Shirley Temple

Shirley Temple was born on April 23, 1928, in Santa Monica, California, the third child of homemaker Gertrude Temple and bank worker George Temple.

Temple in Glad Rags to Riches (1933)

FILM CAREER

Shirley Temple made her on-screen debut at the age of 3, when she and a handful of other toddlers starred in the 1932 satire series Baby Burlesks. The kids wore adult clothing on the top and diapers fastened with large safety pins on the bottom, and their roles included prostitutes and World War I soldiers.  In her 1988 autobiography Temple described the series as "a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence".

The 1934 comedy drama movie Bright Eyes was the first film to be written and developed specifically for Shirley Temple, and the first in which her name was raised above the title. The movie featured her singing her best known musical number, "On the Good Ship Lollipop."

Movie poster for Bright Eyes. Wikipedia

Shirley Temple was honored in February 1935 with a special "pint-sized" Academy Award for her contributions on nine feature films and two shorts in 1934.

Shirley Temple stopped believing in Santa Claus at the age of 6 after her mother took her to see him in a department store and he asked for her autograph.

She was the top U.S. box-office draw from 1935 to 1938, beating out Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, and Joan Crawford.

Shirley Temple received received 135,000 presents for her ninth birthday in 1937. The film star's gifts included a baby kangaroo from Australia and a prize Jersey calf from schoolchildren in Oregon in the U.S. The calf was named "Shirley Temple" in her honor, and she even visited the calf on her birthday.

She was so famous they named a drink after her: The Shirley Temple cocktail is traditionally made with ginger ale and grenadine, topped with a maraschino cherry.

During Temple’s reign as a child star, because she was very physically coordinated and never seen missing baby teeth, there was a lingering rumor in Europe that she was actually an adult dwarf in disguise. The gossip was put to rest after the Vatican sent Father Silvio Massante to verify that Temple was indeed a little girl.

Her mother Gertrude was said to have done her hair for each movie, with every hairstyle having precisely 56 golden curls styled laboriously.

Temple's first on-screen kiss was in the 1942 comedy-drama Miss Annie Rooney when she played a modest girl who falls in love with a rich young man, played by Dickie Moore. He bestowed a kiss on her left cheek.

Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple starred together in That Hagen Girl in 1947.

Wikipedia

POST MOVIE CAREER

Shirley Temple retired from acting at age 22 and became active in the Republican Party in California.

Shirley Temple in 1948

In 1967 Temple campaigned to fill an unexpired California congressional term. Her support of the Vietnam War and conservative Republicanism cost her the election, however.

However, her public career was not over, though. When Henry Kissinger overheard Temple talking about South West Africa at a party, he was surprised how knowledgeable she was. In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Temple to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. 

Nixon's successor, Gerald R. Ford, made Temple U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, a position she held from December 1974 to July 1976. 

Temple (far left) with First Lady Pat Nixon in Ghana, 1972

Later, Ford made Temple the first female Chief of Protocol of the United States. She held that title for half a year and was then in charge of arrangements for President Jimmy Carter's inauguration and inaugural ball.

Shirley Temple hated her namesake cocktail. She reportedly found it too sweet and even once said that it tasted like "liquid candy." In 1988, Temple sued the company that was bottling and selling a version of the drink called "Shirley Temple's Ginger Ale." She argued that the company was using her name without her permission and that the drink was not a true representation of her taste. Temple won the lawsuit and the company was forced to stop selling the drink.

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed Temple as U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

Temple in 1990

PRIVATE LIFE

Shirley Temple married her first husband, John Agar on September 19, 1945. They'd met through Agar's sister, who was a schoolmate of the child actress. The bride wore a traditionally styled satin wedding gown, while John Agar was in military uniform. The ceremony took place in front of 500 guests.

Agar and Temple had a daughter together, Linda Susan Agar.  However, the marriage floundered due to Agar's drinking and pressures of their high public profile. The two were divorced on December 7, 1950.

John Agar

Temple met her second husband, Charles Black, a San Francisco businessman in Honolulu and they married a week after her divorce on December 16, 1950.

Black had never seen any of Temple's movies before they got together. The pair remained a couple until his death from complications of a bone marrow disease in 2005.

HEALTH AND DEATH

Shirley Temple was president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and a co-founder of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, a position that took her around the world. She was in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on MS Society business in 1968 when the Soviet Union's Red Army rolled into crush attempted democratic reform.

