Television Timeline

English electrical engineer Willoughby Smith discovered that the electrical resistance of selenium varies dramatically with the amount of light falling on it. The photoconductivity of selenium eventually provided a method for converting images into electrical signals-- the basis for photoelectric cells and a theoretical basis for television. 

George R. Carey, a professional surveyer employed by the city of Boston, proposed one of the earliest systems of television transmission. 

"In the May 17, 1878 issue of Scientific American, the editors alluded to their earlier article about the 'telectroscope invented by M. Senlecq of Ardres.' This was followed by the news that they had before them 'some very ingenious and curious applications of selenium, in which its peculiar property of changing its electrical conductivity when exposed to light varying in intensity is utilized. The several devices are the invention of Mr. George R. Carey, of Boston, Mass.' A more detailed article was published in the June 5, 1880 Scientific American" (Wikipedia article on George R. Carey, accessed 02-05-2012).

Adriano de Paiva, a professor of chemistry and physics at the Polytechnic Academy at Porto (Portugal) issued the first separate publication on television: La telescopie électrique basée sur l'emploi du selenium, a 48-page pamphlet published in Porto.

Paiva's paper represented the first theoretical formulation of the possibility of using selenium to transmit images at a distance. Paiva became interseted in the possibility of transmitting images by wire after the demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone in Lisbon in November 1877.

In a letter written to the journal Nature, A.A. Campbell-Swinton described his concept of electronic television using the cathode ray tube which had been invented in 1897 by the German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Karl Ferdinand Braun.

Swinton "proposed using an electron beam in both the camera and the receiver, which could be steered electronically to produce moving pictures. He lectured on the subject in 1911 and displayed circuit diagrams, but no one, including Swinton, knew how to realize the design. Although his system was never built, the cathode ray tube did come to be used to display images in almost all television sets and computer monitors until the invention of the LCD panel."

In 1909 English writer E. M. Forster published a short story entitled The Machine Stops.

Describing a world in which people live beneath the surface of the earth, with technology running virtually all aspects of their lives, the story anticipated instant messaging and videoconferencing with a machine called "the speaking apparatus." It also anticipated television with a machine called the "cinematophote."

The only book that the main character in the story uses is an enormous technical manual about "the Machine."

Reacting to H. G. Wells's optimism about science and technology, and fearing that man might be unable to live without the all-encompassing technology that he created, or eventually might not even remember that the technology was man-made, Forster stressed the value of actual or direct experience versus "virtual" experience.

Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian immigrant to the United States, working at Westinghouse Laboratories in Pittsburgh, patented the iconoscope, the first electronic television camera. His design, however, was incomplete:

"Vladimir Zworykin is also sometimes cited as the father of electronic television because of his invention of the iconoscope in 1923 and his invention of the kinescope in 1929. His design was one of the first to demonstrate a television system with all the features of modern picture tubes. His previous work with Rosing on electromechanical television gave him key insights into how to produce such a system, but his (and RCA's) claim to being its original inventor was largely invalidated by three facts: a) Zworykin's 1923 patent presented an incomplete design, incapable of working in its given form (it was not until 1933 that Zworykin achieved a working implementation), b) the 1923 patent application was not granted until 1938, and not until it had been seriously revised, and c) courts eventually found that RCA was in violation of the television design patented by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, whose lab Zworykin had visited while working on his designs for RCA. 

"The controversy over whether it was first Farnsworth or Zworykin who invented modern television is still hotly debated today. Some of this debate stems from the fact that while Farnsworth appears to have gotten there first, it was RCA that first marketed working television sets, and it was RCA employees who first wrote the history of television. Even though Farnsworth eventually won the legal battle over this issue, he was never able to fully capitalize financially on his invention" (http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Colour-television, accessed 12-22-2009).

On January 26, 1926 Scottish engineer and inventor John Logie Baird gave the world's first demonstration of his electromechanical television system to fifty scientists assembled in his attic workshop at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London.

On April 7, 1927 newspaper reporters and dignitaries gathered at the AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories auditorium in New York City to see the first American demonstration of television. The live picture and voice of Secretary of Commerce (later President) Herbert Hoover were transmitted over telephone lines from Washington, D.C., to New York.  

“Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history,” Hoover said. “Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.”

