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Motorola, Inc. (/ˌmoʊtəˈroʊlə/[4]) was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company was divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011.[5] Motorola Solutions is generally considered to be the direct successor to Motorola, Inc., as the reorganization was structured with Motorola Mobility being spun off.[6] Motorola Mobility was acquired by Lenovo in 2014.

Motorola designed and sold wireless network equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal amplifiers. Motorola's home and broadcast network products included set-top boxes, digital video recorders, and network equipment used to enable video broadcasting, computer telephony, and high-definition television. Its business and government customers consisted mainly of wireless voice and broadband systems (used to build private networks), and, public safety communications systems like Astro and Dimetra. These businesses (except for set-top boxes and cable modems) are now part of Motorola Solutions. Google sold Motorola Home (the former General Instrument cable businesses) to the Arris Group in December 2012 for US$2.35 billion.[7]

Motorola's wireless telephone handset division was a pioneer in cellular telephones. Also known as the Personal Communication Sector (PCS) prior to 2004, it pioneered the "mobile phone" with DynaTAC, "flip phone" with the MicroTAC as well as the "clam phone" with the StarTAC in the mid-1990s. It had staged a resurgence by the mid-2000s with the RAZR, but lost market share in the second half of that decade. Later it focused on smartphones using Google's open-source Android mobile operating system. The first phone to use the newest version of Google's open source OS, Android 2.0, was released on November 2, 2009 as the Motorola Droid (the GSM version launched a month later, in Europe, as the Motorola Milestone).

The handset division (along with cable set-top boxes and cable modems) was later spun off into the independent Motorola Mobility. On May 22, 2012, Google CEO Larry Page announced that Google had closed on its deal to acquire Motorola Mobility.[8] On January 29, 2014, Google CEO Larry Page announced that pending closure of the deal, Motorola Mobility would be acquired by Chinese technology company Lenovo for US$2.91 billion (subject to certain adjustments).[9] On October 30, 2014, Lenovo finalized its purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google.[10]


History
Local branch in Glostrup, Denmark

Motorola started in Chicago, Illinois, as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation (at 847 West Harrison Street)[11] in 1928 when brothers, Paul V. and Joseph E. Galvin,[12][13] purchased the bankrupt Stewart Battery Company's battery-eliminator plans and manufacturing equipment at auction for $750. Galvin Manufacturing Corporation set up shop in a small section of a rented building. The company had $565 in working capital and five employees. The first week's payroll was $63.

The company's first products were battery-eliminators, devices that enabled battery-powered radios to operate on household electricity. Due to advances in radio technology, battery-eliminators soon became obsolete. Paul Galvin learned that some radio technicians were installing sets in cars, and challenged his engineers to design an inexpensive car radio that could be installed in most vehicles. His team was successful, and Galvin was able to demonstrate a working model of the radio at the June 1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He brought home enough orders to keep the company in business.

Paul Galvin wanted a brand name for Galvin Manufacturing Corporation's new car radio, and created the name “Motorola” by linking "motor" (for motorcar) with "ola" (from Victrola), which was also a popular ending for many companies at the time, e.g. Moviola, Crayola.[14] The company sold its first Motorola branded radio on June 23, 1930, to H.C. Wall of Fort Wayne, Indiana, for $30. The Motorola brand name became so well-known that Galvin Manufacturing Corporation later changed its name to Motorola, Inc.[15]

Galvin Manufacturing Corporation began selling Motorola car-radio receivers to police departments and municipalities in November 1930. The company's first public safety customers (all in the U.S. state of Illinois) included the Village of River Forest, Village of Bellwood Police Department, City of Evanston Police, Illinois State Highway Police, and Cook County (Chicago area) Police.[16]

Many of Motorola's products have been radio-related, starting with a battery eliminator for radios, through the first hand-held walkie-talkie in the world in 1940,[17] defense electronics, cellular infrastructure equipment, and mobile phone manufacturing. In the same year, the company built its research and development program with Dan Noble, a pioneer in FM radio and semiconductor technologies, who joined the company as director of research. The company produced the hand-held AM SCR-536 radio during World War II, which was vital to Allied communication. Motorola ranked 94th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[18]

Motorola went public in 1943,[19] and became Motorola, Inc. in 1947. At that time Motorola's main business was producing and selling televisions and radios.
Post World War II
Motorola vacuum tube carton

In October 1946 Motorola communications equipment carried the first calls on Illinois Bell telephone company's new car radiotelephone service in Chicago, Illinois. The company began making televisions in 1947, with the model VT-71 with 7-inch cathode ray tube. In 1952 Motorola opened its first international subsidiary in Toronto, Canada to produce radios and televisions. In 1953, the company established the Motorola Foundation to support leading universities in the United States.

In 1955, years after Motorola started its research and development laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona, to research new solid-state technology, Motorola introduced the world's first commercial high-power germanium-based transistor. The present "batwing" logo was also introduced in 1955 (having been created by award-winning Chicago graphic designer Morton Goldsholl in late 1954).

Beginning in 1958, with Explorer 1 Motorola provided radio equipment for most NASA space-flights for decades, including during the 1969 moon landing. A year later it established a subsidiary to conduct licensing and manufacturing for international markets. Motorola created numerous products for use by the government, public safety officials, business installments, and the general public. These products included cell phones, laptops, computer processors, and radio communication devices.

In 1960, it introduced the world's first large-screen portable (19-inch), transistorized, cordless television. According to the 1962 Illinois Manufacturers Directory (50th anniversary edition), Motorola had 14,000 employees worldwide of which at least 5,823 employees in 6 plants were located in Illinois. The company headquarters were at 9401 West Grand Avenue in Franklin Park and it listed TV receivers, Stereo-Hi Fi equipment as the products at this plant made by 1,700 employees. The Communications Division was in Chicago at 4545 West Augusta Blvd. where 2,000 employees made electronic communications equipment. The Military Electronics Division was at 1450 North Cicero Avenue, Chicago where 923 employees made microwave and industrial equipment. Two more Chicago locations were listed at 4900 West Flourney Street and at 650 North Pulaski but no employee count was listed for these. The last plant was listed in Quincy, Illinois at 1400 North 30th Street where 1,200 employees made radio assemblies for both home and automobile.[20]

In 1963, it introduced the first rectangular color picture tube. In 1964, the company opened its first Research and development branch outside of the United States, in Israel, under the management of Moses Basin. The modular Quasar brand was introduced in 1967.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" from the Moon on a Motorola transceiver.[21]

In 1973, Motorola demonstrated the first hand-held portable telephone.[22]

In 1974, Motorola introduced its first microprocessor, the 8-bit MC6800, used in automotive, computing and video game applications.[23] That same year, Motorola sold its television business to the Japan-based Matsushita - the parent company of Panasonic.

