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HISTORY OF TELEVISION
1.Work in a group. Look at pictures answer the questions.
What is the difference between old and modern televisions ?
What are they doing together in the second picture ?
How often do you watch TV ?
2.Work in pairs. Match the words 1-10 with their definitions a-j.
Story
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j) the traditional beliefs, customs, values of a family, country or society
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Campfire
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To come together and form a group
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Heritage
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A fire made outdoors by people who are camping
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Gather around
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A description of how something happened
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Rely on
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To make a later event or development possible
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Propagate
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To depend on
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Coil
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To spread an idea, belief etc
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Pave the way for
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A continuous series of circular rings
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Necessary
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Important
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Intellectual
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Relating to the ability to understand things and think intelligently
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Answers
1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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7
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8
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9
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10
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c
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b
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j
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a
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e
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f
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g
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D
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h
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I
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3.1.Read the text and answer the questions.
What have been the most loved activities for humans ?
In what did people start to document the stories ?
Who introduced the printed word ?
What changes had happened by the end of nineteenth century ?
Answers__1._False__2._True__3._Not_Given__4._True__5._False'>Answers
1. Telling and listening to stories
2. Stones, Walls
3. Johannes Gutenberg
4. Alva Edison invented the phonograph, another invention from that same era—the telephone—made it possible for one human being to talk to another human being
THE EVOLUTION OF STORYTELLING
Ever since the human language became a reality, telling and listening to stories have been the most loved activities for humans. Since the dawn of culture, we have been sitting around the campfire every night listening to the stories that have been passed from one generation to the next. In the beginning, the stories and fairy tales had to be remembered and be told from generation to generation. After a while, humans began to document the stories in drawings on stones and walls in caves. Later, skin from animals and paper were used. The intellectual heritage did not have to rely on the human memory any more and the stories could live on, unchanged, for an extended period of time. This is essential since otherwise the human brain has a tendency to gradually change the meaning of the story.
The introduction of the printed word, thanks to Johannes Gutenberg, made it possible for the stories to be mass-produced and brought to a large number of people. Cultural mass production became a reality. No technical device was required to read a book, but the knowledge of reading was necessary. The family of the nineteenth century gathered around someone who was reading aloud from a book.
For a very long time, storytelling was limited to spoken words and text. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Alva Edison began to change all that. He invented the phonograph, which made it possible to record sounds on a wax-coated roll. Another invention from that same era—the telephone—made it possible for one human being to talk to another human being at a very large distance, a drastic change in the ease and immediacy of communication. These inventions are both based on the observation that sound consists of small vibrations that propagate through air due to small local changes in air pressure. These air pressure changes can be transferred to a thin membrane. The movement of the membrane can be used to form a track in a spinning roll of wax or disc made of a similar material. For the first time, it became possible to store sounds. Another way of using the membrane is to get an electrical coil to move in a magnetic field. Then an electrical current is induced in the coil and this current can be connected to another coil in front of another magnet at a completely different location, making another membrane move to recreate the sounds. The alternating current in the copper wire between the early telephones was one of the first electrical signals. These discoveries paved the way for the fantastic telecom and media technology of today.
3.2. Read the text again and decide whether the statements below are true, false or not given.
Telling and listening to stories haven’t been the most exciting for people ever since the language was a reality___________
Initially, the stories had to be remembered and told from generation to generation___________
Albert Einstein discovered the storytelling___________
Thomas Alva Edison was the inventor of the photograph ___________
The membrane cannot be used to store sounds ___________
Answers
1. False
2. True
3. Not Given
4. True
5. False
4.1 Listen to the information about television and answer the questions.
1. When did 98 percent of U.S homes had at least one television set ?
2. What was the first application of the concept ?
3. What created the voltage ?
4. What basic concept did Wirephoto machines establish at a time ?
Answers
1. 1990
2. Wirephotos
3. Photocell
4. Scanning pictures
4.2 Listen again and complete the blanks.
This was done by _______ a photo around a drum, as shown on the right, and rotating the drum as a light-sensitive _________moved over the image picking up brightness differences. The photocell created ________ that were amplified thousands of times and then sent by telephone lines to the subscribing newspapers. At the receiving end, somewhat the reverse took place. A piece of photographic paper spun around on a ___________ within a light-tight enclosure. The intensity of a pinpoint of light focused on the paper varied with the _______ being picked up by the originating machine. When the _____was finished, the paper was taken out in a darkroom and processed as a photographic ______. Wirephoto machines established the basic concept of scanning pictures a line at a time.
1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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7
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wrapping
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Photocell
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voltage
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cylinder
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signal
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scan
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print
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Tapescript
Few inventions have had as much effect on contemporary American society as television. Before 1947
the number of U.S. homes with television sets could
be measured in the thousands. By the late 1990s, 98
percent of U.S. homes had at least one television set.
It marked the beginning of a phenomenon that was
to have a major impact on news, advertising, film,
radio, and the world—not to mention how millions
of people would spend their leisure hours.
EARLY APPLICATION OF THE TECHNOLOGY
Discovering how to send audio through the airwaves
opened the door to the possibility of television, but
video was far more complex. It was correctly reasoned that since pictures had millions of times more
data than audio, pictures would have to be broken
down into bits of information (a data stream) before
being transmitted.
The first application of this concept was wirephotos (using telephone lines to send still photos to
newspapers). This was done by wrapping a photo
around a drum, as shown on the right, and rotating
the drum as a light-sensitive photocell moved over
the image picking up brightness differences. The
photocell created voltages that were amplified thousands of times and then sent by telephone lines to
the subscribing newspapers.
At the receiving end, somewhat the reverse took
place. A piece of photographic paper spun around on
a cylinder within a light-tight enclosure. The intensity of a pinpoint of light focused on the paper varied
with the signal being picked up by the originating
machine. When the scan was finished, the paper was
taken out in a darkroom and processed as a photographic print.
Wirephoto machines established the basic concept of scanning pictures a line at a time. But still
photos are not motion pictures. Experiments with
film had demonstrated that if a series of pictures
were presented at a rate of about 16 or more persecond, an illusion of motion could be created. So
the problem became one of electronically transmitting a series of still pictures every second. To do this
the wirephoto approach of transmitting still photos—which originally took about 20 minutes just to
transmit one picture—would have to be speeded up
millions of times.
Once the problem of how to dissect images and
sequentially transmit them through the air by means
of radio waves was solved, we had the central elements of the television equation.
5. Write a short text about the day when you are most excited to sit in front of TV .
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