
Speaker 1: So it's so fast that we don't detect that only
Speaker 1: half the number of horizontal lines are being refreshed at
Speaker 1: any given moment. It's way too fast for us to
Speaker 1: be able to see that with our human eyes and
Speaker 1: human brains. To us, it's just an uninterrupted sequence of
Speaker 1: moving images. This is where we can take advantage of
Speaker 1: human limitations. The technology is able to perform at a
Speaker 1: level beyond what we humans can experience. So that allows
Speaker 1: you to make some shortcuts on the technology side. And
Speaker 1: as I said before, it's easier to refresh half the
Speaker 1: screen thirty times a second than a full screen sixty
Speaker 1: times a second. Kind of nifty. Now, eventually you would
Speaker 1: get to progressive scans systems, and progressive scans do every
Speaker 1: single horizontal line every you know, sixty times a second
Speaker 1: or however many times it refreshes. You'll hear about crazy
Speaker 1: refresh rates that like four eight hurts, which means four
Speaker 1: d eight times a second it's refreshing the whole screen.
Speaker 1: But that's way off further into the future. We are
Speaker 1: not covering that in part two. You'll have to wait
Speaker 1: for Part three to get to the high refresh rate stuff.
Speaker 1: So you've got the basic idea of how these electron
Speaker 1: scanning two machines worked. The prototypes that Farnsworth is working
Speaker 1: created were much more primitive than what I just described,
Speaker 1: but they used similar techniques. It was based upon essentially
Speaker 1: the same principle, just it was more limited in what
Speaker 1: it can do. Now let's get to the drama of
Speaker 1: the story, because it gets pretty crazy. So Farnsworth grows up.
Speaker 1: He's had this dream since he was fourteen of a
Speaker 1: method of creating television. He starts to really investigate it
Speaker 1: further as he gets older. He takes charge of his
Speaker 1: family farm after his father passes away. But then he
Speaker 1: ends up meeting and then marrying a woman named Elma
Speaker 1: pem Gardner in nineteen six, and shortly thereafter they moved
Speaker 1: to California. In fact, according to some accounts, as soon
Speaker 1: as they got married they moved to California, and originally
Speaker 1: they moved not too far away from cal Tech because
Speaker 1: Farnsworth was hoping that he would be able to use
Speaker 1: the location to help further his own efforts in developing
Speaker 1: this electronic television idea he had uh some would say
Speaker 1: that he was obsessed at this point, and the following year,
Speaker 1: in nine seven, the two happily married people would relocate
Speaker 1: to San Francisco, and there Farnsworth was able to find
Speaker 1: some funding from investors, which was a tradition that many
Speaker 1: start up follow to this very day. If you have
Speaker 1: a startup in the tech world, chances are you're going
Speaker 1: to San Francisco to take a lot of meetings. That year,
Speaker 1: ninety seven, Farnsworth applied for a patent for his invention.
Speaker 1: The title of the patent was Television System, and in
Speaker 1: it he described his method for capturing, transmitting, and receiving
Speaker 1: moving images. Now, Zorakin had filed his patent back in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three, but the U. S. Patent Office still
Speaker 1: had not granted that patent. It was still pending. Moreover,
Speaker 1: z Workin's approach, while similar to Farnsworth's, wasn't exactly the same,
Speaker 1: and Zorakin had had no real success up to that
Speaker 1: point in getting it to work in the real world.
Speaker 1: He could not make a practical demonstration of it. The
Speaker 1: attempts he made were very muddled. Now Farnsworth, by comparison,
Speaker 1: was able to get a system working in ninety seven,
Speaker 1: although that initial demonstration, which really was more just a
Speaker 1: proof of concept, was ry modest. His first transmission was
Speaker 1: a horizontal line. It wasn't exactly the Super Bowl, but
Speaker 1: it did say that he was onto something and he
Speaker 1: could capture, transmit, and playback moving images electronically. So he
Speaker 1: kept at it, and in nineteen he brought some reporters
Speaker 1: over to his laboratory and he held a demonstration that
Speaker 1: was a little bit more impressive. It showed a very
Speaker 1: blurry but clearly moving image on the screen uh and
Speaker 1: it was at a refresh rate of twenty pictures per second,
Speaker 1: so much less advanced than what we would see later on,
Speaker 1: but enough to get the reporters excited, and it showed
Speaker 1: actual motion. So that really got people talking about his methods,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen thirty the U. S. Patent Office granted
Speaker 1: Farnsworth his patent keep in minds workin still did not
Speaker 1: have a patent for his invention. He was still encountering
Speaker 1: problems with his approach, so in nineteen thirty, he decided
Speaker 1: to visit Farnsworth. Farnsworth was known for getting this method
Speaker 1: to work, and his workin was still running into problems,
Speaker 1: so he arranged a visit and he went and visited
Speaker 1: for about three days, according to Farnsworth's wife, and he
Speaker 1: learned all about the methods Farnsworth used to create this
Speaker 1: electronic television, and he even supposedly watched Farnsworth assemble one
Speaker 1: of the scanning tubes. He then returned to Westinghouse and
Speaker 1: attempted to reverse engineer Farnsworth's invention, and he was later
Speaker 1: approached by our CI A and began working for them.
