When was the first television broadcast?

The first public television demonstration or broadcast was given by the British inventor John Logie Baird (1888-1946) in 1926 at the Royal Institution in London. Twenty years earlier Baird had up a small laboratory at Hastings to study the problem of “seeing by wireless.”

Experimental television broadcast were made by the British Broadcasting Corporation between 1929 and 1935. The pictures were formed of only 30 to 100 lines and flickered badly. It was obvious that a method of high-definition, with more scanning lines, was badly needed.

Research in the United States made possible an increase to 343 lines, and other improvements quickly followed. In November, 1935, the first high-definition television service in the world began with the opening of a B.B.C. station at Alexandra Palace, London, using 405 scanning lines. British television continued with 405 lines until 1964, but now uses the international 625-line standard.

The United States began regular television broadcasting in 1941, but the Second World War held back other countries, and television services did not become widespread until 1950s.

Although the first colour television transmission was given by Baird in 1928, its use did not become general until 1954 in the United States, 1960 in Japan and 1967 in Britain, Germany, France, Russia and other countries.