In 1976, Motorola moved its headquarters to the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois.

In 1980, Motorola’s next generation 32-bit microprocessor, the MC68000, led the wave of technologies that spurred the computing revolution in 1984, powering devices from companies such as Apple, Commodore, Atari, Sun, and Hewlett Packard.[24]
Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first private handheld mobile phone call on a larger prototype model in 1973. This is a reenactment in 2007.

In September 1983, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the DynaTAC 8000X telephone, the world's first commercial cellular device. By 1998, cellphones accounted for two thirds of Motorola's gross revenue.[25] The company was also strong in semiconductor technology, including integrated circuits used in computers. In particular, it is known for the 6800 family and 68000 family of microprocessors and related peripheral ICs; the processors were used in Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Color Computer, and Apple Macintosh personal computers and in the early HP laser printers, and some 6800-family peripheral devices were used in the IBM PC series of personal computers.[26] The PowerPC family was developed with IBM and in a partnership with Apple (known as the AIM alliance). Motorola also has a diverse line of communication products, including satellite systems, digital cable boxes and modems.

In 1986, Motorola invented the Six Sigma quality improvement process. This became a global standard. In 1990 General Instrument Corporation, which was later acquired by Motorola, proposed the first all-digital HDTV standard. In the same year the company introduced the Bravo numeric pager which became the world's best-selling pager.

In 1991, Motorola demonstrated the world's first working-prototype digital cellular system and phones using GSM standard in Hanover, Germany. In 1994, Motorola introduced the world's first commercial digital radio system that combined paging, data and cellular communications and voice dispatch in a single radio network and handset. In 1995, Motorola introduced the world's first two-way pager which allowed users to receive text messages and e-mail and reply with a standard response.

In 1998, Motorola was overtaken by Nokia as the world's biggest seller of mobile phone handsets.[21]

On September 15, 1999, Motorola announced it would buy General Instrument in an $11 billion stock swap. General Instrument had long been the No. 1 cable TV equipment provider, supplying cable operators with end-to-end hybrid fiber coax cable solutions. This meant that GI offers all cable TV transmission network components from the head-end to the fiber optic transmission nodes to the cable set-top boxes, now at the availability of Motorola. GI's acquisition created the Broadband Communications Sector (BCS).

In 1999, Motorola separated a portion of its semiconductor business—the Semiconductor Components Group (SCG)-- and formed ON Semiconductor, whose headquarters are located in Phoenix, Arizona.[27]

In June 2000, Motorola and Cisco supplied the world's first commercial GPRS cellular network to BT Cellnet in the United Kingdom. The world's first GPRS cell phone was also developed by Motorola. In August 2000, with recent acquisitions, Motorola reached its peak employment of 150,000 employees worldwide.[28] Two years later, employment would be at 93,000 due to layoffs and spinoffs.

In 2002, Motorola introduced the world's first wireless cable modem gateway which combined a high-speed cable modem router with an ethernet switch and wireless home gateway. In 2003, Motorola introduced the world's first handset to combine a Linux operating system and Java technology with "full PDA functionality". In 2004, Motorola divested its whole semiconductor business to form Freescale Semiconductor.

The Motorola RAZR line sold over 120 million units, which brought the company to the number two mobile phone slot in 2005.

In June 2005, Motorola overtook the intellectual property of Sendo for $30,000 and paid £362,575 for the plant, machinery and equipment.[29]

In June 2006, Motorola acquired the software platform (AJAR) developed by the British company TTP Communications plc.[30] Later in 2006, the firm announced a music subscription service named iRadio. The technology came after a break in a partnership with Apple Computer (which in 2005 had produced an iTunes compatible cell phone ROKR E1, and most recently, mid-2007, its own iPhone). iRadio has many similarities with existing satellite radio services (such as Sirius and XM Radio) by offering live streams of commercial-free music content. Unlike satellite services, however, iRadio content will be downloaded via a broadband internet connection. As of 2008, iRadio has not been commercially released and no further information is available.[31]

In 2007, Motorola acquired Symbol Technologies to provide products and systems for enterprise mobility solutions, including rugged mobile computing, advanced data capture, and radio frequency identification (RFID).

In 2010, Motorola sold its cellular-infrastructure business to Nokia Siemens Networks for $1.2 billion.
Motorola, post-split

In January 2011, Motorola split into two separate companies, each still using the word Motorola as part of its name. One company, Motorola Solutions (using a blue version of the Motorola logo), is based in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois, and concentrates on police technologies, radios, and commercial needs. The other company, Motorola Mobility (using a red logo), is based in Chicago (formerly in the Chicago suburb of Libertyville, Illinois), and is the mobile handset producer. The split was structured so that Motorola Solutions was the legal successor of the original Motorola, while Motorola Mobility was the spin-off.

On August 15, 2011, Google announced that it would purchase Motorola Mobility for about $12.5 billion.[32] On November 17, 2011, Motorola Mobility stockholders “voted overwhelmingly to approve the proposed merger with Google Inc”.[33]

On May 22, 2012, Google announced that the acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. had closed, with Google acquiring MMI for $40.00 per share in cash. ($12.5 billion)[34]

On October 30, 2014, Google sold off Motorola Mobility to Lenovo. The purchase price was approximately US $2.91 billion (subject to certain adjustments), including US$1.41 billion paid at close: US $660 million in cash and US$750 million in Lenovo ordinary shares (subject to a share cap/floor). The remaining US$1.5 billion was paid in the form of a three-year promissory note.

After the purchase, Google maintained ownership of the vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio, including current patent applications and invention disclosures, while Lenovo received a license to the portfolio of patents and other intellectual property. Additionally Lenovo received over 2,000 patent assets, as well as the Motorola Mobility brand and trademark portfolio.[35]

Divisional Products:[36]

    Enterprise Mobility Solutions: Headquarters located in Schaumburg, Illinois; comprises communications offered to government and public safety sectors and enterprise mobility business. Motorola develops analog and digital two-way radio, voice and data communications products and systems, mobile computing, advanced data capture, wireless infrastructure and RFID solutions to customers worldwide.
    Home & Networks Mobility: Headquarters located in Arlington Heights, Illinois; produces end-to-end systems that facilitate uninterrupted access to digital entertainment, information and communications services via wired and wireless mediums. Motorola develops digital video system solutions, interactive set-top devices, voice and data modems for digital subscriber line and cable networks, broadband access systems for cable and satellite television operators, and also wireline carriers and wireless service providers.
    Mobile Devices: Headquarters located in Chicago, Illinois; designs wireless handsets, but also licenses much of its intellectual properties. This includes cellular and wireless systems and as well as integrated applications and Bluetooth accessories. Some of their latest gadgets are Moto X Gen 3, Moto X Play, Moto 360 smartwatch, etc.