Speaker 1: Uh our Cia had already made an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: money by dominating the radio industry at that point, and
Speaker 1: at the helm of the Radio Corporation of America was
Speaker 1: a guy named David Sarnoff, who I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: a lot about in this episode. He was originally from Russia,
Speaker 1: and Starnoff was the type of guy who if he
Speaker 1: wanted to dominate an industry, he would do so big time.
Speaker 1: He would go in guns figuratively a blazon. He's really
Speaker 1: good at it too, to a point where you might
Speaker 1: call him um Ruthless really start off led our CIA
Speaker 1: through an era of prosperity for the company. During the
Speaker 1: radio days, our CIA had held onto patents that had
Speaker 1: to do with radio components, and they also owned broadcast
Speaker 1: stations and entire networks. Actually, essentially, if you were in
Speaker 1: the business of radio back in those days, you were
Speaker 1: paying our CIA for that privilege. You might be paying
Speaker 1: licensing fees. You might be paying licensing fees just to
Speaker 1: build radios for people to buy, or you might be
Speaker 1: paying fees so that you could broadcast on stations. Pretty
Speaker 1: much anyway that there was a way to make money
Speaker 1: on the radio, some of that money was going to
Speaker 1: our c A at that time. In fact, the company
Speaker 1: even had a basic philosophy which a lot of people
Speaker 1: have alluded to over the years, which was that our
Speaker 1: CIA would not pay licensing fees. R c A was
Speaker 1: the company to whom you paid licensing fees um. They
Speaker 1: also created a major broadcast company INBC. You might have
Speaker 1: heard of it if you're in the United States. It
Speaker 1: is the oldest of the major broadcast networks in the US. UH.
Speaker 1: This was back when our c A was still part
Speaker 1: of General Electric, which eventually it would get spun off
Speaker 1: from General Electric and become its own company. Also, if
Speaker 1: you want to be technical, r c A created ABC
Speaker 1: as well. ABC was originally part of NBC that they
Speaker 1: had created two kind of parallel networks, both of which
Speaker 1: were called NBC at the time. But uh, the government
Speaker 1: stepped in and said, hey, you're muscling in on everybody.
Speaker 1: You've got to break this up. And so eventually they
Speaker 1: spun off part of this network which would later become ABC.
Speaker 1: So in a way, our c A was responsible for
Speaker 1: two of the three major broadcast companies, and you early
Speaker 1: u S Television, and these sort of practices got really serious,
Speaker 1: so serious in fact, that the Department of Justice got interested,
Speaker 1: and on May three, David Sarnov was called before the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice and the d o J was concerned
Speaker 1: that our CIA was using its patent portfolio to suppress competition.
Speaker 1: So this is not a new thing. It might sound
Speaker 1: familiar to anyone who has followed news about patent law
Speaker 1: in general. There's been a lot of stories about companies
Speaker 1: like say Apple and Samsung, using patents to put pressure
Speaker 1: on each other, or you might have heard stories about
Speaker 1: patent trolls. These are entities that hold patents that seem
Speaker 1: to have no intention of actually making anything with the patent. Rather,
Speaker 1: they just sit on the patents that either require people
Speaker 1: to license the patent or they end up just waiting
Speaker 1: for people to try and make something that infringes or
Speaker 1: seems to infringe upon that patent, and then they sue
Speaker 1: them and that's how they make money. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who criticize that particular method of business.
Speaker 1: So this court case required our c A to eventually
Speaker 1: make some concessions and to back off a bit on
Speaker 1: its practices, although the company also won a few victories
Speaker 1: during all the legal maneuvers. In also is the court
Speaker 1: case that led to the birth of the modern Federal
Speaker 1: Communications Commission, or FCC. This is the one that replaced
Speaker 1: the Federal Radio Commission Earlier. That same f CC would
Speaker 1: almost immediately force our cia to split ABC off from NBC.