Temple had breast cancer in the early 1970s and had a mastectomy. She announced the results of the operation on radio and television and in a February 1973 article for the magazine McCall's. 

She was a lifelong smoker but Temple avoided displaying her habit in public because she did not want to set a bad example for her fans.

Shirley Temple died on February 10, 2014 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia at her Woodside, California home, at the age of 85.

Sources About.com, LA Times

Temple

A temple is generally a place of religious worship where people may perform religious rituals, ceremonies, and pray. The word is typically used for such buildings belonging to all faiths where a more specific term such as church, mosque or synagogue is not generally used in English. These include ancient religions such as the Ancient Egyptian religion as well as modern religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

A Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Pixiebay

"Temple" comes from the latin word "templum", which constituted a sacred roman precinct as defined by a priest, or augur.

The Göbekli Tepe is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, approximately 12 kilometres (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. It includes circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars with artwork carved on them – the world's oldest known megaliths – which date back around 11,500 years. The 10 ton pillars were transported 500 meters without the use of the wheel which had yet to be invented. 

The Göbekli Tepe was an ancient temple more sophisticated then Stonehenge predating it by 6000 years. Making Stonehenge closer to us in years than the creators of Gobekli Tepe were to Stonehenge.

Göbekli Tepe, Şanlıurfa. By Teomancimit 

The Sumerian temple was a small brick house that the god was supposed to visit periodically. It was ornamented so as to recall the reed houses built by the earliest Sumerians in the valley. This house, however, was set on a brick platform, which became larger and taller as time progressed until the platform at Ur (built around 2100 BC) was 150 by 200 feet (45 by 60 meters) and 75 feet (23 meters) high.

These Mesopotamian temple platforms were called ziggurats, a word derived from the Assyrian ziqquratu, meaning "high." They were symbols in themselves; the ziggurat at Ur was planted with trees to make it represent a mountain. There the god visited the Earth, and the priests climbed to its top to worship.

In ancient Egypt temples of the gods were also used for medical purposes. Physicians and surgeons could receive training in these places, while the sick and infirm could receive treatment there.

The sacred ancient Egyptian temple of the jackal-headed god Anubis once held nearly 8 million mummified dogs in its catacombs.

The temple in Jerusalem was the only place where the Jews could offer sacrifices. It was the religious center for all Jews.

The first temple at Jerusalem was built by King Solomon around 950 BC. It took seven years to build, was dedicated to Yahweh, and housed the Ark of the Covenant. After this Jerusalem became the great sacred city of the Jews.

Artist's interpretation of the first Temple in Jerusalem. By Israel Truths 

Solomon's first temple was totally destroyed by the Babylonians led by King Nebuchadnezzar on the 9th day of Av, 586 BC.

Seventy years later, the Persian King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple. The second temple was built between 520 and 515 BC by the remnant of exiles who had returned from Babylon to Israel. It was completed on March 12, 515 BC, but wasn't much to look at. "Is it not in your sight as nothing?" the Lord asked them.

Herod the Great built the third temple in 19 BC. It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD along with the rest of Jerusalem.

Model of Jerusalem, Herod's Temple

The Wailing Wall is the surviving part of the western wall of the platform of the enclosure of the Temple of Herod, so-called by tourists because of the oriental chanting style of the Jews in their prayers there.

Asclepius was a much-worshiped ancient Greek god of medicine. Temples to Asclepius were erected throughout the ancient Mediterranean. and his sanctuary at Epidaurus was, in extent, the rival of such major cult sites as the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia and Apollo at Delphi. The sick were admitted there and their treatment was then based on the dreams they experienced while sleeping in the temple overnight.

The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the most important temple in ancient Rome, was dedicated on September 13, 509 BC. It was located on the Capitoline Hill and was considered the center of Roman state religion, serving as a symbol of the Roman Republic's religious and political power. The temple was dedicated to Jupiter, the king of the gods, and his companions Juno and Minerva, forming the Capitoline Triad.

The Roman temple to Venus was dedicated by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the Third Samnite War on August 19, 295 BC. The temple was dedicated to Venus Obsequens,("Indulgent Venus"). It was located near the Aventine Hill in Rome.

The temple was built after Fabius Gurges vowed to build it to Venus if he was victorious in the Battle of Sentinum. The battle was a major victory for the Romans, and it helped to secure their dominance over the Samnites.

The temple of Venus Obsequens was a small, modest temple. It was built in the Tuscan style, with four columns across the front. The temple housed a statue of Venus Obsequens, which was said to have been brought from Greece by Fabius Gurges.

