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Hawkeye_x_Hawkeye t1_iyddewa wrote

Reply to comment by ucanttrustapenguin in TIL The inventor of the television was a 15 year old farm boy who got the idea for scanning an image in rows from the back and forth motion of plowing a field. by chapstickninja

>The OPs headline is incorrect. You can’t say he invented “television” when he didn’t and wasn’t the first to demonstrate a television broadcast.

This is like saying the inventor of the home computer didn't invent it because the Turing machine already existed.

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Alan_Smithee_ t1_iyeshto wrote

Not at all.

He didn’t invent television; it was invented by Baird.

He came up with a new and improved approach, which became the standard.

But Farnsworth was himself screwed over by David Sarnoff of RCA.

Amazing how US technological history is so full of tales like that.

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trailercock t1_iyf5r90 wrote

From what I underatand, Farnsworth did prove the concept could work or at least diagramed how electronic television could work in 1914 while he was still in school. So he probably was the first known person to publicly communicate the concept of electronic television.

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Alan_Smithee_ t1_iyf96gp wrote

Nonsense.

Baird based his television on the work of Paul Nipkow, a German scientist who patented his ideas for a complete television system in 1884. Nipkow likewise used a rotating disk with holes in it to scan images, but he never achieved more than the crudest of shadowy pictures. Various inventors worked to develop this idea, and Baird was the first to achieve easily discernible images. In 1928, Baird made the first overseas broadcast from London to New York over phone lines and in the same year demonstrated the first color television.

So many inventors and scientists had been discussing the concept for years.

Farnsworth is credited as developing the first fully electronic system.

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Pandarandrist t1_iyee8fg wrote

No, it's like saying the inventor of the "home computer" didn't invent "the computer".

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PM_UR_NUMBER_IN_HEX t1_iydee7m wrote

a turing machine is fictional device used for proofs and was created after the computer

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Hawkeye_x_Hawkeye t1_iydeuoi wrote

According to the wiki, it was invented in the 1930s. Its not fictional, it's a theoretical model of a working machine. The concept existed prior to the existence of computers. Would the inventor of image broadcasting owe credit of their invention to the inventor of the camera?

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PM_UR_NUMBER_IN_HEX t1_iydgfk2 wrote

I am a computer scientist. Computers are extremely old. The first program was written before workable computer existed and well before the 1900s. Unless you have unlimited tape the machine can't exist. It's just supposed to be the simplest possible computer.

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Sparkybear t1_iydsl5i wrote

Theoretical and fictional mean the same thing. A device with infinite memory is a thing of fiction, but because it's a useful concept for theories tested in math and science we label it theoretical instead.

Beyond that, the first computer was built by Babbage in the 1830s, 100 years before the Turing machine was thought up, unfortunately he died before he finished his general purpose analytical machine, but his differece engines are generally considered the first iterations of modern computers.

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