A second telecast followed that day, via radio transmission from Whippany, N.J. The telecasts demonstrated television’s potential as an adjunct to telephone service and as a medium for entertainment.

The live demonstration of television at Bell Labs was filmed, and in February 2013 that short movie was viewable on Facebook at this link:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=116047015077905.

In April 1930 Bell Labs issued a pamphlet entitled Two-Way Television and a Pictorial Account of its Background, documenting the technology involved and the historic demonstration, plus some later developments.  An unusual dust jacket added to the 40-page illustrated pamphlet dramatized the new technology.

On September 7, 1927 American inventor Philo T. Farnsworth transmitted an image through the purely electronic means of a device called an "image dissector." This was the first all-electronic television.

"When Philo T. Farnsworth was 13, he envisioned a contraption that would receive an image transmitted from a remote location—the television. Farnsworth submitted a patent in January 1927, when he was 19, and began building and testing his invention that summer. He used an "image dissector" (the first television camera tube) to convert the image into a current, and an "image oscillite" (picture tube) to receive it. On this day his tests bore fruit. When the simple image of a straight line was placed between the image dissector and a carbon arc lamp, it showed up clearly on the receiver in another room. His first tele-electronic image was transmitted on a glass slide in his S[an] F[rancisco] lab at 202 Green St" (http://www.timelines.ws/subjects/Television.HTML, accessed 12-22-2009).

Television. The World’s First Television Journal, began publication in London. (See Readings 5.5 and 5.6.)

General Electric (GE) began regular television broadcasting in the United States with a 24-line system from a station that became WGY in Schenectady, New York.

Programs were transmitted Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. By the end of 1928 over 15 stations were licensed for TV broadcasting;

Scottish engineer and inventor John Logie Baird began the first experimental television service at the German Post Office using his 30 line mechanical system.  In this system Sound and vision were initially sent alternately, and only began to be transmitted simultaneously from 1930.

In 1932 the BBC began public television broadcasting in England.

By 1935 the transmissions reached only the 2000 homes with television sets within a 35-mile range of the Alexandria Palace transmitting station. Each TV set cost £100—roughly the cost of a small car.

Edwin Howard Armstrong developed wide-band frequency modulation, FM radio, which delivered clearer sound, free of static. 

Armstrong received a patent on wideband FM on December 26, 1933.

"Armstrong conducted the first large scale field tests of his FM radio technology on the 85th floor of RCA's (Radio Corporation of America) Empire State Building from May 1934 until October 1935. However RCA had its eye on television broadcasting, and chose not to buy the patents for the FM technology.  A June 17, 1936, presentation at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) headquarters made headlines nationwide. He played a jazz record over conventional AM radio, then switched to an FM broadcast. 'If the audience of 50 engineers had shut their eyes they would have believed the jazz band was in the same room. There were no extraneous sounds,' noted one reporter. He added that several engineers described the invention 'as one of the most important radio developments since the first earphone crystal sets were introduced' " (Wikipedia article on Edward Howard Armstrong, accessed 07-12-2009).

Armstrong's first paper on FM radio was "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation," presented to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers on November 6, 1935, and first published in Proceedings of the IRE, 24, no. 5, (1936) 689–740.

In 1946 there were six television stations in the United States.

The world's first commercial television network, DuMont Television Network, began operation in the United States.

"It was owned by DuMont Laboratories, a television equipment and set manufacturer. The network was hindered by the prohibitive cost of broadcasting, by Federal Communications Commission regulations which restricted the company's growth, and even by the company's partner, Paramount Pictures. Despite several innovations in broadcasting and the creation of one of television's biggest stars of the 1950s, the network never found itself on solid financial ground. Forced to expand on UHF channels during an era when UHF was not profitable, DuMont ceased broadcasting in 1956." (Wikipedia article on Dumont Television Network, accessed 12-07-2008).

John Walston introduced cable television, initially in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

As host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater, Milton Berle's highly visual, sometimes outrageous vaudeville style proved ideal for the burgeoning new medium of television. Berle became the first great television star.