Speaker 1: So our CIA's troubles began with this lawsuit, but they
Speaker 1: didn't end with them. Ah. So Sarnoff, though has working
Speaker 1: as an asset, he went out and he hireds work
Speaker 1: in a way to try and develop television because Sarnoff said,
Speaker 1: we did this thing with radio and made a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money. I think television is going to be
Speaker 1: the next big thing, because it still wasn't a thing yet.
Speaker 1: Not very many people had mechanical TVs and nobody had
Speaker 1: electronic TVs yet, and there was a problem already. Saranoff
Speaker 1: was upset because he saw that Farnsworth was seeing some
Speaker 1: success and his working had not yet met with success,
Speaker 1: even though he had a very similar idea and Farnsworth
Speaker 1: had our They secured a patent in so now there
Speaker 1: was patented information out there, and our CIA does not
Speaker 1: pay licensing fees. That was dead set against his corporate philosophy,
Speaker 1: Sarnoff's corporate philosophy. I should say, I will often equate
Speaker 1: Sarnoff in our Cia in this episode, but it's really
Speaker 1: just to talk about the specific era of our CIA's history.
Speaker 1: And there was another problem, which was that the glory
Speaker 1: days of our CIA were in danger at this time
Speaker 1: because the government's intervention meant the company had to slash
Speaker 1: licensing fees or else be charged with suppressing competition. The
Speaker 1: Great Depression was also having a major impact on the
Speaker 1: consumer electronics field. People didn't have the money to spend
Speaker 1: on luxury items like radios, and that's what the main
Speaker 1: product was for our Cia, so it was it was
Speaker 1: really a difficult time for the company. Our Cia stock
Speaker 1: dropped nine in value. But Starnoff really thought that television
Speaker 1: was the cart that was gonna take him back to success.
Speaker 1: He was gonna hitch his horse to that one, or
Speaker 1: hitch his cart to that horse. I guess I should
Speaker 1: say I go backwards. I put the cart before the horse. Literally, no,
Speaker 1: just figuratively. Literally, it just doesn't work anyway. He thought
Speaker 1: that TV was going to be the next big thing,
Speaker 1: so he really wanted to get ahead of this, and
Speaker 1: the problem was Farnsworth was in the way because Farnsworth
Speaker 1: had filed this patent and our c A does not
Speaker 1: want to pay licensing fees. So in April nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: Sarnoff actually paid a visit to Farnsworth's lab. Now, Farnsworth
Speaker 1: wasn't in his lab at the time that Sarnof was there.
Speaker 1: He wasn't in town, but his wife showed Sarnoff around.
Speaker 1: By the end of the visit, Sarnoff said to his
Speaker 1: partners that he felt they could make televisions without infringing
Speaker 1: on Farnsworth's patents. It wouldn't be a problem at all,
Speaker 1: and that our c A was in the clear. However,
Speaker 1: not that law. Long after his visit, he must have
Speaker 1: had second thoughts. He must have either heard something that
Speaker 1: changed his mind, or maybe one of his attorneys said something.
Speaker 1: At any rate, he went to Farnsworth and said, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: how about I buy your company for one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and you can come work for me. You can
Speaker 1: be an r c A employee and we'll just buy
Speaker 1: your company. And of course all the intellectual property like
Speaker 1: your patents will own those forever and ever. And people
Speaker 1: who want to make TVs want to pay us a
Speaker 1: licensing fee. Does that sound good to you, buddy? And Uh?
Speaker 1: He probably didn't word it exactly that way, but Farnsworth
Speaker 1: did not. I think the deal was great. I mean,
Speaker 1: a hundred grand was a huge amount of money in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one. It's still a good junk of change.
Speaker 1: I'll happily accept a hundred grand from anyone who's willing
Speaker 1: to get rid of it. Uh, I'll take it. I mean,
Speaker 1: assuming it's not like a money launder ring thing. I
Speaker 1: don't want in on that. I got troubles on my own,
Speaker 1: but a hundred thousand dollars, way more money than more
Speaker 1: buying power than why don't we get you today? But
Speaker 1: Farnsworth suspected that his patent was actually worth more than
Speaker 1: a hundred grand and that he can make more money
Speaker 1: licensing his ideas to interest in parties. In fact, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what our Cia wanted to do with his work.
Speaker 1: So Farnsworth's like, I don't really feel like I need
Speaker 1: to go work for you. I can do this on
Speaker 1: my own. So he rejected the offer, which did not
Speaker 1: make David Sarnoff very happy. Farnsworth then attempted to work
Speaker 1: with one of our Sier's competitors, phil Co. No relation
Speaker 1: to Filo T. Farnsworth, but phil Co, which was an
Speaker 1: East Coast company that was also looking at getting into televisions.
Speaker 1: They also created did radios as well. Now, according to
Speaker 1: pem His you know, Farnsworth's wife, our Cia got word
Speaker 1: of Farnsworth's plans that they were able to pick up
Speaker 1: transmissions when Farnsworth was demonstrating his UH technology. Two people
Speaker 1: over at Philco, and once they learned that Farnsworth was
Speaker 1: going to go work with Philco, r c A decided
Speaker 1: to put the screws to Philco. Again, this is according
Speaker 1: to Farnsworth's wife, And so our c A essentially went
Speaker 1: to Philco and said, if you hire this guy, if
Speaker 1: you or rather if you become his customer, if you
Speaker 1: license his technology, we're going to revoke our licenses to
Speaker 1: you to make radios and you won't be able to
Speaker 1: make radios anymore. It would be illegal for you to
Speaker 1: make radios because you would be doing it in violation
Speaker 1: of our intellectual property. And Philco then backed off from
Speaker 1: working with Farnsworth. So that's according to Farnsworth's wife. It
Speaker 1: sounds pretty uh vicious if you ask me, so Farnsworth
Speaker 1: was left without a customer. Now, in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: is Working would file a patent for what was now
Speaker 1: called the r c A Icono scope, and the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three patent application included references to the earlier nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three application, and in nineteen thirty eight he would
Speaker 1: essentially he would eventually get this patent granted to him
Speaker 1: by the U S Patent Office. Sarnough actually used this
Speaker 1: filing as an argument that our c A really invented
Speaker 1: television because it's Workin's original patent application was in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three. That was four years before Farnsworth filed his
Speaker 1: patent in nineteen seven. So Starnup saying, look, we've got
Speaker 1: it on file here. Sure it's not a granted patent,
Speaker 1: but the fact that the idea existed before Farnsworth ever
Speaker 1: filed a patent for it tells us that we own
Speaker 1: this idea, not this guy. So the big issue at
Speaker 1: stake was really not paying that licensing fee, and he
Speaker 1: didn't want to have to. Sarno didn't want to pay
Speaker 1: Farnsworth a penny if he could help it. So our
Speaker 1: c A decided to challenge Farnsworth's patents in court in
Speaker 1: one of the ugliest tech lawsuits in history. I'll get
Speaker 1: into that more in just a moment, but let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. Let's get into
Speaker 1: this massive lawsuit that our ci A leveled against Farnsworth.
Speaker 1: So Zorakin really had the backing of our CIA and
Speaker 1: all their lawyers and Sarnof behind him. And at the
Speaker 1: crux of the case was a claim in Farnsworth's patent,
Speaker 1: and that was claim number fifteen, which stated the device
Speaker 1: was designed to display an electrical image. That was the
Speaker 1: term Farnsworth created an electrical image, and it is so
Speaker 1: intrinsic to the way television's work, electronic television's work, that
Speaker 1: there just was no real wiggle room for our CIA.
Speaker 1: There was no way our CIA was going to be
Speaker 1: able to make televisions without paying a license fee to
Speaker 1: Farnsworth because there was no way to it around the
Speaker 1: fact that their devices had to create an electrical image.
Speaker 1: It was pivotal to an electronic television. So they thought, well,
Speaker 1: how can we get around this. Let's undermine the claim,
Speaker 1: and that's where they started to try and make a case,
Speaker 1: Sayings workin that his UH nineteen twenty three patent application
Speaker 1: was for a device that also would create an electrical image,
Speaker 1: and since it was filed in nineteen twenty three, although
Speaker 1: not granted, it still wasn't granted at the time of
Speaker 1: this lawsuit, which began in nineteen thirty one and lasted
Speaker 1: for about four years. UH. Even though it hadn't been
Speaker 1: granted yet, it was a show that this idea was
Speaker 1: around before Farnsworth had filed for it, and that really
Speaker 1: r c A should have ownership of that idea, not Farnsworth.
Speaker 1: But here was the problem. They couldn't prove that Zarikins
Speaker 1: approach would you know, work, and without it working, it
Speaker 1: was hard to make an argument that Zorkin had really
Speaker 1: come up with this idea. Uh. You know, a patent
Speaker 1: is supposed to be for an idea that ultimately can work.
Speaker 1: If it has proven to not be a workable idea,
Speaker 1: then the patent is not supposed to be valid. Now,
Speaker 1: the team cited a supposed nineteen thirty four demonstration towards
Speaker 1: the end of this lawsuit. They said, hey, Workin demonstrated
Speaker 1: that his system works. He built a working version of
Speaker 1: what he had uh proposed back in ninety three. But
Speaker 1: there was no evidence to support this claim. There were
Speaker 1: no eyewitnesses of this demonstration that they could bring up.