The temple of Venus Obsequens was destroyed in the 4th century AD. The ruins of the temple are still visible today, and they offer a glimpse into the religious life of ancient Rome.

The Mayan people constructed their temples in a way that a handclap at the base of the temple produces an echo that sounds like the call of the sacred Quetzal bird. For them the bird was a messenger of the gods.

There are five temples in Kyoto, Japan that have blood stained ceilings. The ceilings are made from the floorboards of a castle where warriors killed themselves after a long hold-off against an army.

Source Encyclopedia Britannica

Temperature

Temperature is a physical quantity expressing how hot or cold something is. To measure temperature more accurately, a thermometer can be used.

Pixabay

HISTORY

In 1714 A Dutch-German-Polish physicist, Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit constructed the mercury thermometer, the first sealed thermometer. Ten years he introduced the first temperature scale.

In the original Fahrenheit scale, the lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the temperature of a solution of brine made from equal parts of ice, salt and water. Further limits were established as the melting point of ice (32 °F) and his estimate of the average human body temperature by placing the thermometer under the arm or in the mouth (96 °F, about 2.6 °F less than the modern value).

When Swedish scientist Anders Celsius first proposed the scale of temperatures named after him on December 25, 1741 zero was the boiling point of water and 100 its freezing point.

Celsius' suggestion of the freezing and boiling points of water as thermometer fixed reference points became popular and these fixed points (by now reversed from Celsius' original proposals) were adopted in the UK by a committee of the Royal Society led by Henry Cavendish in 1776.

Side-by-side diagrams of centigrade and fahrenheit thermometers

For scientific use, "Celsius" is the term usually used, with "centigrade" remaining in decreasing use in English-speaking countries. It was not until February 1985 that the weather forecasts issued by the BBC switched from "centigrade" to "Celsius."

By the end of the 20th century, Fahrenheit was used as the official temperature scale only in the United States (including its unincorporated territories), its freely associated states in the Western Pacific, the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands and Liberia. All other countries in the world now use the Celsius scale,

RECORDS

The lowest natural temperature ever directly recorded at ground level on Earth is −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F;) at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica on July 21, 1983.

The coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth is the Siberian village of Oymyakon (pop. 4000) in Russia, where Winter temperatures average -58. The temperature reached -68°C (-90°F) in 1933 (the coldest ever recorded outside Antarctica).

Children are still allowed to go school in Oymyakon if it is warmer than −55.0 °C (−67.0 °F).

The coldest temperature ever recorded in North America belongs to Alaska, at a bone-chilling -89.4°F (-67.8°C). This record was set on February 3, 1971, at Prospect Creek, a remote weather station located north of the Brooks Range.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in the contiguous United States (the 48 states excluding Alaska and Hawaii) is a chilling -70°F (-56.6°C). This extreme coldness was measured at Rogers Pass, Montana on January 20, 1954.

The greatest recorded change in temperature within a 24-hour period occurred in Loma, Montana on January 14-15, 1972, when a downslope chinook wind event caused the temperature to rise from -54°F at 9 am on January 14th to 49°F by 8 am the next day. This resulted in a temperature swing of 103°F (57.2°C)."

In Spearfish, South Dakota on January 22, 1943 at 7:30 am, it was -4 °F (−20 °C), then two minutes later, the temperature rose up to 45 °F (7 °C). This is the fastest temperature change ever.

The highest temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth is 56.7°C (134.1°F), which was recorded on July 10, 1913, at Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley, California. This reading is the official record recognized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

However, there is another reading of 58°C (136.4°F) that was recorded on September 13, 1922, at El Azizia, Libya. This reading was not officially recognized by the WMO due to concerns about the accuracy of the measurement methods used.

The hottest place in the universe is a cluster of galaxies called RXJ1347; it was discovered in 2009 by the Japanese telescope Suzaku and has a constant temperature of 300 million Celsius degrees. Theoretically, 150°C (302°F) is the cut-off point for life—proteins fall apart and chemical reactions can't occur at that temperature.

The hottest known thing in the known universe is actually on Earth: the Large Hadron Collider can reach temperatures of 4 trillion Kelvin.

In 2012 scientists at the Hadron Collider formed a quark-gluon plasma and subsequently recorded the hottest temperature created by man, 5.5 trillion degrees celsius. The team smashed together lead ions at 99% light speed to create quark gluon plasma–a state of matter that filled the universe after the Big Bang.