"Berle and Texaco owned Tuesday nights for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings and keeping it, with as much as an 80% share of the recorded viewing audience. Berle and the show each won Emmy Awards after the first season. Fewer movie tickets were sold on Tuesdays. Some theaters, restaurants and other businesses shut down for the hour or closed for the evening so their customers wouldn't miss Berle's antics. Berle's autobiography notes that in Detroit, 'an investigation took place when the water levels took a drastic drop in the reservoirs on Tuesday nights between 9 and 9:05. It turned out that everyone waited until the end of the Texaco Star Theater before going to the bathroom.' Berle is credited for the huge spike in the sale of TV sets. (Other comedians turned this into a punchline: 'I sold mine, my uncle sold his. . .') After Berle's show began, set sales more than doubled, reaching two million in 1949. His stature as the medium's irst superstar earned Berle the sobriquet 'Mr. Television' " (Wikipedia article on Milton Berle, accessed 12-07-2008).

By 1949 10,000,000 television sets were sold.

Fulton J. Sheen, Roman Catholic Bishop of Rochester, New York, and former radio broadcaster, became one of the first  televangelists.

From 1951 to 1957 Sheen hosted Life Is Worth Living first on the DuMont Television Network and later on ABC, winning an Emmy in 1952 for "Most Outstanding Personality". He later hosted The Fulton Sheen Program in syndication, with a virtually identical format, from 1961 to 1968.

National Educational Television (NET) was founded by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the National Television Committee’s recommendation for a system of color television broadcasting based on the RCA Dot Sequential Color System.

RCA began manufacture of its twelve-inch model CT100 color television set, which used phosphor dots deposited on an internal glass plate.

5000 of these sets were produced and sold at the then very high retail price of $1000.

The BBC presented a television production of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, adapted for television by Nigel  Kneale.

"Kneale's script was a largely faithful adaptation of the novel as far as was practical with the limitations of the medium. The writer did, however, make some small additions of his own, the most notable being the creation of a sequence in which O'Brien observes Julia at work in PornoSec, and reads a small segment from one of the erotic novels being written by the machines there."

"When it had become clear what an important production Nineteen Eighty-Four was, it was arranged for the second performance [December 14, 1954] to be telerecorded onto 35mm film – the first performance having simply disappeared off into the ether, as it was shown live, seen only by those who were watching on the Sunday evening. At this stage, Videotape recording was still at the development stage and television images could only be preserved on film by using a special recording apparatus (known as "telerecording" in the UK and "kinescoping" in the USA), but was only used sparingly, then in Britain for historic preservation reasons and not for pre-recording. It is thus the second performance that survives in the archives, one of the earliest surviving British television dramas" (Wikipedia article on Nineteen Eight-Four (TV Programme), accessed 07-26-2009).

♦ The program is available for downloading or viewing at the Internet archive at this link.

On June 10, 1962 a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral launched the AT&T TELSTAR 1 satellite, designed and built at Bell Labs. It was the first privately owned active communications satellite, transmitting the first direct television pictures from the United States to Europe. It became the first satellite to relay signals from the earth to a satellite and back.

"Telstar was unique in that it had the ability to receive a signal, amplify it, and then transmitted it back to elsewhere on earth . . . which is, after all, the core of what a communications satellite does. This technology allowed telephones calls to be bounced from coast to coast and around the world. The satellite was powered by Bell Labs solar cells and transistors – two other Bell Labs pioneering inventions."

Canadian educator, philosopher, and media theorist of the University of Toronto Marshall McLuhan published Undertstanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

"In it McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study — popularly quoted as the medium is the message'. McLuhan's insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as a clear demonstration of this concept. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that 'a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.' More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society — in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example — the effect of television on society would be identical. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.

"The book is the source of the well-known phrase 'The medium is the message'. It was a leading indicator of the upheaval of local cultures by increasingly globalized values. The book greatly influenced academics, writers, and social theorists" (Wikipedia article on Understanding Media, accessed 11-14-2009)

The first geostationary communication satellite, Syncom 3, was launched by NASA with a Delta D #25 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral.

"The satellite, in orbit near the International Date Line, was used to telecast the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo to the United States. It was the first television program to cross the Pacific ocean" (Wikipedia article on Syncom, accessed 05-24-2009).

On April 6, 1965, Intelsat I (nicknamed Early Bird), was placed in geosynchronous orbit above the Atlantic Ocean by a Thrust Augmented Delta D rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Built by the Space and Communications Group of Hughes Aircraft Company (later Hughes Space and Communications Company, and now Boeing Satellite Systems) for COMSAT, Intelsat I was the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, and the first satellite to provide direct and near instantaneous contact between Europe and North America. It handled television, telephone, and facsimile transmissions. It measured nearly 76 x 61 cm and weighed 34.5 kg.