Speaker 1: There was there were no lab notes to show what
Speaker 1: had happened or the procedure that's Workin used. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: ultimately they could not prove that the nineteen twenty three
Speaker 1: version of what Zorkin was saying would ever work, and
Speaker 1: that Farnsworth's idea seemed to be the first one to
Speaker 1: actually be viable. So ultimately the Patent Office decided in
Speaker 1: favor of Farnsworth. He won. They are c a could
Speaker 1: not get around the fact that Farnsworth had a patented
Speaker 1: idea that they would have to license if they wanted
Speaker 1: to make televisions. Now, by that time, Farnsworth himself was
Speaker 1: pretty sick of the whole thing, and sick as the
Speaker 1: operative word. He had bleeding ulcers and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the stress had really gotten to him over the course
Speaker 1: of several years. Uh. David Sarnop once joked that they
Speaker 1: must have spent about fifty million dollars. Our ci A
Speaker 1: must have spent fifty million dollars in this lawsuit just
Speaker 1: to get around licensing fees and to secure them for themselves.
Speaker 1: Um brutal. Right, But things were starting to look up
Speaker 1: for Farnsworth. The television era was poised to take off,
Speaker 1: and then a little thing called World War Two happened.
Speaker 1: Where World War Two obviously changed everything. Priorities changed dramatically.
Speaker 1: Once the United States entered into the war. The US
Speaker 1: government suspended consumer electronics manufacturing and rededicated all those assets
Speaker 1: to wartime production. So Farnsworth, who was now free and
Speaker 1: clear to pursue these working relationships with various television companies
Speaker 1: and to get licensing fees, suddenly found himself without any customers.
Speaker 1: Because consumer electronics was shut down while World War Two
Speaker 1: was going on. When the war ended, Farnsworth had a
Speaker 1: little more than a year before his patents expired. Because
Speaker 1: patents don't last forever. Once they expire, that information is
Speaker 1: public domain. Anyone can invent anything based off a patent
Speaker 1: that has expired and not have not be expected to
Speaker 1: pay licensing fees, assuming that you haven't infringed upon some
Speaker 1: other patent with your new invention. But yeah, that meant
Speaker 1: that once those patents expired, anyone can make an electronic
Speaker 1: television based on Farnsworth's approach and not have to pay
Speaker 1: Farnsworth a penny. He never made the money he should
Speaker 1: have off of his invention, and in fact, when his
Speaker 1: patents expired in nine there were only about six thousand
Speaker 1: television sets in the entire United States. Just a few
Speaker 1: years later that would number in the millions. So they
Speaker 1: were we were literally on the precipice of the electronic
Speaker 1: television age when Farnsworth's patents expired, and he wasn't able
Speaker 1: to become insanely wealthy off of his ideas. Other people
Speaker 1: became insanely wealthy off of his ideas, but he was
Speaker 1: not able to do that he didn't. He didn't just
Speaker 1: give up. He actually went on to work in another
Speaker 1: you know, boring, normal job, nuclear fusion. Yeah, Farnsworth, the
Speaker 1: TV guy went on to work in nuclear fusion. Now,
Speaker 1: his work would not lead to a viable nuclear fusion
Speaker 1: power solution. If it did, our world would be totally different.