Finances
[icon]     This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2008)

Motorola's handset division recorded a loss of US$1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007, while the company as a whole earned $100 million during that quarter.[37] It lost several key executives to rivals,[38] and the web site TrustedReviews called the company's products repetitive and uninnovative.[39] Motorola laid off 3,500 workers in January 2008,[40] followed by a further 4,000 job cuts in June[41] and another 20% cut of its research division a few days later.[42] In July 2008, a large number of executives left Motorola to work on Apple Inc.'s iPhone.[43] The company's handset division was also put on offer for sale.[44] Also that month, analyst Mark McKechnie from American Technology Research said that Motorola "would be lucky to fetch $500 million" for selling its handset business. Analyst Richard Windsor said that Motorola might have to pay someone to take the division off the company's hands, and that Motorola may even exit the handset market altogether.[45] Its global market share has been on the decline; from 18.4% of the market in 2007 the company had a share of just 6.0% by Q1 2009, but at last Motorola scored a profit of $26 million in Q2 and showed an increase of 12% in stocks for the first time after losses in many quarters. During the second quarter of 2010, the company reported a profit of $162 million, which compared very favorably to the $26 million earned for the same period the year before. Its Mobile Devices division reported, for the first time in years, earnings of $87 million.[46]
Spin-offs
Television and radio manufacturing

In 1974, Motorola divested itself of its television and radio-manufacturing division, which included the Quasar brand of electronics. This division was acquired by Matsushita, already known under its Panasonic brand in North America, where it was looking to expand.
Iridium
Main article: Iridium (satellite)

Motorola developed the global communication network using a set of 77 satellites. The business ambitions behind this project and the need to raise venture capital to fund the project led to the creation of the Iridium company in the late 1990s. While the technology was proven to work, Iridium failed to attract sufficient customers and it filed for bankruptcy in 1999. Obligations to Motorola and loss of expected revenue caused Motorola to divest the ON Semiconductor (ONNN) business August 4, 1999, raising about $1.1 billion.

Motorola manufactured two satellite phone handsets for this network – the 9500 and 9505 as well as transceiver units. Some of these are still in production by an OEM but sold under the Iridium brand.
Government and defense

Due to declines in business in 2000 and 2001, Motorola spun off its government and defense business to General Dynamics. The business deal closed September 2001. Thus GD Decision Systems was formed (and later merged with General Dynamics C4 Systems) from Motorola's Integrated Information Systems Group.
Semiconductor

On August 4, 1999, Motorola, Inc.'s Semiconductor Components Group, manufacturing Motorola's discrete, standard analog and standard logic devices was spun off, recapitalized and established as an independent company named ON Semiconductor.

On October 16, 2004, Motorola announced that it would spin off its Semiconductor Products Sector into a separate company called Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.. The new company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on July 16 of the following year.

On Dec. 7, 2015 Freescale Inc. was sold to NXP Semiconductor, a European company.
Automotive

On January 29, 1988, Motorola sold its Arcade, New York facility and automotive alternators, electromechanical speedometers and tachometers products to Prestolite Electric.[47]

In July 2006, Motorola completed the sale of its automotive business to Continental AG. Motorola’s automotive unit had annual sales of $1.6 billion (€1.33 billion) and employed 4,504. The divisions products included telematics systems - like GM's OnStar used for vehicle navigation and safety services, engine and transmission control electronics, vehicle control, electronics and sensors used in steering, braking, and power doors and power windows.
Biometrics

In 2000, Motorola acquired Printrak International Inc.[48] for $160 million.[49] In doing so, Motorola not only acquired computer aided dispatch and related software, but also acquired Automated fingerprint identification system software.[50]

In October 2008, Motorola agreed to sell its Biometrics business to Safran, a French defense firm. Motorola's biometric business unit was headquartered in Anaheim, Calif. The deal closed in April 2009.[51] The unit became part of Sagem Morpho, which was renamed MorphoTrak.
Split

On March 26, 2008, Motorola's board of directors approved a split into two different publicly traded companies. This came after talk of selling the handset division to another corporation. These new companies would comprise the business units of the current Motorola Mobile Devices and Motorola Broadband & Mobility Solutions. Originally it was expected that this action would be approved by regulatory bodies and complete by mid-2009, but the split was delayed due to company restructuring problems and the 2008–2009 extreme economic downturn.[52]

On February 11, 2010, Motorola announced its separation into two independent, publicly traded companies,[53] effective Q1 2011. The official split occurred at around 12:00 pm EST on January 4, 2011. The two new companies are called Motorola Mobility (now owned by Lenovo; cell phone and cable television equipment company) and Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI; Government and Enterprise Business). Motorola Solutions is generally considered to be the direct successor to Motorola, Inc., as the reorganization was structured with Motorola Mobility being spun off.[6] Motorola Solutions retains Motorola, Inc.'s pre-2011 stock price history, though it retired the old ticker symbol of "MOT" in favor of "MSI."
Motorola Mobility deal by Google

On August 15, 2011, seven months after Motorola Mobility was spun off into an independent company, Google announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion,[54][55] subject to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe.

According to the filing, Google senior vice president Andy Rubin first reached out to Motorola Mobility in early July 2011 to discuss the purchase by some of Google's competitors of the patent portfolio of Nortel Networks Corp., and to assess its potential impact on the Android ecosystem.

Google boosted its offer for Motorola Mobility by 33% in a single day in early August, even though Motorola wasn't soliciting competing bids. The aggressive bidding by Google showed that[citation needed] the search engine company was under considerable pressure to beef up its patent portfolio to protect its promising Android franchise from a growing number of legal challenges.

According to the filing, Google and Motorola began discussions about Motorola's patent portfolio in early July, as well as the "intellectual property litigation and the potential impact of such litigation on the Android ecosystem".

Although the two companies discussed the possibility of an acquisition after the initial contact by Mr. Rubin, it was only after Motorola pushed back on the idea of patent sale that the acquisition talks picked up steam.

The turning point came during a meeting on July 6. At the meeting, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha discussed the protection of the Android ecosystem with Google senior vice president Nikesh Arora, and during that talk Jha told Arora that "it could be problematic for Motorola Mobility to continue to exist as a stand-alone entity if it sold a large portion of its patent portfolio".

In connection with these discussions, the two companies signed a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement that allowed Google to do due diligence on the company's patent portfolio.

