The Nipkow scanning disc, invented in 1883, was a metal disc perforated by holes arranged in a spiral. When it revolved, the disc could scan a picture placed behind it. By rapidly changing the picture, the illusion of movement could be achieved and sent, via electric wires, from a transmitter to a receiver.

The present system of electronic television was proposed in detail by a Scotsman, A.A. Campbell-Swinton, in 1908. The many other early television schemes, however, envisioned transmission through wires, not over the air. Guglielmo Marconi's invention of the wireless radio (1895) spurred efforts toward over-the-air transmission of pictures, and in the late 1920s, radio, the motion picture, and television were combined.

Electronic television, which eliminated mechanical scanning discs at both the transmitting and receiving ends and substituted cathode ray tubes as receivers and transmitters, was developed simultaneously and independently in the early 1920s in the United States by Vladimir K. Zworykin and Philo T. Farnsworth, both of whom built on the tube developed in 1897 by Karl Ferdinand Braun in Germany.
Charles Francis Jenkins, the inventor of the modern theatrical motion picture projector, in 1928 began regular broadcasts of crude radiomovies in Washington, D.C., using motion-picture film as a source.
John Logie Baird in 1926 developed a similar mechanical TV system in Britain, which became the basis for the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) first regular television broadcasts. Also in the 1920s, Baird developed and demonstrated the first color television system and the first videodisc system, which was actually sold for several years at Selfridge's in London, where, as said before, began the first regular broadcasts of electronic tv for the public in 1936.

In 1884 the German Paul Nipkow invented a mechanical system of scanning an image through holes in a rotating disk, but not until 1926 did the Englishman John Logie Baird and the American Charles F. Jenkins actually demonstrate the transmission of images in halftone using the Nipkow disk.

The development of electronic methods began in 1897 when the German Ferdinand Braun produced the first cathode-ray tube, the ancestor of the picture tube.
In 1907 the Russian Boris Rosing suggested the use of Braun's tube to reproduce television images. Using a rotating mirror drum for scanning, Rosing actually transmitted crude geometrical shapes but was unable to reproduce halftone images.

By the early 1930s experimental broadcasts of black-and-white halftone images, composed of 343 scanning lines, were conducted by engineers of the Radio Corporation of America (now RCA).
By 1935, English engineers had developed a broadcast system using 405 scanning lines.

The first telecasts regularly scheduled for the public began in London in 1936 using this system. Experimental broadcasts using 441-line images began in New York that same year, but not until 1941 did the Federal Communications Commission authorize public broadcasting in the United States using 525-line images. This effort was held in abeyance during World War II. After the war black-and-white broadcasting developed rapidly in the United States, England, France, and Germany. One million receivers were in use in America by 1949, 10,000,000 by 1951, and more than 100,000,000 by 1975.

In 1938 the Frenchman George Valensi proposed the general principle of a color system that would serve black-and-white receivers.
In 1930 an American, Frank Gray, invented the technique of frequency interleaving, but not until 1949 was the concept of transmitting a luminance signal and a chrominance signal interleaved in the channel first publicly proposed.

Work on such a system had taken place in the laboratories of several U.S. companies. To coordinate this work, in 1950 the National Television System Committee (NTSC) was convened. The committee clearly recognized that the new color service would have to be compatible with the existing black-and-white service so that the color telecasts would be receivable by the 25 million black-and-white receivers then in use.
By 1953 the NTSC had drawn up the detailed specifications of what has since been known as the NTSC compatible color system. Authority to broadcast color programs using this system was given by the Federal Communications Commission in 1954.

For the ensuing decade color receivers were not purchased in substantial numbers until 1964. Minor variations have subsequently been introduced in the color-television systems serving Europe and rest of the world, but the basic principles are those of the NTSC system.

One of the more notable advances in television technology since the advent of color television is the imminent availability of digital television systems. Digital electronics, derived from the computer industry, has already been applied to sound recording and reproduction and is currently being developed for the home television market. Digital television sets will convert incoming broadcast signals into the form of digital pulses, enabling the visual and audio information to be processed more precisely before being reconverted to analog form for display on the screen. Such sets will eventually also be able to display several channels at once and to freeze a desired picture frame for close-up inspection, as well as providing clearer images and eliminating various reception problems such as double-image ghosts.

Also in the research and development stage in the early 1980s are flat-screen television sets that could be hung on the wall. Very small flat-screen black-and-white sets employing liquid crystal technology appeared in the early 1980s, and a hand-held color set of this nature was introduced in 1984.

Digital devices are already standard in the broadcast industry for such processes as editing, special effects, and titling. Many of these digital effects are now available for consumers in advanced video recorders (known generically as Super-VHS) and camcorders. Both incorporate digital circuitry capable of producing elaborate effects - zoom, picture-in-picture, digital art simulations, and many others - along with a sharper TV image.
The compact disc, at first available only for audio, has extended its reach to include short video sequences (CD-V), and may eventually replace videotape as the prime medium for TV recording, in the form of the erasable laserdisc.

Many of the basic principles and designs for video devices and products originated in the United States and Europe - for example, the videotape recorder, video cameras, and video display terminals. Their execution and production, however, have increasingly moved to the Far East, particularly Japan. Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese firms produce almost all black-and-white tv sets and a large percentage of color sets, although most of them have established final assembly plants in the United States, largely as a result of U.S. restrictions against imports of finished products.

In the home VCR field, the situation is quite different. The first successful home video recorder was developed in Japan, and virtually all VCRs since then have been designed and manufactured there. Even industrial video equipment, such as that made for television stations, increasingly is coming from Japanese firms.

In the decade of the 1950s television threw the motion picture industry into a deep depression as people stayed home to watch the free entertainment that tv provided.
The movies fought back with 3D, color, Cinerama, and CinemaScope, and for a time, they managed to hold their own. But with the coming of the VCR and the videodisc player, both of which made movies easily and cheaply available for home viewing, the industry was pushed into another crisis. In response, motion picture producers are using videocassettes to sell their products. Within a matter of months - sometimes weeks - after a film's theatrical premiere, it may show up on videocassette. Shortly after its cassette debut, it may appear on one of the new pay-per-view cable services.

Thus, movies are now made with the small-screen audience as well as theatergoers in mind. Video techniques are now used in the production and editing of movies, many producers shooting movies simultaneously with video and film cameras for the greater flexibility in editing permitted by electronic recording. In some cases, features are made on videotape and then transferred to film. With the development of high-definition television (HDTV), which will provide the same detail as a 35-millimeter film, even the distribution of motion pictures promises to change. In Japan, experimental simultaneous distribution of feature films by satellite in high-definition video to hundreds of theaters is planned, with video projectors replacing photographic film equipment in the projection rooms.

In the U.S. if video has affected theatrical entertainment, the new video media have also had a strong effect on the original video medium, broadcast television. The competition of cable and the VCR for the time and attention of audiences, and the wide variety of choice now available, have reduced the audiences of the broadcast television networks and thus their advertising revenues.

For the future, it seems inevitable that video will increase its presence and influence. Some significant factors should be the improvement in pictures through the adoption of high-definition standards; the increasing integration of the computer with the visual media, for more interactive forms of entertainment, education, and training; and the availability to vastly increased numbers of persons of the means of video production - especially, the camcorder and related devices - which could make creating for the the electronic visual arts almost as widespread as setting pen or brush to paper or canvas.