Speaker 1: Right now, we're still trying to develop nuclear fusion power
Speaker 1: that is sustainable. We've seen some promising early experiments, but
Speaker 1: nothing that's truly a sustainable nuclear fusion power plant. But
Speaker 1: farns worth work actually meant that we were able to
Speaker 1: create neutrons using his approach, so that was very important
Speaker 1: for other scientific work and experiments. So he still made
Speaker 1: some very significant contributions, even though his patents had expired
Speaker 1: and he wasn't able to really profit off of them
Speaker 1: the way he should have. As for our CIA and Starnoff,
Speaker 1: they continue to throw their weight around, or at least
Speaker 1: attempt to. Uh. The late nineteen forties saw companies like
Speaker 1: our ci A start to look into ways to incorporate
Speaker 1: color in television broadcast. And this is still at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of TV, so black and white was still,
Speaker 1: you know, very important, but they were they already thinking ahead,
Speaker 1: how can we incorporate color into this? But there were
Speaker 1: actually other companies that were also looking at incorporating color
Speaker 1: into television broadcasts. And our CIA had made a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money by defining the standards for radio, so
Speaker 1: what they wanted to do was do the same thing
Speaker 1: but for color TV. If they made their fortune by
Speaker 1: creating a standard in one format, why not do the
Speaker 1: same thing for another format, similar to what they were
Speaker 1: trying to do with just basic television when they tried
Speaker 1: to undermine Farnsworth's work. So to that end, Starnoff decided
Speaker 1: to sue a major competitor to our CIA. That would
Speaker 1: be uh CBS. CBS was working on color television at
Speaker 1: the same time. CBS, by the way, was the one
Speaker 1: major broadcast company that r c A did not have
Speaker 1: a hand in create ing. Now, the lawsuit went all
Speaker 1: the way up to the Supreme Court, and our c
Speaker 1: A once again found itself on the losing side. The
Speaker 1: Supreme Court sided with CBS, saying that the company could
Speaker 1: continue to create its competing standard, So our CIA was
Speaker 1: free to continue working on their standard. CBS was free
Speaker 1: to work on their standard. This didn't define the standard
Speaker 1: because The Supreme Court had nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1: They were just deciding whether or not CBS would be
Speaker 1: allowed to pursue this, and they said yes. So our
Speaker 1: c A was not able to cut it off there.
Speaker 1: But Sarnav had another trick up a sleeve. He had
Speaker 1: his research and development over at our CIA working on
Speaker 1: developing a superior color technology UH for television that would
Speaker 1: be better than cbs is approach, but more importantly, would
Speaker 1: be backwards compatible for old r C A black and
Speaker 1: white television sets, which meant if you owned an r
Speaker 1: C A black and white television set and you were
Speaker 1: tuning into an r C A color broadcast, you could
Speaker 1: still watch it. Now, it wouldn't be in color, because
Speaker 1: nothing's magically going to turn a black and white TV
Speaker 1: into a color TV, but you could actually watch what
Speaker 1: was going on. It would just be in black and white.
Speaker 1: The CBS approach, however, was not backwards compatible. If you
Speaker 1: wanted to watch a CBS color broadcast using an old
Speaker 1: black and white r C A set, you actually had
Speaker 1: to go out and buy a hundred dollar adapter, and
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars was a huge amount of money back then,
Speaker 1: still pretty hefty sum. If you just want an adapter
Speaker 1: for your television and uh and they so r c
Speaker 1: A was saying that, well, by making back ours backwards compatible,
Speaker 1: it's more attractive, right, Like, not everyone has a color set,
Speaker 1: and when color sets hit the market, they're going to
Speaker 1: be incredibly expensive. Most people are gonna stick with their
Speaker 1: black and white sets. So if we make a color
Speaker 1: broadcast strategy that works even with older black and white sets,
Speaker 1: we have an advantage. And they also had already he
Speaker 1: did the market with thousands millions of black and white
Speaker 1: r c A sets, so they knew that the customer
Speaker 1: base was going to be on their side. So even
Speaker 1: if you were to argue that cbs IS approach would
Speaker 1: be superior or cheaper or faster to market, the fact
Speaker 1: that it didn't have that backwards capability was what held
Speaker 1: it back. And sure enough it ended up working. The
Speaker 1: f c C and the National Television Standards Committee decided
Speaker 1: to go with our CIA's standard instead of cbs IS
Speaker 1: standard to be the industry standard. And this was still
Speaker 1: years before anyone had really got into color TV manufacturing. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was all part of the long game. But Starnov
Speaker 1: could see where things were going, and he said we
Speaker 1: got to get ahead of it so that we're the
Speaker 1: ones who defined the standard. That's how we make the
Speaker 1: money because our c A gets paid the licensing fees.
Speaker 1: By night. R c A standard was the way to go,
Speaker 1: and the company collected licensing fees, but the Justice Department
Speaker 1: made sure that our c A stuck to what was
Speaker 1: defined as reasonable prices. So that meant that they couldn't
Speaker 1: do the same thing they had done back in the
Speaker 1: radio days, but they still were collecting lots of licensing fees,
Speaker 1: so it was great for the company. Now, both Starnoff
Speaker 1: and Farnsworth passed away in nineteen seventy one. Z Workin
Speaker 1: actually outlived both of them. He would pass away in
Speaker 1: ninety two in Princeton, New Jersey. And that's the story
Speaker 1: of the first electronic televisions. But there's still more to
Speaker 1: talk about. I mentioned color TVs, but how the heck
Speaker 1: do they work? So I'm gonna wrap up this episode
Speaker 1: with a quick lesson on color TVs, and the next
Speaker 1: episode we'll look at developments and television like l C
Speaker 1: D S, l e D S, plasma screens, high dynamic range,
Speaker 1: and more. But first let's talk about color TVs. So
Speaker 1: the first color TVs which we're using. The CBS method.
