History of Television

Telecommunications is the word we use for the science and technology of sending messages using electricity.This includes the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and computers. These instruments change information into signals that are sent over long distances, through wires, or through optical fibers, or by radio waves, or satellite. The information can be almost anything--voices, music, pictures, words, or computer data and it arrives almost immediately.

Read the history of telecommunication and how television became the world’s most popular form of entertainment.

History of Telecommunications | Kids Work!

Episode 1

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Grades: 3 4 5

Telegraph and Telephone | Kids Work!

Episode 2

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PICTURED ABOVE: Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the telephone The first reliable electronic telegraph machines were built in the 1830s when an American named Samuel Morse developed a telegraph...

History of Radio | Kids Work!

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The next advancement in telecommunications was radio, the first wireless mode of communication. Radios send messages by radio waves instead of wires. German scientist Heinrich Hertz proved the...

Television Invention | Kids Work!

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Television is a way of sending and receiving moving images and sounds over wires or through the air by electrical impulses. The big breakthrough in technology was the ability to send sound and...

Broadcast Television | Kids Work!

Episode 5

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The first American television broadcast was exhibited at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. The fair’s theme was “Worlds of Tomorrow” and RCA set up twelve televisions, which broadcast events...

Digital Television | Kids Work!

Episode 6

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Grades: 3 4 5

We have come a long way and now, “The sky’s the limit.” We have regular television, known as terrestrial (land), cable which brings signals through underground cable, microwave signal transmission...