Swedish skier Anna Bagenholm survived the lowest body temperature ever recorded at 56.7 F (13.7 C). She had been skiing in Norway's Kjolen Mountains when she fell through a frozen stream and became stuck for 80 minutes. Despite being clinically dead, she made a full recovery.

FUN TEMPERATURE FACTS 

The temperature in the shade is the actual air temperature. A thermometer in the sun will be inaccurate because the device absorbs the heat.

When he was president, Lyndon B. Johnson constantly asked the flight crew of Air Force One to change the temperature of the cabin. Eventually, they installed a fake control knob for him to 'control' the temperature himself. Johnson stopped complaining.

The temperature on the moon at the Apollo 11 landing site was 200ºF (93ºC).

According to a study in 2011, we are happiest when the temperature is 13.9C (57F).

The average temperature of a bee hive and the human body are the same.

At least one animal can survive cold approaching absolute zero - the tardigrade. Also known as the water bear, this microscopic being has been shown to be able to survive being frozen for several minutes at a mere 1 degree above absolute zero.

Television station and network

A television station is a commercial business or organization that transmits video content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's surface to television sets.

A television network is a network that provides television programming to many television stations.

Today, more than fifty national broadcasting networks exist in the US. The largest broadcast television networks are the traditional Big Three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC). Many other large networks exist, however, notably Fox and The CW which air original programming for two hours each night instead of three like the original "Big Three" do.

By ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW -Wikipedia

In 1928, WRGB (then W2XB) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, New York. It was popularly known as "WGY Television".

CBS's New York City station, W2XAB, began broadcasting the first regular seven-day television schedule in the United States on July 21, 1931. The station's first broadcast featured New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. W2XAB was an experimental station, and its broadcasts were limited to a small area of New York City. However, it is considered to be the first television station in the United States to broadcast a regular schedule of programs.

W2XAB was eventually granted a commercial license and became WCBS-TV on July 1, 1941. WCBS-TV is now one of the most-watched television stations in the United States. It is owned by the CBS Corporation and is affiliated with the CBS television network.

The world's first public television service was started from the BBC station at the Alexandra Palace, in North London, on November 2, 1936. Two competing systems, Marconi-EMI's 405-line system and John Logie Baird's 240-line system, were installed, each with its own broadcast studio and were transmitted on alternate weeks until the 405-line system was chosen in 1937. 

Alexandra Palace continued as the BBC's main transmitting center for London until 1956, interrupted only by the Second World War when the transmitter found an alternative use jamming German bombers' navigation systems. 

Alexandra Palace Wikipedia

NBC inaugurated its regularly scheduled television service in New York City in 1939, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New York World's Fair opening day ceremonial address.

RCA, originally the Radio Corporation of America, sold the NBC Blue radio network to Edward Noble for $8-million in 1943. Noble renamed the network the American Broadcasting Company, ABC. 

KTLA, Channel 5, in Hollywood, began operation as the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River in 1947.

Canada's first television station, CBFT-TV, opened in Montreal in 1952.

The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston in 1953.

Commercial television came to the United Kingdom when the television channel ITV went live for the first time on September 22, 1955 breaking the BBC's monopoly. The launch night broadcast to around 100,000 homes began at 7.15pm, with a four-minute trailer announcing "Commercial television is here!" The channel then showed a five-minute opening film about London and the history of British broadcasting. ITV then moved to a live broadcast from London’s Guildhall, where a gala dinner was being held to celebrate the start of independent television. The rest of ITV's schedule that night included an hour of drama excerpts, a variety show, a boxing fight, and news broadcasts. A five-minute religious program called Epilogue brought the night to a close at 11pm.

The first ever advert broadcast on ITV was for Gibbs toothpaste.

The world's first all-color tv station debuted in Chicago on April 15, 1956, when WMAQ-TV (also known as NBC Channel 5) became the world's first TV station to broadcast exclusively in color. The first color telecast from the station on that date was Wide, Wide World, which was transmitted to 110 NBC stations across the country. 

CNN was launched on June 1, 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner as a cable news channel. CNN is widely credited with introducing the concept of 24-hour news coverage. Its services are available to more than 1.5 billion people in over 212 countries and territories.

NBC, Fox, and ABC, who are seemingly TV rivals, are also co-owners of Hulu. 30% each, plus 10% owned by TBS.