"It [Intelsat I] helped provide the first live TV coverage of a spacecraft splashdown, that of Gemini 6 in December 1965. Originally slated to operate for 18 months, Early Bird was in active service for four years, being deactivated in January 1969, although it was briefly activated in June of that year to serve the Apollo 11 flight when the Atlantic Intelsat satellite failed. It was deactivated again in August 1969 and has been inactive since that time (except for a brief reactivation in 1990 to commemorate its 25th launch anniversary), although it remains in orbit. . . .Early Bird was one of the satellites used in the then record-breaking broadcast of Our World" (Wikipedia article on Intelsat I, accessed 03-23-2012).

The Our World TV special, the first live, international satellite television production, was broadcast on June 25, 1967 from the BBC control room in London, using satellites Intelsat I (Early Bird), Intelsat II and ATS-1.

 "Creative artists, including opera singer Maria Callas, The Beatles and painter Pablo Picasso, representing nineteen different nations were invited to perform or appear in separate segments featuring their respective countries. The two-and-half-hour event had the largest television audience ever up to that date: an estimated 400 million people around the globe watched the broadcast. Today, it is most famous for the segment from the United Kingdom starring The Beatles. They sang their specially composed song "All You Need Is Love" to close the broadcast" (Wikipedia article on Our World [TV special] accessed 03-23-2012).

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was founded as the successor to National Educational Television (NET).

The first home video game console, the Magavox Odyssey, which used a television screen as a display, was first demonstrated on May 24, 1972 and released in August of that year, predating the Atari Pong home consoles by three years. The Odyssey was designed by Ralph Baer, who began development around 1966 and had a working prototype finished by 1968.

This prototype, known as the Brown Box, is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Atari of Sunnyvale, California, released the Home Pong video game console through the Sears catalogue.

Home Pong used a television as a monitor. The success of this product resulted in a patent infringement lawsuit from the manufacturers of the Magnavox Odyssey video game console.

On June 1, 1980 Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III launched the Cable News Network (CNN) in Atlanta, Georgia. The husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored its first newscast.

American political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool of MIT published "Tracking the Flow of Information," Science 221 (1983) 609-19.

This study, which estimated the growth trends of the “amount of words” transmitted by 17 major communications media in the United States from 1960 to 1977, was the first to show empirically the declining relevance of print media relative to electronic media in terms of information flow.

"By using words transmitted and words attended to as common denominators, novel indexes were constructed of growth trends in seventeen major communications media from 1960 to 1977. There have been extraordinary rates of growth in the transmission of electronic communications, but much lower rates of growth in the material that peole actually consume, representing the phenomenon often labeled information overload. Growth in print media has sharply decelerated, a a close relationship is found between the cheapness of a medium and its rate of growth."

In 1989 digital high-definition TV (HDTV) software, based on video compression algorithms, was developed at Bell Labs.

Brian Raila of GTE Laboratories recognized that a viewer or listener did not need to download the entirety of a program to view or listen to a portion of it, as long as the receiving device ("client computer") could, over time, receive and present data more rapidly than the user could digest the data. At the InterTainment '89 conference held in New York City Raila used the term "buffered media" to describe this concept. It became the basis for "webcasting."

David Allen and Harold Williams founded Teleport, the first commercially successful telepresence company. Its name was later changed to TeleSuite.

"The original intent was to develop a system that could allow families to interact across great distances without the hassle or costliness of flying. The first systems (which they called TeleSuites) looked more like something out of an upper class home rather than a conference room in an office suite. . . . " 

The science fiction television series Babylon 5 became the first television series to use computer generated images (CGI) as the primary method for its visual effects (rather than using hand-built models). It also marked the first TV use of virtual sets.

On Thanksgiving morning ABC's World News Now became the first television show to be broadcast over the Internet, using the CU-SeeMe videoconferencing software. This was the beginning of Internet Protocol Television IPTV.

The Raleigh, North Carolina television station WRAL-HD began broadcasting from the existing tower of WRAL-TV south-east of Raleigh, winning a race to be first television station to broadcast high-definition televison (HDTV) in the United States.

