15 Technologies That Changed The Way We Watch Television

It’s easy to take for granted how important your television really is. It revolutionized how information spreads, empowered the common man and helped end practices that governments could no longer keep under wraps.

But in the bustle of life, it’s easy to lose sight of the TV advances that gave society so much power. Consider this article an eye opener; below you’ll find some of the most important (and oft-forgotten) gadgetry that brought TV to where it is today…

1. Mechanical TV

The mechanical TV is the forefather of today’s plasmas, LCDs, tube sets and everything else for that matter. They came onto the scene a full quarter of a century before the first electronic TV started frying brain matter. Back then, the entire family would sit down and catch the program on a “peephole set” that sat on the kitchen table. Source.

2. Cathode Ray TV

The Cathode Ray Tube, or CRT, paved the road for today’s television technology. Its technical underpinnings were ingenious for the time, leveraging negative electrodes captured in a gas-filled tube to display images. Alas, the LCD killed the CRT by slashing away TV set size and cranking up image quality. Source.

3. Color TV

RCA gave us color TV (thank you RCA!). The work ran from 1946 until 1950, finishing in time for the color-drenched hippy years. Their design wasn’t the first to be proposed though; two previous inventors had patented the basic idea but failed to make their systems work. Source.

4. Remote Control

1950 is one year that should never be forgotten, because it gave us the remote control. Zenith Radio Corp. produced the first one, a cable-attached device, and called it the “Lazy Bone”. It took 6 years for the remote control to go wireless, transforming itself into a gift from God… at least, for any man that likes sports. Source.

5. VCRs & VHS

VHS was all the rave by 1975 the JVC VCR hit the markets. It ground the Sony Betamax (a competing videocassette format) into dust, and VHS dominated until fairly recently when DVDs took over. For all intents and purposes, VHS is dead. Source.