Speaker 1: Hearken back to those mechanical television set days. In fact,
Speaker 1: CBS color TVs had a mechanical element to them. They
Speaker 1: had a color wheel. So similar to what John Logie Baird,
Speaker 1: the Scottish inventor who worked on mechanical television sets UH
Speaker 1: twenty years earlier, what he had been doing. He had
Speaker 1: been using a color wheel to create color television. Well,
Speaker 1: CBS wanted to do the same thing. So a cathode
Speaker 1: ray tube would be between the wheel and the screen
Speaker 1: and that would provide the stream of electrons spinning the
Speaker 1: wheel would allow you to get whatever color you needed
Speaker 1: for that particular pixel. And because the wheel could spend
Speaker 1: quite fast, and because our brains will merge different colors
Speaker 1: into new color all on its own, the speed of
Speaker 1: transmission is what did all the work. Our brains just
Speaker 1: would assimilate the information we had to see a color
Speaker 1: that was represented by lots of individual colors being presented
Speaker 1: to us very rapid within the span of a second.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you can get red, green, or
Speaker 1: blue because that's what the color wheel had. Those were
Speaker 1: the primary colors on the color wheel. But if you
Speaker 1: wanted to get purple, then what you're getting is a
Speaker 1: series of red and blue pixels that are presented so
Speaker 1: fast that our brain just ends up combining those into
Speaker 1: a purple pixel. It's super cool. So I love this
Speaker 1: because it again depends upon the limitations of the human
Speaker 1: brain to make the technology work. And uh, it really
Speaker 1: makes me appreciate both the amazing work of the technology
Speaker 1: and also how weird humans are. And I include myself
Speaker 1: there along with you human. So you've got this this
Speaker 1: super fast method of presenting colors that end up sort
Speaker 1: of bleeding into one another to represent whatever the actual
Speaker 1: color needs to be for the picture. Um, and it
Speaker 1: was really nifty, but the mechanical approach didn't end up
Speaker 1: becoming the standard. Again, that was not compatible with the
Speaker 1: old black and white television sets. So instead our c
Speaker 1: A went with an electrical standpoint and used colorful phosphors.
Speaker 1: So the stuff that fluoresces on the back of your
Speaker 1: television screen, so when you're looking at the front of
Speaker 1: the television screen, the opposite side has that phosphorus cover
Speaker 1: coating on it. Well, it would have colorful phosphors, not
Speaker 1: just ones that would shine white or gray. Depending upon
Speaker 1: the amount of electric or the energy of the electron
Speaker 1: hitting it. So a color CRT television has three electron beams,
Speaker 1: not just one, and those beams are called red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue, although the beams themselves don't have any color
Speaker 1: to them because they're electrons, but they're dedicated to red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue phosphors. Uh, the screen itself would have red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue phosphers that would be arranged as dots or
Speaker 1: line on the back of the screen. And each pixel
Speaker 1: has three phosphors right as each pixel has a red component,
Speaker 1: a green component, and a blue component. And between the
Speaker 1: phosphorus coding and the electron beams was a little mesh screen.
Speaker 1: It was actually called the shadow mask, and the holes
Speaker 1: in the shadow mask match up with the phosphorus dots
Speaker 1: or stripes depending upon the actual model of TV. So
Speaker 1: color TV signals are really similar to black and white
Speaker 1: TV signals, but in addition to intensity, it includes a
Speaker 1: component called a chrominance signal, and this involves superimposing a
Speaker 1: special sign wave over the top of the black and
Speaker 1: white television signal. And what kind of special sign wave?
Speaker 1: I hear you ask pipe down? Nobody asked you. But
Speaker 1: if you really have to know it's a three point
Speaker 1: five seven nine five four five mega hurt sign wave.
Speaker 1: Are you happy? No? Sor right? Neither am I? Anyway?