Source BT 

Television show

A television show (or program) is any content viewed on a television set, excluding breaking news, commercials, or trailers.

HISTORY

The first television shows in the UK were experimental, sporadic broadcasts viewable only within a very short range from the BBC broadcast tower starting in the 1930s. The first piece of television drama ever to be produced in Britain was a production of Luigi Pirandello’s play The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, which was broadcast as a test by BBC to the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street in 1930.

The first ever TV show was broadcast by NBC/RCA on July 7, 1936. It was seen by only a few hundred people who had access to the new television. The first ever program featured newsreel items, as well as a variety show of sorts, which included female dancers performing a water lily dance, a fashion show and some comic bits. 

The BBC began transmitting a regular television service at 3pm on November 2, 1936 from a converted wing of the Alexandra Palace in London. They broadcast to a hundred very expensive television sets that had been bought by wealthy Londoners. After formal introductions and a news bulletin, the first show Here's Looking At You! was a hotpotch involving comedy dancers Buck and Bubbles, some jugglers, the BBC television orchestra and the singer Adele Dixon who performed a specially composed song. The show was retransmitted several times over the coming weeks, making them the first repeats.

In 1937 Marcel Boulestin became the world's first television cook when he presented the first of the Cooks Night Out programs on the BBC.

Meet the Press debuted on NBC on November 6, 1947. It is Network television's oldest show.

In 1948, the popular radio comedy-variety show Texaco Star Theater made the move to the television and became the first weekly televised variety show. It is remembered as the program that gave Milton Berle the nickname "Mr Television". The popularity of Texaco Star Theater demonstrated that TV was a stable, modern form of entertainment which could attract advertisers.

The first TV daytime soap opera, These Are My Children, was telecast from NBC in Chicago in 1949. 

The first all-black-cast variety show was presented on WENR-TV in Chicago in 1949. The show was called Happy Pappy.

In 1956, when African-Americans were rarely seen on television starring in acting roles let alone hosting, jazz pianist and singer Nat King Cole became the first black person to host a TV series with The Nat King Cole Show, which featured other black performers including Count Basie and Sammy Davis Jr.

Guyanese actor, musician, writer and poet Cy Grant was the first black person to be featured regularly on television in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, mostly due to his appearances on the BBC current affairs show Tonight.

Coronation Street is the world's longest-running television soap opera. It was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on December 9, 1960.

The first couple shown in bed together on prime time US TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

On July 20, 1969, an estimated 530 million people watched the live global broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing. This constituted around 14% of total population of the world at the time, despite the fact that the first moonwalk took place in the middle of the night in Europe.

On October 5, 1969, Fuji Television started an anime comedy series, Sazae-san, which is still on the air today and currently in production, making it the longest-running anime and non-soap opera scripted TV series in history.

The shortest run for a TV series was 11 minutes. In 1969, a sketch show called Turn-On, by the creator of Laugh-In, was deemed so risqué that at the first commercial break of the debut episode, the network announced it would no longer play the show and instead aired organ music over a black screen.

Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii, transmitted via satellite in 1973, broke records for the largest worldwide television audience in the history of the medium. The show was the most expensive entertainment special at the time, costing $2.5 million. Later released as a double album, it became one of Elvis' best selling releases of the '70s.

Roots, a mini-series based on the Alex Haley novel of that name became the most watched TV (non-comedic) drama program in history when it was aired on ABC-TV in 1977. The final episode was watched by 100 million viewers and an average of 80 million viewers watched each of the last seven episodes.

Wikipedia

In 1967 72% of American TV viewers watched Dr. Richard Kimbal catch up with the one-armed man on The Fugitive. It was a record proportion that stood until 76% watched Dallas to find out who shot J.R. on November 21, 1980.

M*A*S*H became the most watched television comedy or drama program in history, as the final original episode of the fictitious, but uncommonly real, 4077th M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) unit of the Korean War aired on February 28, 1983. An estimated 125-million people in the U.S. tuned in to see the broadcast on CBS.

M.A.S.H. cast Wikipedia

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson became the first network program to be telecast in stereo in 1984.

The Miami Vice soundtrack was already at the summit of the US album chart when the show's theme tune topped the Hot 100 on November 9, 1985. US chart history was made, as it was the first time a TV show generated both the US #1 single and album.

RECORDS

According to Nielsen Media Research, 4.7 billion viewers worldwide tuned into some of the television coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, making it the most watched TV broadcast of all time.