Webcast company AudioNet (Broadcast.com) began the first continuous live webcasts with content from WFAA-TV serving Dallas-Ft. Worth in January, 1998 and KCTU-LP serving Wichita, Kansas, on January 10, 1998.

The author/editor of this database, Jeremy Norman, issued From Gutenberg to the Internet: A Sourcebook on the History of Information Technology.

This printed book was the first anthology of original publications, reflecting the origins of the various technologies that converged to form the Internet. Each reading is introduced by the editor.

Three former employees of Paypal — Steven Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim — founded the video sharing website, YouTube.  Its first headquarters were above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.

Google completed the purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock.

David Ferrucci, leader of the Semantic Analysis and Integration Department at IBM's T. J. Watson's Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, Eric Nyberg, and several co-authors published IBM Research Report: Towards the Open Advancement of Question Answering Systems.

Section 4.2.3. of the report includes an analysis of why the television game show Jeopardy! provides a good model of the semantic analysis and integration problem.

IBM's Watson Question Answering (QA) System will challenge humans in the television quiz show Jeopardy!

"IBM is working to build a computing system that can understand and answer complex questions with enough precision and speed to compete against some of the best Jeopardy! contestants out there.

"This challenge is much more than a game. Jeopardy! demands knowledge of a broad range of topics including history, literature, politics, film, pop culture and science. What's more, Jeopardy! clues involve irony, riddles, analyzing subtle meaning and other complexities at which humans excel and computers traditionally do not. This, along with the speed at which contestants have to answer, makes Jeopardy! an enormous challenge for computing systems. Code-named "Watson" after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, the IBM computing system is designed to rival the human mind's ability to understand the actual meaning behind words, distinguish between relevant and irrelevant content, and ultimately, demonstrate confidence to deliver precise final answers.

"Known as a Question Answering (QA) system among computer scientists, Watson has been under development for more than three years. According to Dr. David Ferrucci, leader of the project team, 'The confidence processing ability is key to winning at Jeopardy! and is critical to implementing useful business applications of Question Answering.

"Watson will also incorporate massively parallel analytical capabilities and, just like human competitors, Watson will not be connected to the Internet, or have any other outside assistance.  

"If we can teach a computer to play Jeopardy!, what could it mean for science, finance, healthcare and business? By drastically advancing the field of automatic question answering, the Watson project's ultimate success will be measured not by daily doubles, but by what it means for society" (http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/index.shtml, accessed 06-16-2010).

On June 16, 2010 The New York Times Magazine published a long article by Clive Thompson on IBM's Watson's challenge of humans in Jeopardy! entitled, in the question response language of Jeopardy!, "What is I.B.M.'s Watson?."

♦ Link to to FAQs concerning Watson and Jeopardy! on IBM's website, accessed 02-08-2011: http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/faq.shtml.

The United States converted from analog to digital television broadcasting.

"The switch from analog to digital broadcast television is referred to as the digital TV (DTV) transition. In 1996, the U.S. Congress authorized the distribution of an additional broadcast channel to each broadcast TV station so that they could start a digital broadcast channel while simultaneously continuing their analog broadcast channel. Later, Congress set June 12, 2009 as the final date that full power television stations can broadcast analog signals. As of June 13, 2009, full power television stations will only broadcast digital, over-the-air signals. Your local broadcasters may make the transition before then, and some already have.

"The digital transition is underway. Prepare now! On Feb. 17, some full-power broadcast television stations in the United States may stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and begin broadcasting only in digital. The remaining stations may stop broadcasting analog sometime between April 16 and June 12. June 12 is the final deadline for terminating analog broadcasts under legislation passed by Congress.

"Why are we switching to DTV?

"An important benefit of the switch to all-digital broadcasting is that it will free up parts of the valuable broadcast spectrum for public safety communications (such as police, fire departments, and rescue squads). Also, some of the spectrum will be auctioned to companies that will be able to provide consumers with more advanced wireless services (such as wireless broadband).