On July 21 and 23, Jha met with Arora and Rubin to discuss strategic options between the two companies, agreeing to continue to discuss a potential sale. On the morning of August 15, the two companies entered into a merger agreement at the offered price of $40. On November 17, Motorola Mobility stockholders approved the proposed merger with Google Inc. On April 17, 2013, ARRIS Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARRS) announced that it completed its acquisition of the Motorola Home business from a subsidiary of Google Inc.
Motorola Mobility (Google) deal by Lenovo

On January 29, 2014, Google announced Lenovo plans to acquire the Motorola Mobility smartphone business. The purchase price is approximately $2.91 billion (subject to certain adjustments), including $1.41 billion paid at close: $660 million in cash and $750 million in Lenovo ordinary shares (subject to a share cap/floor). The remaining $1.5 billion will be paid in the form of a three-year promissory note.

Google maintained ownership of the vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio, including active patent applications and invention disclosures. As part of its ongoing relationship with Google, Lenovo received a license to this rich portfolio of patents and other intellectual property. Additionally Lenovo received over 2,000 patent assets, as well as the Motorola Mobility brand and trademark portfolio.[56] On October 30, 2014, Lenovo finalized its purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google.[10]
Canopy and Orthogon

Cambium Networks was created when Motorola Solutions sold the Canopy and Orthogon businesses in 2011. Cambium Networks has evolved the platform and expanded it to three product lines: Point to Point (PTP) (formerly Orthogon), Point to Multipoint (PMP) (formerly Canopy) and ePMP.
Quality systems

The Six Sigma quality system was developed at Motorola even though it became best known through its use by General Electric. It was created by engineer Bill Smith, under the direction of Bob Galvin (son of founder Paul Galvin) when he was running the company. Motorola University is one of many places that provide Six Sigma training.
Environmental record

Motorola, Inc., along with the Arizona Water Co. has been identified as the sources of trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination that took place in Scottsdale, Arizona. The malfunction led to a ban on the use of water that lasted three days and affected almost 5000 people in the area. Motorola was found to be the main source of the TCE, an industrial solvent that is thought to cause cancer. The TCE contamination was caused by a faulty blower on an air stripping tower that was used to take TCE from the water, and Motorola has attributed the situation to operator error.[57]

Of eighteen leading electronics manufacturers in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics (October 2010), Motorola shares sixth place with competitors Panasonic and Sony).[58]

Motorola scores relatively well on the chemicals criteria and has a goal to eliminate PVC plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFRs), though only in mobile devices and not in all its products introduced after 2010, despite the fact that Sony Ericsson and Nokia are already there. All of its mobile phones are now PVC-free and it has two PVC and BFR-free mobile phones, the A45 ECO and the GRASP; all chargers are also free from PVC and BFRs.[58]

The company is also increasing the proportion of recycled materials that used in its products. For example, the housings for the MOTO W233 Renew and MOTOCUBO A45 Eco mobile phones contain plastic from post-consumer recycled water cooler bottles.[59] According to the company’s information, all of Motorola’s newly designed chargers meet the current Energy Star requirements and exceed the requirements for standby/no-load modes by at least 67%.[60]
Sponsorships

Motorola sponsored Scottish Premier League club Motherwell F.C. for 11 years. This long term deal ended after the company started to reduce its manufacturing operations in Scotland. The company also sponsored Livingston F.C. between 1998 and 2002. The company also had a plant on the edge of the town. However, this closed down at the same time as their sponsorship with the club ended. The South Stand at Livingston's Almondvale Stadium, was named after the company, during their time of sponsorship. The company also sponsored a cycling team that counted Lance Armstrong amongst its members. Motorola is also a sponsor of Danica Patrick, David Beckham, and Fergie. It also sponsored the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League from 2004 to 2007. Motorola sponsored São Paulo FC from 2000 to 2001. Motorola also sponsored Club Bolívar since 2008. Motorola awarded TrackIT Solutions for being "The company with most Innovative Enterprise Mobility Solution" in 2010.

In Madden NFL 07 franchise mode, a Motorola phone is used to communicate with coaches and agents.

Robby Gordon was sponsored by Motorola in 2007 and 2008. Motorola is on Gordon's car in NASCAR 07 and NASCAR 08.





Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome (black-and-white), or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. It can refer to a television set, a television program ("TV show"), or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium, for entertainment, education, news, and advertising.

Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but these did not sell to the public. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion.[1] In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US and most other developed countries. The availability of storage media such as Betamax (1975), VHS tape (1976), DVDs (1997), and high-definition Blu-ray Discs (2006) enabled viewers to watch prerecorded material at home, such as movies. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity. Another development was the move from standard-definition television (SDTV) (576i, with 576 interlaced lines of resolution and 480i) to high-definition television (HDTV), which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats: 1080p, 1080i and 720p. Since 2010, with the invention of smart television, Internet television has increased the availability of television programs and movies via the Internet through streaming video services such as Netflix, iPlayer, Hulu, Roku and Chromecast.

In 2013, 79% of the world's households owned a television set.[2] The replacement of early bulky, high-voltage cathode ray tube (CRT) screen displays with compact, energy-efficient, flat-panel alternative technologies such as plasma displays, LCDs (both fluorescent-backlit and LED), and OLED displays was a hardware revolution that began with computer monitors in the late 1990s. Most TV sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs. Major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s.[3][4][5] LEDs are expected to be replaced gradually by OLEDs in the near future.[6] Also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TV sets in the mid-2010s.[7][8][9] Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s.[10]

Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by coaxial cable or optical fiber, satellite systems and, since the 2000s via the Internet. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as analog signals but countries started switching to digital, this transition is expected to be completed worldwide by late 2010s. A standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television.

Etymology

The word television comes from ancient Greek τῆλε (tèle), meaning "far", and Latin visio, meaning "sight". The first documented usage of the term dates back to 1900, when a Russian scientist Constantin Perskyi used it in a paper that he presented in French at the 1st International Congress of Electricity, which ran from 18 to 25 August 1900 during the International World Fair in Paris. The Anglicised version of the term is first attested in 1907, when it was still "...a theoretical system to transmit moving images over telegraph or telephone wires".[11] It was "...formed in English or borrowed from French télévision."[11] In the 19th century and early 20th century, other "...proposals for the name of a then-hypothetical technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote (1880) and televista (1904)."[11] The abbreviation "TV" is from 1948. The use of the term to mean "a television set" dates from 1941.[11] The use of the term to mean "television as a medium" dates from 1927.[11] The slang term "telly" is more common in the UK. The slang term "the tube" or the "boob tube" refers to the bulky cathode ray tube used on most TVs until the advent of flat-screen TVs. Another slang term for the TV is "idiot box".[12]
History
Main article: History of television
Mechanical
Main article: Mechanical television
The Nipkow disk. This schematic shows the circular paths traced by the holes that may also be square for greater precision. The area of the disk outlined in black shows the region scanned.