Talk and game show host Regis Philbin holds the world record for most hours on U.S. television: between 1958 and 2011, he racked up 16,746.50 hours in front of the camera--an average of one hour per day for 52 years.

The CCTV New Year's Gala, also known as the Spring Festival Gala, is broadcast annually on the eve of Chinese New Year. The Gala is recognized by Guinness World Records as the most-watched television show in the world, with one billion viewers in 2018.

On April 20, 2015, the second episode of the fifth season of the TV drama series Game of Thrones was broadcast simultaneously in 173 different territories around the world. This broke the previous record for the largest simulcast of a TV drama series, which was also held by Game of Thrones for its fourth season premiere, shown in 170 territories.  The episode, titled "The House of Black and White," was shown in 40 languages across a range of different platforms, including cable, satellite, and online streaming services. The event was organized by HBO, which produced the series, and it was a major achievement in the history of television broadcasting, demonstrating the global popularity and impact of the show.

As of December 25, 2017, 840 episodes of the British BBC science fiction television program Doctor Who have been broadcast. The show's high episode count resulted in Doctor Who holding the world record for the highest number of episodes for a science fiction program.

At a cost of £2.5 million (US$3.2 million), the opening scene for "The Holy Trinity", the first episode of The Grand Tour, was the most expensive scene in television history.

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May greeting the audience in The Grand Tour. Wikipedia

FUN FACTS

The creators, directors and writers for Parks and Rec, Bob’s Burgers, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Silicon Valley, Modern Family, The Good Place, American Dad, and Rick and Morty all got their big breaks on King of the Hill.

Television set

A television is a telecommunication medium that reproduces moving images and sound at a distance.

HISTORY OF THE TELEVISION SET

In 1878 Englishman William Crookes invented the Crookes tube, producing cathode rays. Seven years later in Germany, Paul Nipkow built a mechanical scanning device, the Nipkow disc, which was a rotating disc with a spiral pattern of holes in it. Both these inventions were important in the development of the early television sets.

The Russian inventor Boris Rosing's interest in television — or the "electric telescope", as he called it — started in 1897. He began experimenting with the Nipkow disc using the cathode ray tube as a receiver, eventually succeeding in transmitting some crude television pictures. Rosing filed a patent application in Russia on July 25, 1907.

The word "television" comes from the words "tele" (Greek for far away) and vision (sight). It first entered the English language in 1907 at the start of attempts to transmit moving images. 

By the 1920s, amplification had made the idea of television practical. However, some people were unimpressed with the idea. CP Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, said in 1920: "Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of it." 

Vladimir K. Zworykin, who had helped Rosing with his pioneering work on the television, invented in 1923 the iconoscope. It was the first practical video camera tube to be used in early television cameras. 

Iconoscope television cameras at NBC in 1937

John Logie Baird, a Scottish electrical engineer and a son of a Presbyterian minister, created his television prototype in a little village called Santa Cruz on the island of Trinidad where he was recovering from an illness. He called it a "televisor."

Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion at Selfridge's Department Store in London on March 25, 1925. Baird's early system used a large spinning disc through which a picture could be broken down into horizontal lines.

On October 2, 1925, John Logie Baird made the first successful transmission of a moving image of a human face by television. The face was that of his office boy, William Taynton, who was paid two shillings and sixpence for sitting in front of the hot TV transmitter. Before using a real person, Baird had experimented with a ventriloquist's dummy called Stooky Bill.

The prototype television set Baird used for his early experiments was made from an old hatbox, a pair of scissors, some darning needles, some bicycle light lenses, a used tea chest, wax and glue.

John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of a moving televised image in 1926 when he showed the face of his business partner Oliver Hutchinson. At the time Baird's crude television apparatus was able to receive transmitted moving images over a range of a few feet.

Below is a photograph of a moving image of Oliver Hutchinson produced by Baird's "televisor", as reported in The London Times, January 28, 1926.

Wikipedia

American inventor Philo Farnsworth built the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system using cathode ray tubes. On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, to a receiver in another room of his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. Within two years, Farnworth and  Vladimir Zworykin had perfected a new improved television system.

Vladimir Zworykin demonstrates electronic television (1929)

Even though Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of electronic television, was disappointed by electronic television for most of his life, he changed his mind the day he saw Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon thanks to his invention, telling his wife "this has made it all worthwhile".

Charles Francis Jenkins of Washington, D.C was a pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies. His businesses included Charles Jenkins Laboratories, which in 1928 became the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.

