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The Terrific Transformation of Television
There are hundreds of satellite and cable channels that are available at the flick of a switch and if you tire of these, you are able to pop in a DVD and watch your favourite movie at any time you choose. When your parents were young, they probably only had a few television programmes they could watch. Every day the channel would show a handful of programmes for kids, such as the BBC's Pinky & Perky or Blue Peter (above), and then after that it was back to grown-up television! In the UK in 1930, the BBC began to produce regular televised transmissions, and in the USA in 1933 there were twice weekly television programs being shown by a station in Iowa. There surely were not many viewers because this was during the Great Depression, and even by 1936, there were only 200 TV sets in America. In 1937, the BBC began high definition broadcasts and CBS was busy at work developing a large television station. The USA then became the country where television became very popular and where many television channels were being started. In 1946, a colour television was invented that used an interior spinning wheel with blue, red, and green sections. By 1948 over a million American homes had television sets but the cost was still very expensive. By 1967, many of the shows were being broadcast in colour but most homes still had black and white television sets. Some people even bought a piece of multicoloured plastic that would stick to the screen because of the static electricity. The plastic was blue at the top, red and pink in the middle and green at the bottom and was supposed to give them the look of colour television for one dollar! In 1969, the first transmission of televised signals was broadcast from the moon when the first manned spacecraft landed. On 20th of July 20th over 600 million people world-wide, many staying up late at night, watched the event. Yes, a lot of the viewers really expected to see some sort of Moon creature! By 1972 about half of the home televisions in are now colour TV sets, and the first of the Giant screen projection TVs is also introduced to the public market. Dolby surround sound was first available for televisions in 1982, and Direct Broadcast Satellite service made its debut in America in 1983. By 1996, statistics showed an estimated billion TVs in use around the world. Since 1996, satellite transmissions have continued to add more channels and programs and televisions have been converted to HD (high definition) models. Technology has made Plasma, LCD and HDMI TV sets available and new features continue to be added each year to make television viewing a more exciting adventure.
This is an original news article © The Kids Window
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