Facsimile transmission systems for still photographs pioneered methods of mechanical scanning of images in the early 19th century. Alexander Bain introduced the facsimile machine between 1843 and 1846. Frederick Bakewell demonstrated a working laboratory version in 1851.[citation needed] Willoughby Smith discovered the photoconductivity of the element selenium in 1873. As a 23-year-old German university student, Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the Nipkow disk in 1884.[13] This was a spinning disk with a spiral pattern of holes in it, so each hole scanned a line of the image. Although he never built a working model of the system, variations of Nipkow's spinning-disk "image rasterizer" became exceedingly common.[14] Constantin Perskyi had coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on 25 August 1900. Perskyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others.[15] However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology by Lee de Forest and Arthur Korn, among others, made the design practical.[16]

The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. A matrix of 64 selenium cells, individually wired to a mechanical commutator, served as an electronic retina. In the receiver, a type of Kerr cell modulated the light and a series of variously angled mirrors attached to the edge of a rotating disc scanned the modulated beam onto the display screen. A separate circuit regulated synchronization. The 8x8 pixel resolution in this proof-of-concept demonstration was just sufficient to clearly transmit individual letters of the alphabet. An updated image was transmitted "several times" each second.[17] In 1921 Edouard Belin sent the first image via radio waves with his belinograph.

In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the "Braun tube" (cathode ray tube or "CRT") in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner: "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy".[18]
Baird in 1925 with his televisor equipment and dummies "James" and "Stooky Bill" (right).
The first known photograph of a moving image produced by Baird's "televisor", circa 1926 (The subject is Baird's business partner Oliver Hutchinson)

By the 1920s, when amplification made television practical, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird employed the Nipkow disk in his prototype video systems. On 25 March 1925, Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge's Department Store in London.[19] Since human faces had inadequate contrast to show up on his primitive system, he televised a ventriloquist's dummy named "Stooky Bill", whose painted face had higher contrast, talking and moving. By 26 January 1926, he demonstrated the transmission of the image of a face in motion by radio. This is widely regarded as the first television demonstration. The subject was Baird's business partner Oliver Hutchinson. Baird's system used the Nipkow disk for both scanning the image and displaying it. A bright light shining through a spinning Nipkow disk set with lenses projected a bright spot of light which swept across the subject. A Selenium photoelectric tube detected the light reflected from the subject and converted it into a proportional electrical signal. This was transmitted by AM radio waves to a receiver unit, where the video signal was applied to a neon light behind a second Nipkow disk rotating synchronized with the first. The brightness of the neon lamp was varied in proportion to the brightness of each spot on the image. As each hole in the disk passed by, one scan line of the image was reproduced. Baird's disk had 30 holes, producing an image with only 30 scan lines, just enough to recognize a human face. In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow.

In 1928, Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and the first shore-to-ship transmission. In 1929, he became involved in the first experimental mechanical television service in Germany. In November of the same year, Baird and Bernard Natan of Pathé established France's first television company, Télévision-Baird-Natan. In 1931, he made the first outdoor remote broadcast, of the Epsom Derby.[20] In 1932, he demonstrated ultra-short wave television. Baird's mechanical system reached a peak of 240-lines of resolution on BBC television broadcasts in 1936, though the mechanical system did not scan the televised scene directly. Instead a 17.5mm film was shot, rapidly developed and then scanned while the film was still wet.

An American inventor, Charles Francis Jenkins, also pioneered the television. He published an article on "Motion Pictures by Wireless" in 1913, but it was not until December 1923 that he transmitted moving silhouette images for witnesses; and it was on 13 June 1925, that he publicly demonstrated synchronized transmission of silhouette pictures. In 1925 Jenkins used the Nipkow disk and transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles, from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, D.C., using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.[21][22] He was granted U.S. Patent No. 1,544,156 (Transmitting Pictures over Wireless) on 30 June 1925 (filed 13 March 1922).

Herbert E. Ives and Frank Gray of Bell Telephone Laboratories gave a dramatic demonstration of mechanical television on 7 April 1927. Their reflected-light television system included both small and large viewing screens. The small receiver had a 2-inch-wide by 2.5-inch-high screen. The large receiver had a screen 24 inches wide by 30 inches high. Both sets were capable of reproducing reasonably accurate, monochromatic, moving images. Along with the pictures, the sets received synchronized sound. The system transmitted images over two paths: first, a copper wire link from Washington to New York City, then a radio link from Whippany, New Jersey. Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality. Subjects of the telecast included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. A flying-spot scanner beam illuminated these subjects. The scanner that produced the beam had a 50-aperture disk. The disc revolved at a rate of 18 frames per second, capturing one frame about every 56 milliseconds. (Today's systems typically transmit 30 or 60 frames per second, or one frame every 33.3 or 16.7 milliseconds respectively.) Television historian Albert Abramson underscored the significance of the Bell Labs demonstration: "It was in fact the best demonstration of a mechanical television system ever made to this time. It would be several years before any other system could even begin to compare with it in picture quality."[23]

In 1928, WRGB then W2XB was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY. It was popularly known as "WGY Television". Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, Léon Theremin had been developing a mirror drum-based television, starting with 16 lines resolution in 1925, then 32 lines and eventually 64 using interlacing in 1926. As part of his thesis, on 7 May 1926, he electrically transmitted, and then projected, near-simultaneous moving images on a five-foot square screen.[22] By 1927 he achieved an image of 100 lines, a resolution that was not surpassed until May 1932 by RCA, with 120 lines.[24] On 25 December 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a television system with a 40-line resolution that employed a Nipkow disk scanner and CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan. This prototype is still on display at the Takayanagi Memorial Museum in Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu Campus. His research in creating a production model was halted by the United States after Japan lost World War II.[25]

Because only a limited number of holes could be made in the disks, and disks beyond a certain diameter became impractical, image resolution on mechanical television broadcasts was relatively low, ranging from about 30 lines up to 120 or so. Nevertheless, the image quality of 30-line transmissions steadily improved with technical advances, and by 1933 the UK broadcasts using the Baird system were remarkably clear.[26] A few systems ranging into the 200-line region also went on the air. Two of these were the 180-line system that Compagnie des Compteurs (CDC) installed in Paris in 1935, and the 180-line system that Peck Television Corp. started in 1935 at station VE9AK in Montreal.[27][28] The advancement of all-electronic television (including image dissectors and other camera tubes and cathode ray tubes for the reproducer) marked the beginning of the end for mechanical systems as the dominant form of television. Mechanical television, despite its inferior image quality and generally smaller picture, would remain the primary television technology until the 1930s. The last mechanical television broadcasts ended in 1939 at stations run by a handful of public universities in the United States.
Electronic
Main article: Video camera tube

