A Scotsman, John Logie Baird, was regarded as the father of television. His first transmitted pictures were shown in 1926. They were in black and white and of low definition.
In 1936, the first medium definition public television service was founded by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in London, England. They set an international standard transmission rate of 625 lines, at 25 frames per second. This standardisation is still adhered to by most countries, with the exception of North America, South America, and Japan.
One the first colour programmes was broadcast in Great Britain in 1971, ironically, the vast majority of the audience saw the transmission in black and white.
All of the colours which appear on our television screens are made up from three colours: red, green, and blue. Television images are transmitted via radio waves, and arrive at our television sets on a single line. All of the information for each television picture, is mixed together for transmission and decoded into separate colour and image components by the television set. Once the information has been decoded, it is used to drive a set of colour guns. These guns fire an electron stream at the phosphors on the rear of the tube. The electron stream is electromagnetically steered by magnets. The beam scans across the screen from left to right, and down the screen from top to bottom building the picture as it goes.
Many countries are currently working on new High Definition (HDTV) standards for television, sets are already available in Japan, these offer photo-realistic images which are quite stunning when compared to existing TV pictures.
