IPL, world cup fever hits India, again. Imagine this: your favourite team is on the ground in the finals- one wicket remaining, 3 runs to
win, 1 ball to go. God forbid, but what’d be your emotion if the TV stopped
working at that moment? Well, for the love of the game, there would be pure
anger. Television has become such an integral part of our lives that we often
forget that it’s just a screen, not a series of actions actually unfolding in
front of us but miles away, sometimes thousands of miles away. It’s hard to
imagine life without our idiot boxes, which were conceived more than 100 years
ago.
A little-difficult-to-digest fact it that one of the
first televisions made in 1907 was not completely electronic- it was
electromechanical. In 1911, one of the very first television transmissions was
done using mirror drums and CRT technology that used selenium cells. Due to the
lagging nature of the cells, moving pictures were not possible back then. By
1927, CRT technology matured and by 1950s, television were being put to
practical use. With the help of camera and recording technologies, shows
started airing.
Television changed a
lot of things. Advertisements were no longer served only on paper. A whole new
generation spruced up which didn’t know how it felt not being able to see
something ‘live’. Fast forward to today and we have multiple channels and an
abundance of content to consume. The entertainment industry as we know it is a
child of the television.
