Before we can start the Countdown – and make the case that Philo T. Farnsworth invented television – we need to look back on the discoveries, speculations, false starts, and breakthroughs that finally came to fruition in San Francisco on September 7th, 1927.
This episode of TV100 starts with Aristotle, who observed the phenomenon of "persistence of vision" that was first explore scientifically in 1824 by Peter Mark Roget – the same guy who compiled the thesaurus that bears his name to this day (assuming you can still find one).
We then follow the subsequent discoveries an inventions that employed the phenomenon first observed by Aristotle to introduce motion pictures in the late 19th century.
The next episode will delve into the parallel advances in electrical science during roughly the same period.