Ten years after John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in 1926 in London there were only 100 TVs in the world.

A 1938 television model with a 12-inch screen could be had for $445 — more than $7,200 in today's dollars.

John Logie Baird Baird gave a demonstration of color television in London in 1928, but it took several decades before the first successful system was adopted for broadcasting.

By 1940, John Logie Baird had started work on a fully electronic color system he called the "Telechrome". His demonstration on August 16, 1944 was the first example of a practical color television system whose pictures closely resembled Technicolor films. Work on the Telechrome continued but Baird's untimely death in 1946 ended development of his color television system. 

The live image of Paddy Naismith below was used to demonstrate John Logie Baird's first all-electronic color television system. 

The first demonstration of small-screen color television in America was given by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1941. The TV failed miserably, since Radio Corporation of America (RCA) had pretty much wrapped up the patent process on color TV at the time.

CBS's mechanical color system was the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in 1950 and the company made the first color televisions available for sale to the general public the following year, but the product was discontinued less than month later.

December 30, 1953 marked the official launch date for compatible color TVs from the Admiral Corporation. These first compatible color TV sets by the Admiral corporation had a 15" screen and sold for about $1,175. 

RCA began commercial production of  color TV sets  on March 25, 1954, and 5,000 Model CT-100's were produced. Initially $1,000, its price was cut to $495 in August 1954. 

CT-100 at the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention playing Superman.

TV detector vans hit the British streets in February 1952 for the first time and found 150,000 homes hadn't paid their £2 licence fee.

On January 30, 1957 300 UK MPs and peers watched the first full length show produced in color in Britain. Sets were rigged up by the BBC in a committee room. TV broadcaster Sylvia Peters — in a green taffeta dress — was the announcer in the half-hour program. Guyanese musician and poet Cy Grant appeared in a vivid shirt and sang a calypso.

Sales of color TVs surpassed black-and-white sets for the first time in 1972.

The electronics giant Philips unveiled a new television, the Flat TV in 1996. It could be hung on a wall as if it were a painting.

Philips introduced the first plasma TV in 1997. It was only displayed in four Sears locations in the US and was priced at US$14,999, which included in-home installation. 

In 2004, the number of television sets in the UK overtook the number of people.

FUN TELEVISION FACTS

A small percentage of static on televisions is actually radioactive resonance from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago.

The "color bars" we see used on televisions are called SMPTE bars. These bars, which were created in 1951 and became widespread in 1978, are used to calibrate color and audio levels for taped recordings.

Rendition of SD SMPTE color bars By Denelson83 

St Clare of Assisi is patron saint of television as she once saw a vision as if projected on her wall. In the vision she saw and heard the Mass as clearly as if she had gone to the monastery chapel.

The idea that sitting too close to the television is bad for your eyes was started by a lamp manufacturer.

In 1997, a monkey was arrested in the African state of Benin for stealing a television aerial.

The average person in the UK watches just over four hours' television a day.

It has been calculated that the average American child sees about 13,000 deaths on television between the ages of five and 14.

One in every four Americans has appeared on TV.

Source Daily Express

Television broadcast

John Logie Baird transmitted the first television picture in 1925 in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London. It was the head of two ventriloquist's dummies named "James" and "Stooky Bill" (see picture below). 

Baird gave the first public display of television on January 26, 1926 in his Soho lab in front of members from the Royal Institution and a journalist from the London Times. He broadcast an image of the moving face of his business partner, Oliver Hutchinson through an apparatus he dubbed "the televisor". Although the pictures were small, measuring just 3.5 by 2 inches, the process was revolutionary.

A General Electric engineer, Ernst Alexanderson, made the first in-home television broadcast in the United States at his own home in Schenectady, New York in 1927.

The first long-distance public television broadcast in America took place on April 7, 1927, when a speech by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover was broadcast live from Washington DC to New York.  However, at the time television was not yet widely available, and the audience for the broadcast was limited to a small number of people who were able to pick up the signal.

John Logie Baird made the first transatlantic television broadcast between Britain and the USA in 1928 when signals transmitted from the Baird station in Coulson, Kent, were picked up by a receiver in Hartsdale, New York.

Though television was still in its experimental phase in 1928,  the medium's potential to sell goods was already predicted (see picture below). 

On September 30, 1928, the Irish actress Peggy O'Neil agreed to be "televised" as part of a demonstration of the Baird television system at the National Radio Exhibition outside London. For 30 minutes she told stories and sang the song "I'm a Little Bit Fonder of You." A couple years later, in 1930, she gave the first live broadcast interview at the Ideal Home Exhibition in Southampton.