In 1897, English physicist J. J. Thomson was able, in his three famous experiments, to deflect cathode rays, a fundamental function of the modern cathode ray tube (CRT). The earliest version of the CRT was invented by the German physicist Ferdinand Braun in 1897 and is also known as the "Braun" tube.[29][30] It was a cold-cathode diode, a modification of the Crookes tube, with a phosphor-coated screen. In 1906 the Germans Max Dieckmann and Gustav Glage produced raster images for the first time in a CRT.[31] In 1907, Russian scientist Boris Rosing used a CRT in the receiving end of an experimental video signal to form a picture. He managed to display simple geometric shapes onto the screen.[32]

In 1908 Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, fellow of the Royal Society (UK), published a letter in the scientific journal Nature in which he described how "distant electric vision" could be achieved by using a cathode ray tube, or Braun tube, as both a transmitting and receiving device,[33][34] He expanded on his vision in a speech given in London in 1911 and reported in The Times[35] and the Journal of the Röntgen Society.[36][37] In a letter to Nature published in October 1926, Campbell-Swinton also announced the results of some "not very successful experiments" he had conducted with G. M. Minchin and J. C. M. Stanton. They had attempted to generate an electrical signal by projecting an image onto a selenium-coated metal plate that was simultaneously scanned by a cathode ray beam.[38][39] These experiments were conducted before March 1914, when Minchin died,[40] but they were later repeated by two different teams in 1937, by H. Miller and J. W. Strange from EMI,[41] and by H. Iams and A. Rose from RCA.[42] Both teams succeeded in transmitting "very faint" images with the original Campbell-Swinton's selenium-coated plate. Although others had experimented with using a cathode ray tube as a receiver, the concept of using one as a transmitter was novel.[43] The first cathode ray tube to use a hot cathode was developed by John B. Johnson (who gave his name to the term Johnson noise) and Harry Weiner Weinhart of Western Electric, and became a commercial product in 1922.[citation needed]

In 1926, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Tihanyi designed a television system utilizing fully electronic scanning and display elements and employing the principle of "charge storage" within the scanning (or "camera") tube.[44][45][46][47] The problem of low sensitivity to light resulting in low electrical output from transmitting or "camera" tubes would be solved with the introduction of charge-storage technology by Kálmán Tihanyi beginning in 1924.[48] His solution was a camera tube that accumulated and stored electrical charges ("photoelectrons") within the tube throughout each scanning cycle. The device was first described in a patent application he filed in Hungary in March 1926 for a television system he dubbed "Radioskop".[49] After further refinements included in a 1928 patent application,[48] Tihanyi's patent was declared void in Great Britain in 1930,[50] so he applied for patents in the United States. Although his breakthrough would be incorporated into the design of RCA's "iconoscope" in 1931, the U.S. patent for Tihanyi's transmitting tube would not be granted until May 1939. The patent for his receiving tube had been granted the previous October. Both patents had been purchased by RCA prior to their approval.[51][52] Charge storage remains a basic principle in the design of imaging devices for television to the present day.[49] On 25 December 1926, at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan, Japanese inventor Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a TV system with a 40-line resolution that employed a CRT display.[25] This was the first working example of a fully electronic television receiver. Takayanagi did not apply for a patent.[53]

On 7 September 1927, American inventor Philo Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco.[54][55] By 3 September 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press. This is widely regarded as the first electronic television demonstration.[55] In 1929, the system was improved further by the elimination of a motor generator, so that his television system now had no mechanical parts.[56] That year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images with his system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife Elma ("Pem") with her eyes closed (possibly due to the bright lighting required).[57]
Vladimir Zworykin demonstrates electronic television (1929)

Meanwhile, Vladimir Zworykin was also experimenting with the cathode ray tube to create and show images. While working for Westinghouse Electric in 1923, he began to develop an electronic camera tube. But in a 1925 demonstration, the image was dim, had low contrast, and poor definition, and was stationary.[58] Zworykin's imaging tube never got beyond the laboratory stage. But RCA, which acquired the Westinghouse patent, asserted that the patent for Farnsworth's 1927 image dissector was written so broadly that it would exclude any other electronic imaging device. Thus RCA, on the basis of Zworykin's 1923 patent application, filed a patent interference suit against Farnsworth. The U.S. Patent Office examiner disagreed in a 1935 decision, finding priority of invention for Farnsworth against Zworykin. Farnsworth claimed that Zworykin's 1923 system would be unable to produce an electrical image of the type to challenge his patent. Zworykin received a patent in 1928 for a color transmission version of his 1923 patent application,[59] he also divided his original application in 1931.[60] Zworykin was unable or unwilling to introduce evidence of a working model of his tube that was based on his 1923 patent application. In September 1939, after losing an appeal in the courts, and determined to go forward with the commercial manufacturing of television equipment, RCA agreed to pay Farnsworth US$1 million over a ten-year period, in addition to license payments, to use his patents.[61][62]

In 1933, RCA introduced an improved camera tube that relied on Tihanyi's charge storage principle.[63] Dubbed the "Iconoscope" by Zworykin, the new tube had a light sensitivity of about 75,000 lux, and thus was claimed to be much more sensitive than Farnsworth's image dissector.[citation needed] However, Farnsworth had overcome his power problems with his Image Dissector through the invention of a completely unique "multipactor" device that he began work on in 1930, and demonstrated in 1931.[64][65] This small tube could amplify a signal reportedly to the 60th power or better[66] and showed great promise in all fields of electronics. Unfortunately, a problem with the multipactor was that it wore out at an unsatisfactory rate.[67]

At the Berlin Radio Show in August 1931, Manfred von Ardenne gave a public demonstration of a television system using a CRT for both transmission and reception. However, Ardenne had not developed a camera tube, using the CRT instead as a flying-spot scanner to scan slides and film.[68] Philo Farnsworth gave the world's first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system, using a live camera, at the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia on 25 August 1934, and for ten days afterwards.[69][70] Mexican inventor Guillermo González Camarena also played an important role in early TV. His experiments with TV (known as telectroescopía at first) began in 1931 and led to a patent for the "trichromatic field sequential system" color television in 1940.[71] In Britain, the EMI engineering team led by Isaac Shoenberg applied in 1932 for a patent for a new device they dubbed "the Emitron",[72][73] which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the BBC. On 2 November 1936, a 405-line broadcasting service employing the Emitron began at studios in Alexandra Palace, and transmitted from a specially built mast atop one of the Victorian building's towers. It alternated for a short time with Baird's mechanical system in adjoining studios, but was more reliable and visibly superior. This was the world's first regular "high-definition" television service.[74]