Speaker 1: The chrominance signal indicates which color to display based on
Speaker 1: a phase shift. So if you're looking at a sine
Speaker 1: wave on a graph, a phase shift is shifting it
Speaker 1: to the left or to the right, so it's out
Speaker 1: of phase with its original position. So a shift of
Speaker 1: a degrees would indicate blue, a shift of just fifteen
Speaker 1: degrees would be yellow, and shifting it would tell I'm
Speaker 1: using air quotes the electron beams which color it needed
Speaker 1: to represent, So that shift would give the the electron
Speaker 1: beams the information necessary to replicate whatever color you were
Speaker 1: looking for. And this would give the electron beams the
Speaker 1: ability ability to scan those phosphors in the correct order,
Speaker 1: the correct frequency to generate the color necessary for you
Speaker 1: to perceive it on the screen itself. And again, that
Speaker 1: rapid succession of lines on display and the colors would
Speaker 1: eate that illusion in our minds that we're watching a
Speaker 1: color moving image on a screen. It's really kind of
Speaker 1: incredible that just by using red, green, and blue, you
Speaker 1: could replicate all sorts of colors just depending upon the
Speaker 1: amount of time they're on screen and the frequency that
Speaker 1: you switch back and forth between those three, and that
Speaker 1: that's all you need to create all the different colors
Speaker 1: that we can perceive. Now. The first color television set
Speaker 1: was made by Westinghouse and it cost a whopping one thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars in March nineteen fifty four. If you
Speaker 1: want to adjust that for inflation, which I did, it
Speaker 1: comes out to almost twelve thousand dollars in today's money,
Speaker 1: which it's pretty expensive. And here's a shocking fact. They
Speaker 1: put out a full page ad in the New York
Speaker 1: Times that sixty New York stores were carrying those sets,
Speaker 1: and they sold zero of them from those stores. Now,
Speaker 1: eventually they were able to move about thirty sets. I
Speaker 1: think they produced about five hundred total in that first run.
Speaker 1: But I guess the only people who were capable of
Speaker 1: buying them were colors starved millionaires. Everyone else couldn't really
Speaker 1: afford such a thing, so they eventually slashed their prices
Speaker 1: down to an affordable one dollars, still a princely some,
Speaker 1: as Chris Palette and I would used to say, most
Speaker 1: of those sets that Westinghouse made were never sold there.
Speaker 1: There was hardly anything to watch in color. Back in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. There were very few color broadcasts and
Speaker 1: it was just so darned expensive, and it also would
Speaker 1: break down fairly easily, so uh never really took off
Speaker 1: at that time. Color television sales were actually really slow
Speaker 1: until about the mid nineteen fifties. Um all the way
Speaker 1: up into the nineteen sixties, it was just not a
Speaker 1: whole lot to move them. But then the combination of
Speaker 1: lower prices and more programming started to create a bit
Speaker 1: of a demand in the early sixties. Oh. One of
Speaker 1: the companies that was instrumental in color television taking off
Speaker 1: in the United States was Disney. In nine, Disney began
Speaker 1: to broadcast The Wonderful World of Color, which was essentially
Speaker 1: an advertisement to go out and buy color televisions when
Speaker 1: you get down to it, because you couldn't really enjoy
Speaker 1: the color broadcast without one. I actually remember watching an
Speaker 1: episode of The Wonderful World of Color where Professor Von
Speaker 1: Drake explained how color television was so much better than
Speaker 1: black and white TV, and did so in a song
Speaker 1: called the Spectrum Song. And if you've never heard the
Speaker 1: spectrum song. You need to look that up because it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I will not sing it now. Keep in mind I'm
Speaker 1: talking about a show I saw as a rerun because
Speaker 1: I'm not that old. I wasn't born in the sixties.
Speaker 1: Stop looking at me that way now. The first year
Speaker 1: to see color television sales outpaced black and white TV
Speaker 1: sa als wasn't until nineteen seventy. So while everyone was
Speaker 1: fighting over the color television standards in the late forties
Speaker 1: and early fifties, it wasn't until nineteen seventy the color
Speaker 1: TVs were actually out selling black and white televisions. The
Speaker 1: technology had been around for more than fifteen years before
Speaker 1: it began to overtake the old black and white sets. Now,
Speaker 1: I want you guys to remember that when I talk
Speaker 1: about h d TV in the future episode, because it's
Speaker 1: a very different story. Some people were thinking, like, how
Speaker 1: long was HDTV around before people started actually using it?
Speaker 1: Not as long as we went from color from black
Speaker 1: and white to color rather, But for now it is
Speaker 1: time to sign off. In the next episode, I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the display technologies that competed with CRT systems
Speaker 1: and how they work, as well as chat about stuff
Speaker 1: like flat screen TVs or HDR televisions or two K
Speaker 1: and eight K t vs and more. But if you
Speaker 1: guys have any questions or comments and you suggest is
Speaker 1: for future episodes or people I should have on this show,
Speaker 1: please let me know. You can email me. The email
Speaker 1: address for the show is tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or you can drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for the show at
Speaker 1: both those locations is tech Stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com