CBS's New York City station, W2XAB, began broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the U. S. on July 21, 1931. 

Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York  by RCA in 1939

The first American political telecast took place on October 11, 1932 when the Democratic National Committee sponsored a program from a CBS television studio in New York City.  The program featured a speech by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for president at the time.

At the time, television was still a very new technology, and only a small percentage of Americans had televisions in their homes. However, the telecast of Roosevelt's speech was a significant event in the history of American politics, as it marked the first time that a presidential candidate had used television to communicate directly with the American people.

The first ever TV program was broadcast by NBC/RCA’s W2XBS in New York City on July 7, 1936. It originated from NBC’s first television studio and was watched by a group of NBC radio affiliate executives in the hopes of interesting them in being television affiliates as well. There were three sets in operation at the time, the most distant in Harrison, New Jersey.

The BBC began transmitting a regular television service at 3pm on November 2, 1936 from a converted wing of the Alexandra Palace in London. It was the world's first regular, public all-electronic "high-definition" television service. The BBC originally offered three hours of programming a day.

In 1939, the New York Times predicted that the television would fail because the average American family would not have enough time to sit around and watch it.

The first official, paid advertising to appear on American commercial television occurred on July 1, 1941, over New York station WNBT (now WNBC) before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. 

WNBT schedule for first week of commercial TV programming in the United States, July 1941

The abbreviation TV for television was first seen in 1948.

With a program broadcast from Calais, the BBC transmitted the first live TV pictures across the English Channel on August 27, 1950.

The first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco in 1951, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.

A television show was transmitted from the United States to Canada for the first time in 1953. The CBS Television production of Studio One was transmitted to CBLT-TV in Canada. 

Nippon Television broadcasted Japan's first television show, a variety show called Ohayo Nippon (Good Morning, Japan) on August 28, 1953. The first TV advertisement broadcast on NTV was for Seikosha clocks.

NTV quickly became a popular television station, and it helped to popularize television in Japan. In 1959, NTV broadcast the wedding of the Crown Prince (currently Emperor Emeritus Akihito), which was the first live coverage broadcast from Japan on color TV.

The first US national TV broadcast in color was the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1, 1954, but over the next dozen years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white. 

The first TV show ever to be put into reruns was The Lone Ranger. In the early 1950s, The Lone Ranger was so popular with the television audience that ABC, for a short period of time, ran it on late Friday nights for those who missed the earlier Thursday 7:30 p.m. broadcast.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are generally credited as the inventors of the rerun. All I Love Lucy (1951–57) episodes were recorded on a permanent, re-playable, high-quality medium, which made the rerun possible. It was first utilized during Ball's 1952-53 pregnancy.

St. Claire of Assisi, who died in 1253 AD, was named the Patron Saint of Television by Pope Pius XII in 1958, based on an incident in which she claimed the moving image and sound of a Catholic Mass had been miraculously projected on the wall of her room when she was too sick to attend. 

The first full color  television program in the world, publicly advertised, was broadcast in Mexico City by XHGC-TV, Channel 5 on February 8 1963, due to technical breakthrough advances made by Mexican Engineer Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena.  By that time, the Mexican government had adopted NTSC as the television color system.

In 1967 BBC2 screened four hours of live Wimbledon tennis as Britain's first color television broadcast. 

More than 400 million people viewed Our World on June 25, 1967. It was the first live, international satellite television production.

NBC-TV began a two-night showing of the motion picture, The Godfather on November 16, 1974. The film represented the highest price paid for a movie shown on television. NBC paid Paramount Pictures $10 million for the showing.

Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals, including the sound channel, using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier television technology, analog television, in which the video and audio are carried by analog signals. DirecTV in the U.S. launched the first commercial digital satellite platform in May 1994, using the Digital Satellite System (DSS) standard.

Digital TV arrived in the UK in 1998 on satellite from Sky and terrestrial from Ondigital.

Until 1987, there were no television broadcasts in Iceland on Thursdays.

On November 21 and 22 1996 the United Nations held the first World Television Forum, where leading media figures met under the auspices of the United Nations to discuss the growing significance of television in today's changing world and to consider how they might enhance their mutual cooperation. In December 1996 the United Nations proclaimed November 21 as World Television Day commemorating the date on which the first World Television Forum was held in 1996.