The idea of transmitting images, including moving ones, arose in 1907 with the Russian scientist Boris Rosing, who suggested that any complex figure can be decomposed into simple components using the line-by-line method. However, the implementation of this project required the development of many technical devices that are part of the design of a modern television receiver.
Many scientists in different countries fought over numerous problems. It is believed that for the first time the image was transferred to a distance by an American engineer Charles Jenkins in 1923, but then another specialist created the most important structural element, which became the main part of the 20th century imaging devices. The surname of this inventor is Zvarykin. He, working as an engineer at RCA (American Radio Corporation), developed an iconoscope, also called a kinescope, or cathode ray tube.
But in the early years, this revolutionary invention was not appreciated. The main line of thought of the late 1920s and early 1930s was limited to the improvement of equipment created on the basis of the optical-mechanical disk of Paul Nipkov, created back in 1884. This device was intended for image scanning and was the simplest model of a personnel and horizontal scanning system, which today can only be used to explain to children the general principles of video broadcasting.
To the question of when television appeared in the USSR, there is no definite answer. The first video broadcast was conducted by the HF transmitter of the Moscow Electrotechnical Institute back in 1931, coinciding this achievement with the glorious May Day holiday. After another six months, the transmission began to occur more often, but only those who assembled their mechanical receiver on their own could enjoy it, and there were no more than three dozen of them. Then similar attempts were realized in other scientific centers of the country, in Odessa and Leningrad.
The video began to be broadcast regularly in Moscow, again coinciding with the occasion of the holiday, this time the 17th anniversary of the October Revolution. In 1938, the Shabolovsky shopping center broadcast a feature film about Kirov "The Great Citizen."
Exact date
March 25 was the official date when the creation of television in the USSR took place, but even it did not become final. Such an important means of propaganda could not limit its activity only to demonstration of films, other programs were needed, and the first studio program, which became the prototype of future broadcasts, took place ten days later. This milestone was a major breakthrough in the technology of news production. The live performance of the beginning of April 1938 marked the moment when television appeared in the USSR in the format that modern viewers are accustomed to
All these programs were not available to the people for a simple reason: the equipment was expensive, it was not mass produced. Preparations for the industrial production of a national device under an American license, and then of its own design, were carried out immediately before the war, but the day when television appeared in the USSR, accessible to the people, was, for obvious reasons, postponed, as, indeed, throughout the rest of the world. Soviet propaganda managed to take an important step; the 18th Congress of the CPSU (B.) (1939) was the first of which a television report was broadcast.
The post-war beginning of television in the USSR took place at the end of the victorious year, December 15. The programs were available only to Muscovites, and not to everyone. The receivers became members of the government, senior party functionaries and some prominent figures of science and art. Two years later, residents of the city on the Neva River, which survived the brutal blockade, also gained access to this benefit of civilization - the Leningrad shopping center began its work.
The creation of the Central Studio in 1951 demonstrated the serious intentions of the Soviet leadership to expand broadcasting throughout the country. After Stalin's death, the country 's main channel underwent a structural transformation, each of the editorial offices was responsible for its own area of work.
The mid-50s became the time when television appeared in the USSR, and not only in Moscow and Leningrad. By this time, mechanical receivers were long outdated, and Zvarykin’s invention found its application in new, mass-produced devices, the first of which was the legendary KVN. Hundreds of thousands, and then millions of citizens of the Soviet Union, clung to the blue screens .