The original American iconoscope was noisy, had a high ratio of interference to signal, and ultimately gave disappointing results, especially when compared to the high definition mechanical scanning systems then becoming available.[75][76] The EMI team, under the supervision of Isaac Shoenberg, analyzed how the iconoscope (or Emitron) produces an electronic signal and concluded that its real efficiency was only about 5% of the theoretical maximum.[77][78] They solved this problem by developing, and patenting in 1934, two new camera tubes dubbed super-Emitron and CPS Emitron.[79][80][81] The super-Emitron was between ten and fifteen times more sensitive than the original Emitron and iconoscope tubes and, in some cases, this ratio was considerably greater.[77] It was used for outside broadcasting by the BBC, for the first time, on Armistice Day 1937, when the general public could watch on a television set as the King laid a wreath at the Cenotaph.[82] This was the first time that anyone had broadcast a live street scene from cameras installed on the roof of neighboring buildings, because neither Farnsworth nor RCA would do the same until the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York City by RCA in 1939
Indian-head test pattern used during the black & white era before 1970. It was displayed when a TV station first signed on every day.

On the other hand, in 1934, Zworykin shared some patent rights with the German licensee company Telefunken.[83] The "image iconoscope" ("Superikonoskop" in Germany) was produced as a result of the collaboration. This tube is essentially identical to the super-Emitron.[citation needed] The production and commercialization of the super-Emitron and image iconoscope in Europe were not affected by the patent war between Zworykin and Farnsworth, because Dieckmann and Hell had priority in Germany for the invention of the image dissector, having submitted a patent application for their Lichtelektrische Bildzerlegerröhre für Fernseher (Photoelectric Image Dissector Tube for Television) in Germany in 1925,[84] two years before Farnsworth did the same in the United States.[85] The image iconoscope (Superikonoskop) became the industrial standard for public broadcasting in Europe from 1936 until 1960, when it was replaced by the vidicon and plumbicon tubes. Indeed, it was the representative of the European tradition in electronic tubes competing against the American tradition represented by the image orthicon.[86][87] The German company Heimann produced the Superikonoskop for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games,[88][89] later Heimann also produced and commercialized it from 1940 to 1955;[90] finally the Dutch company Philips produced and commercialized the image iconoscope and multicon from 1952 to 1958.[87][91]

American television broadcasting, at the time, consisted of a variety of markets in a wide range of sizes, each competing for programming and dominance with separate technology, until deals were made and standards agreed upon in 1941.[92] RCA, for example, used only Iconoscopes in the New York area, but Farnsworth Image Dissectors in Philadelphia and San Francisco.[93] In September 1939, RCA agreed to pay the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation royalties over the next ten years for access to Farnsworth's patents.[94] With this historic agreement in place, RCA integrated much of what was best about the Farnsworth Technology into their systems.[93] In 1941, the United States implemented 525-line television.[95][96] Electrical engineer Benjamin Adler played a prominent role in the development of television.[97][98]

The world's first 625-line television standard was designed in the Soviet Union in 1944 and became a national standard in 1946.[99] The first broadcast in 625-line standard occurred in Moscow in 1948.[100] The concept of 625 lines per frame was subsequently implemented in the European CCIR standard.[101] In 1936, Kálmán Tihanyi described the principle of plasma display, the first flat panel display system.[102][103]
Color
Main article: Color television

The basic idea of using three monochrome images to produce a color image had been experimented with almost as soon as black-and-white televisions had first been built. Although he gave no practical details, among the earliest published proposals for television was one by Maurice Le Blanc, in 1880, for a color system, including the first mentions in television literature of line and frame scanning.[104] Polish inventor Jan Szczepanik patented a color television system in 1897, using a selenium photoelectric cell at the transmitter and an electromagnet controlling an oscillating mirror and a moving prism at the receiver. But his system contained no means of analyzing the spectrum of colors at the transmitting end, and could not have worked as he described it.[105] Another inventor, Hovannes Adamian, also experimented with color television as early as 1907. The first color television project is claimed by him,[106] and was patented in Germany on 31 March 1908, patent № 197183, then in Britain, on 1 April 1908, patent № 7219,[107] in France (patent № 390326) and in Russia in 1910 (patent № 17912).[108]

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the world's first color transmission on 3 July 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with filters of a different primary color; and three light sources at the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate their illumination.[109] Baird also made the world's first color broadcast on 4 February 1938, sending a mechanically scanned 120-line image from Baird's Crystal Palace studios to a projection screen at London's Dominion Theatre.[110] Mechanically scanned color television was also demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in June 1929 using three complete systems of photoelectric cells, amplifiers, glow-tubes, and color filters, with a series of mirrors to superimpose the red, green, and blue images into one full color image.

The first practical hybrid system was again pioneered by John Logie Baird. In 1940 he publicly demonstrated a color television combining a traditional black-and-white display with a rotating colored disk. This device was very "deep", but was later improved with a mirror folding the light path into an entirely practical device resembling a large conventional console.[111] However, Baird was not happy with the design, and, as early as 1944, had commented to a British government committee that a fully electronic device would be better.

In 1939, Hungarian engineer Peter Carl Goldmark introduced an electro-mechanical system while at CBS, which contained an Iconoscope sensor. The CBS field-sequential color system was partly mechanical, with a disc made of red, blue, and green filters spinning inside the television camera at 1,200 rpm, and a similar disc spinning in synchronization in front of the cathode ray tube inside the receiver set.[112] The system was first demonstrated to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on 29 August 1940, and shown to the press on 4 September.[113][114][115][116]

CBS began experimental color field tests using film as early as 28 August 1940, and live cameras by 12 November.[117] NBC (owned by RCA) made its first field test of color television on 20 February 1941. CBS began daily color field tests on 1 June 1941.[118] These color systems were not compatible with existing black-and-white television sets, and, as no color television sets were available to the public at this time, viewing of the color field tests was restricted to RCA and CBS engineers and the invited press. The War Production Board halted the manufacture of television and radio equipment for civilian use from 22 April 1942 to 20 August 1945, limiting any opportunity to introduce color television to the general public.[119][120]

As early as 1940, Baird had started work on a fully electronic system he called Telechrome. Early Telechrome devices used two electron guns aimed at either side of a phosphor plate. The phosphor was patterned so the electrons from the guns only fell on one side of the patterning or the other. Using cyan and magenta phosphors, a reasonable limited-color image could be obtained. He also demonstrated the same system using monochrome signals to produce a 3D image (called "stereoscopic" at the time). A demonstration on 16 August 1944 was the first example of a practical color television system. Work on the Telechrome continued and plans were made to introduce a three-gun version for full color. However, Baird's untimely death in 1946 ended development of the Telechrome system.[121][122] Similar concepts were common through the 1940s and 1950s, differing primarily in the way they re-combined the colors generated by the three guns. The Geer tube was similar to Baird's concept, but used small pyramids with the phosphors deposited on their outside faces, instead of Baird's 3D patterning on a flat surface. The Penetron used three layers of phosphor on top of each other and increased the power of the beam to reach the upper layers when drawing those colors. The Chromatron used a set of focusing wires to select the colored phosphors arranged in vertical stripes on the tube.