"Consumers also benefit because digital broadcasting allows stations to offer improved picture and sound quality, and digital is much more efficient than analog. For example, rather than being limited to providing one analog program, a broadcaster is able to offer a super sharp “high definition” (HD) digital program or multiple “standard definition” (SD) digital programs simultaneously through a process called “multicasting.” Multicasting allows broadcast stations to offer several channels of digital programming at the same time, using the same amount of spectrum required for one analog program. So, for example, while a station broadcasting in analog on channel 7 is only able to offer viewers one program, a station broadcasting in digital on channel 7 can offer viewers one digital program on channel 7-1, a second digital program on channel 7-2, a third digital program on channel 7-3, and so on. This means more programming choices for viewers. Further, DTV can provide interactive video and data services that are not possible with analog technology" (http://dtv.gov/whatisdtv.html, accessed 06-12-2009).

IBM's Watson question answering system supercomputer, developed at IBM's T J Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, running DeepQA software, defeated the two best human Jeopardy! players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson's hardware consisted of 90 IBM Power 750 Express servers. Each server utilized a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight-core processor, with four threads per core. The system operatesd with 16 terabytes of RAM.

The success of the machine underlines very significant advances in deep analytics and the ability of a machine to process unstructured data, and especially to intepret and speak natural language.

"Watson is an effort by I.B.M. researchers to advance a set of techniques used to process human language. It provides striking evidence that computing systems will no longer be limited to responding to simple commands. Machines will increasingly be able to pick apart jargon, nuance and even riddles. In attacking the problem of the ambiguity of human language, computer science is now closing in on what researchers refer to as the “Paris Hilton problem” — the ability, for example, to determine whether a query is being made by someone who is trying to reserve a hotel in France, or simply to pass time surfing the Internet.  

"If, as many predict, Watson defeats its human opponents on Wednesday, much will be made of the philosophical consequences of the machine’s achievement. Moreover, the I.B.M. demonstration also foretells profound sociological and economic changes.  

"Traditionally, economists have argued that while new forms of automation may displace jobs in the short run, over longer periods of time economic growth and job creation have continued to outpace any job-killing technologies. For example, over the past century and a half the shift from being a largely agrarian society to one in which less than 1 percent of the United States labor force is in agriculture is frequently cited as evidence of the economy’s ability to reinvent itself.  

"That, however, was before machines began to 'understand' human language. Rapid progress in natural language processing is beginning to lead to a new wave of automation that promises to transform areas of the economy that have until now been untouched by technological change.  

" 'As designers of tools and products and technologies we should think more about these issues,' said Pattie Maes, a computer scientist at the M.I.T. Media Lab. Not only do designers face ethical issues, she argues, but increasingly as skills that were once exclusively human are simulated by machines, their designers are faced with the challenge of rethinking what it means to be human.  

"I.B.M.’s executives have said they intend to commercialize Watson to provide a new class of question-answering systems in business, education and medicine. The repercussions of such technology are unknown, but it is possible, for example, to envision systems that replace not only human experts, but hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs throughout the economy and around the globe. Virtually any job that now involves answering questions and conducting commercial transactions by telephone will soon be at risk. It is only necessary to consider how quickly A.T.M.’s displaced human bank tellers to have an idea of what could happen" (John Markoff,"A Fight to Win the Future: Computers vs. Humans," http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/science/15essay.html?hp, accessed 02-17-2011).

♦ As a result of this technological triumph, IBM took the unusal step of building a colorful website concerning all aspects of Watson, including numerous embedded videos.

♦ A few of many articles on the match published during or immediately after it included:

John Markoff, "Computer Wins on 'Jeopardy!': Trivial, It's Not," http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/science/17jeopardy-watson.html?hpw

Samara Lynn, "Dissecting IBM Watson's Jeopardy! Game," PC Magazine. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380351,00.asp

John C. Dvorak, "Watson is Creaming the Humans. I Cry Foul," PC Magazine. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380451,00.asp

Henry Lieberman published a three-part article in MIT Technology Review, "A Worthwhile Contest for Artificial Intelligence" http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/26391/?nlid=4132

♦ An article which discussed the weaknesses of Watson versus a human in Jeopardy! was Greg Lindsay, "How I Beat IBM's Watson at Jeopardy! (3 Times)" http://www.fastcompany.com/1726969/how-i-beat-ibms-watson-at-jeopardy-3-times

♦ An opinion column emphasizing the limitations of Watson compared to the human brain was Stanley Fish, "What Did Watson the Computer Do?" http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/what-did-watson-the-computer-do/

♦ A critical response to Stanley Fish's column by Sean Dorrance Kelly and Hubert Dreyfus, author of What Computers Can't Do, was published in The New York Times at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/watson-still-cant-think/?nl=opinion&emc=tya1

On September 28, 2011 Amazon announced the Kindle Fire, a tablet computer version of Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader, with a  7" color multi-touch display with IPS technology, running a forked version of Google's Android operating system. The device, which included access to the Amazon Appstore, streaming movies and TV shows, and Kindle's e-books, was released on November 14, 2011 for $199.

