When Was the First TV Made?

Jason Todd/Digital Vision/Getty Images

Philo Taylor Farnsworth is credited with the invention of the first all-electronic television, which was initially demonstrated in 1927. Farnsworth’s concept was to capture moving images that were then coded for radio-wave broadcasts in order to transmit a signal to the receiving television set.

Farnsworth’s invention came 16 years after a Russian inventor named Boris Rosing conducted crude experiments that were able to transmit visual images. Unlike an earlier mechanical television that utilized a spinning disk to form an image, Farnsworth’s all-electronic television scanned images with a beam of electrons and is the direct ancestor of today’s modern television sets.

ADVERTISEMENT