Pat Tertig, age 8, of Rockford, Illinois, for his question:

When was TV invented?

When your grandparents were children, they had no home TV programs. In those days, most people thought that television was an impossible dream. But there were a few clever people around who believed that the wonderful thing could be invented. They figured out the separate parts to make it work, one by one. And when you were born, the wondrous thing was all finished and ready for you to enjoy.

Toddlers and other very young children take the magic of TV for granted. They just turn the knobs to tune in their favorite programs and settle down to watch the activity. Grade school viewers are more curious and full of interesting questions. They wonder how television works and just by wondering, they figure out that it is a very advanced and complicated thing. So it is natural to wonder how all the problems were solved to make it work. It is nice to know how it was invented and say a silent thank you to the genius who figured it out. That thank you is a good sign that a person is growing up.

Telescopes and many other marvelous gadgets were discovered more or less by accident. But TV was no accident. What's more, we cannot thank just one genius for inventing it. Almost 100 years ago, several experts began to dream that such a thing was possible. But they knew that many different parts would be needed to make it work: Special inventions would be needed to capture the moving pictures and send them from here to there. Other inventions would be needed to catch the program and show it on a viewing screen. All sorts of other gadgets would be needed to send along the right sounds to go with the pictures. The job called for a whole system of inventions, all working perfectly together.

The TV dreamers knew about electricity and radio. They studied optics to make pictures move and electronics to make electrons work in delicate gadgets. Way back in 1817, selenium was discovered by a Swiss chemist named Baron Berzelius. Later, other scientists learned that this strange element can take and give back spots of light. But it took more than 50 years for inventors to use selenium to make a photoelectric cell. In 1878, a British scientist named Sir William Crookes invented an electron tube. Others improved it to create the cathode ray tube.

Cathode tubes and selenium screens and at least 50 other inventions were needed to create a whole, workable TV system.

Then, in 1884, a German scientist named Paul Nipkow saw how the pieces could be put together. But the job was very tricky and many other geniuses worked almost 40 years to make it workable. In 1923, an American named Vladimir Zworykin patented a TV system. In 1925, Charles Jenkins of America acid John Baird of England were able to send and receive TV programs. In the 1930, these systems were Improved and American networks began sending TV programs over short distances: But World War II put a stop to all this until the 1940s. Then at last everything was ready to go=go go. The first home TV sets were ready in 1946 and that is when television viewing became a family affair.

You might say that the magic of television grew bit by bit and experts of many lands had a hand in It. They mastered electricity and radio, optics and electronics and dozens of delicate gadgets.