In January 2012 Amazon advertised that there were 19 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books available for the Kindle Fire.

According to the October 2012 IAB Internet advertising revenue report by the Internet Advertising Bureau, a New York based international organization founded in 1996:

"In the first half of the year, U.S. Internet sites collected $17 billion in ad revenue, a 14 percent increase over the same period of 2011. . . . In the second half of last year, websites had $16.8 billion in ad revenue. So even if growth were to slow in the second half, digital media this year could exceed the $35.8 billion that U.S. print magazines and newspapers garnered in ad revenue in 2011.

"In fact, the digital marketing research firm eMarketer projects 2012 Internet ad spending in excess of $37 billion, while print advertising spending is projected to fall to $34.3 billion.

"Meanwhile, television ad spending—which Nielsen reports was nearly $75 billion in 2011—continues to dwarf both" (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429638/online-advertising-poised-to-finally-surpass/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121017, accessed 10-22-2012).

"Sony is using nanoscale particles called quantum dots to significantly improve the color of some of its high-end Bravia televisions. It showed off the technology, which increases the range of colors that an LCD television can display by about 50 percent, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. This marks the first time that quantum dots—which for a long time have fascinated researchers because of their unusual electronic and optical properties—have been used in a mass-produced consumer electronics product."  

"The product that’s finally coming to market is far different. Sony’s new television is a modified LCD TV. In LCD televisions, each pixel is illuminated from behind by a white backlight, and different colors are created by changing the amount of light allowed to pass through three different filters—one red, one green, and one blue. LCDs originally used fluorescent bulbs as the backlight, but now most use LEDs (marketers call these products LED LCDs). QD Vision uses quantum dots to enhance the LED backlight."

"The new technology is a hit with some industry watchers (one publication named the new Sony KD-65X9000A, one of the TVs to feature the quantum dots, “Best in Show” at CES). Sony is pairing the quantum dot backlighting with other innovations, such as 3-D and and ultra-high 4K resolution, which it hopes will boost sales. Sales of TVs have been flagging.  

"Other quantum dot displays are in the works. For example, last year Nanosys announced it would have a quantum dot backlight product in a notebook in 2013, but it hasn’t disclosed the specific product (see “Quantum Dots Give Notebooks a New Glow”) (MIT TechnologyReview.com, accessed 01-14-2013).  

"Billboard and Nielsen announced today the addition of U.S. YouTube video streaming data to its platforms, which includes an update to the methodology for the Billboard Hot 100, the preeminent singles chart.

"The YouTube streaming data is now factored into the chart's ranking, enhancing a formula that includes Nielsen's digital download track sales and physical singles sales; as well as terrestrial radio airplay, on-demand audio streaming, and online radio streaming, also tracked by Nielsen.  

"Billboard is now incorporating all official videos on YouTube captured by Nielsen's streaming measurement, including Vevo on YouTube, and user-generated clips that utilize authorized audio into the Hot 100 and the Hot 100 formula-based genre charts – Hot Country Songs, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, R&B Songs, Rap Songs, Hot Latin Songs, Hot Rock Songs and Dance/Electronic Songs – to further reflect the divergent platforms for music consumption in today's world.

"The most notable YouTube-influenced title this week is viral sensation 'Harlem Shake' by producer Baauer, which debuts at No. 1 on both the Hot 100 and Streaming Songs charts and jumps 12-1 on Dance/Electronic Songs with 103 million views, according to YouTube. According to Nielsen, the "Harlem Shake" arrival also benefits from viral video-influenced sales of 262,000 downloads. That sales sum alone, good for a No. 3 ranking on Hot Digital Songs, would have placed the track within the top 15 on the Hot 100 without the inclusion of YouTube streams into the calculation" (http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1549399/hot-100-news-billboard-and-nielsen-add-youtube-video-streaming-to-platforms, accessed 02-21-2013).