When Pictures Make History

Television Hits the Airwaves
Inspired by the development of radio and cinema, a series of inventors working in the early twentieth century perfect a method of sending sound and pictures through the air. (Among them was American Philo T. Farnsworth, who was able to transmit this image of actress Joan Crawford on his equipment in 1934.) Though the National Broadcasting Company succeeded in transmitting live television images from the New York World's Fair in 1939, television's progress was delayed by World War II. Once the war was over, however, the medium took off, as TV sets invaded living rooms everywhere, driving revolutions in entertainment, politics, journalism and social behavior that are still going on today.

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