One of the great technical challenges of introducing color broadcast television was the desire to conserve bandwidth, potentially three times that of the existing black-and-white standards, and not use an excessive amount of radio spectrum. In the United States, after considerable research, the National Television Systems Committee[123] approved an all-electronic Compatible color system developed by RCA, which encoded the color information separately from the brightness information and greatly reduced the resolution of the color information in order to conserve bandwidth. The brightness image remained compatible with existing black-and-white television sets at slightly reduced resolution, while color televisions could decode the extra information in the signal and produce a limited-resolution color display. The higher resolution black-and-white and lower resolution color images combine in the brain to produce a seemingly high-resolution color image. The NTSC standard represented a major technical achievement.
Color bars used in a test pattern, sometimes used when no program material is available.

Although all-electronic color was introduced in the U.S. in 1953,[124] high prices, and the scarcity of color programming, greatly slowed its acceptance in the marketplace. The first national color broadcast (the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade) occurred on 1 January 1954, but during the following ten years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white. It was not until the mid-1960s that color sets started selling in large numbers, due in part to the color transition of 1965 in which it was announced that over half of all network prime-time programming would be broadcast in color that fall. The first all-color prime-time season came just one year later. In 1972, the last holdout among daytime network programs converted to color, resulting in the first completely all-color network season.

Early color sets were either floor-standing console models or tabletop versions nearly as bulky and heavy; so in practice they remained firmly anchored in one place. The introduction of GE's relatively compact and lightweight Porta-Color set in the spring of 1966 made watching color television a more flexible and convenient proposition. In 1972, sales of color sets finally surpassed sales of black-and-white sets. Color broadcasting in Europe was not standardized on the PAL format until the 1960s, and broadcasts did not start until 1967. By this point many of the technical problems in the early sets had been worked out, and the spread of color sets in Europe was fairly rapid. By the mid-1970s, the only stations broadcasting in black-and-white were a few high-numbered UHF stations in small markets, and a handful of low-power repeater stations in even smaller markets such as vacation spots. By 1979, even the last of these had converted to color and, by the early 1980s, B&W sets had been pushed into niche markets, notably low-power uses, small portable sets, or for use as video monitor screens in lower-cost consumer equipment. By the late 1980s even these areas switched to color sets.
Digital
Main article: Digital television
See also: Digital television transition

Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of audio and video by digitally processed and multiplexed signals, in contrast to the totally analog and channel separated signals used by analog television. Due to data compression digital TV can support more than one program in the same channel bandwidth.[125] It is an innovative service that represents the first significant evolution in television technology since color television in the 1950s.[126] Digital TV's roots have been tied very closely to the availability of inexpensive, high performance computers. It was not until the 1990s that digital TV became feasible.[127]

In the mid-1980s, as Japanese consumer electronics firms forged ahead with the development of HDTV technology, the MUSE analog format proposed by NHK, a Japanese company, was seen as a pacesetter that threatened to eclipse U.S. electronics companies' technologies. Until June 1990, the Japanese MUSE standard, based on an analog system, was the front-runner among the more than 23 different technical concepts under consideration. Then, an American company, General Instrument, demonstrated the feasibility of a digital television signal. This breakthrough was of such significance that the FCC was persuaded to delay its decision on an ATV standard until a digitally based standard could be developed.

In March 1990, when it became clear that a digital standard was feasible, the FCC made a number of critical decisions. First, the Commission declared that the new ATV standard must be more than an enhanced analog signal, but be able to provide a genuine HDTV signal with at least twice the resolution of existing television images.(7) Then, to ensure that viewers who did not wish to buy a new digital television set could continue to receive conventional television broadcasts, it dictated that the new ATV standard must be capable of being "simulcast" on different channels.(8)The new ATV standard also allowed the new DTV signal to be based on entirely new design principles. Although incompatible with the existing NTSC standard, the new DTV standard would be able to incorporate many improvements.

The final standards adopted by the FCC did not require a single standard for scanning formats, aspect ratios, or lines of resolution. This compromise resulted from a dispute between the consumer electronics industry (joined by some broadcasters) and the computer industry (joined by the film industry and some public interest groups) over which of the two scanning processes—interlaced or progressive—would be best suited for the newer digital HDTV compatible display devices.[128] Interlaced scanning, which had been specifically designed for older analogue CRT display technologies, scans even-numbered lines first, then odd-numbered ones. In fact, interlaced scanning can be looked at as the first video compression model as it was partly designed in the 1940s to double the image resolution to exceed the limitations of the television broadcast bandwidth. Another reason for its adoption was to limit the flickering on early CRT screens whose phosphor coated screens could only retain the image from the electron scanning gun for a relatively short duration.[129] However interlaced scanning does not work as efficiently on newer display devices such as Liquid-crystal (LCD), for example, which are better suited to a more frequent progressive refresh rate.[128]

Progressive scanning, the format that the computer industry had long adopted for computer display monitors, scans every line in sequence, from top to bottom. Progressive scanning in effect doubles the amount of data generated for every full screen displayed in comparison to interlaced scanning by painting the screen in one pass in 1/60 second, instead of two passes in 1/30 second. The computer industry argued that progressive scanning is superior because it does not "flicker" on the new standard of display devices in the manner of interlaced scanning. It also argued that progressive scanning enables easier connections with the Internet, and is more cheaply converted to interlaced formats than vice versa. The film industry also supported progressive scanning because it offered a more efficient means of converting filmed programming into digital formats. For their part, the consumer electronics industry and broadcasters argued that interlaced scanning was the only technology that could transmit the highest quality pictures then (and currently) feasible, i.e., 1,080 lines per picture and 1,920 pixels per line. Broadcasters also favored interlaced scanning because their vast archive of interlaced programming is not readily compatible with a progressive format. William F. Schreiber, who was director of the Advanced Television Research Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1983 until his retirement in 1990, thought that the continued advocacy of interlaced equipment originated from consumer electronics companies that were trying to get back the substantial investments they made in the interlaced technology.[130]

Digital television transition started in late 2000s. All governments across the world set the deadline for analog shutdown by 2010s. Initially the adoption rate was low, as the first digital tuner-equipped TVs were costly. But soon, as the price of digital-capable TVs dropped, more and more households were converting to digital televisions. The transition is expected to be completed worldwide by mid to late 2010s.