A History of Television & Future: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

Originally published on ebrandme.biz October 10, 2019.

So, how did television come about? What innovations have been made to the device since? And what opportunities lie in its future?

Long before its realization, television was seen as a natural progression from the telephones, the radio, and motion pictures. An idea that existed since at least 1839, it was thought to be have been a good medium to educate, implant ideas, impressions and attitudes. Whether it lives up to this goal is a matter of opinion.

In the 1920s, when you mentioned television you were referring to a device that mechanically scanned an image through a spinning disc, projecting a tiny, unstable reproduction of what was being scanned on a screen. Many people contributed to its progression, a few of whom I’ll mention:

• German inventor and physicist, Karl Ferdinand Braun, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics 1909, invented the earliest version of the cathode ray tube or “CRT”, also known as the Braun tube in 1897.
• John B. Johnson and Harry Weiner Weinhart developed the first CRT to use a hot cathode — the negatively charged metal electrode from which conventional current travels in a polarized electrical device.
• As early as 1907, Soviet…