Prime Time 4, Coursebook

3 First in colour! Reading: The history of television a) Read the article on the history of television and match the pictures with the text. Draw lines. ci38bk 2 Unlike many other inventions in the history of mankind, the TV had many inventors instead of just one. Inventors from all over the world had been working on the idea of moving pictures on a screen since the 1830s, but the first real television set wasn’t built until the early 20 th century. Five men are mostly associated with the invention we know today. Among them, a German named Paul Nipkow, invented the first rotating disk that allowed pictures to be sent over wire in 1884. John Baird from Scotland became famous when he made possible the first moving pictures that were televised in Europe in 1924. He showed a human face on a screen, and later, during World War II invented the first colour picture tube. The American Charles Jenkins invented a mechanical television called “radiovision” which also showed one of the first moving images worldwide in 1923. He also created the first television station in North America. Vladimir Zworykin from Russia invented the cathode ray tube, named Kinescope . Before the Kinescope, the television systems had been mechanical – now they were electronic devices. Philo Farnsworth, an American farmboy, finally discovered a way to show images on a screen with the use of 60 horizontal lines in 1929, which made the picture clearer. It wasn’t until the 1950s that colour TVs were widely available and the television had become a typical household item in more than half of American homes. And then, in 1956 people didn’t even have to get up anymore to change the channel: the remote control had been invented. 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 rotating disk image on screen light 1 2 7 4 5 6 40 5 Unit Television and streaming forty Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv