Television is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance. The term has come to refer to all the aspects of television from the television set to the programming and transmission. The word is derived from mixed Latin and Greek roots, meaning "far seeing" (Greek "tele," meaning far, and Latin "visus," meaning seeing).

Origins

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The origins of what would become today's television system can be traced back as far as the discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith in 1873, and the invention of a scanning disk by Paul Nipkow in 1884. All practical television systems use the fundamental idea of scanning an image to produce a time series signal representation. That representation is then transmitted to a device to reverse the scanning process. The final device, the television, relies on the human eye to integrate the result into a coherent image.

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NPR Topics: Arts & Entertainment

'Twilight': For Teens, A Swooningly Risky Romance
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:01:00 -0500
Morning Edition's movie critic is not, and never has been, a 13-year-old girl. But Catherine Hardwicke's dead-on screen take on Stephenie Meyer's vampire books makes him wish he could be — if only to get the full effect.
'Bolt': A Show-Biz Hero With More Bark Than Bite
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:00:00 -0500
An animal actor, convinced his TV-show superpowers are real, scrambles to find his way from New York back to Hollywood. Kids will have a fine time, says critic Mark Jenkins, but adults might develop an allergy.
'Were The World Mine': 'Tis Definitely Fairy Time
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:00:00 -0500
How's a much-bullied gay teen to get his revenge? Well, if he's starring in a musicalized A Midsummer Night's Dream, and he stumbles upon a working formula for Puck's love potion ...

NYT > Arts

Music: How Axl Rose Spent All That Time
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:21:18 -0000
“Chinese Democracy” is the Titanic ship of rock albums: It’s outsize, lavish, obsessive, technologically advanced and, all too clearly, the end of an era.
Music Review: Making Girls Dance: All in a Night’s Work
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:23:39 -0000
Girl Talk set off instant pandemonium as its set began at Terminal 5.
Book Prizes Awarded With Nod to History
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:04:41 -0000
Annette Gordon-Reed won the National Book Award for nonfiction for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” while Peter Matthiessen won the fiction award for “Shadow Country.”

Arts & Culture

Sasha Frere-Jones: Political beats.
Sasha Frere-Jones Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0000
After Barack Obama conceded defeat at the New Hampshire primary last January, the Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am selected quotes from his concession speech and set them to music--sort of. The video for Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” features a clutch of celebrities singing (or speaking), over Obama and a few . . .
Sasha Frere-Jones: Pink's progress.
Sasha Frere-Jones Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0000
Funhouse,” the new album by Alecia Moore, who calls herself Pink, has already spawned an enormous hit--her first solo No. 1 in the U.S.--called “So What,” an explosion of brattiness and rock-star entitlement that is both maddening and hard to shake. There are cracks in “Funhouse,” though . . .
Peter Schjeldahl: The New Orleans Biennial beckons.
Peter Schjeldahl Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0000
New Orleans is smaller and poorer than it used to be, as I have confirmed on my first visit there since the floods attendant on Hurricane Katrina obliterated a large part of the city and left much of the rest a mud-gray mess, traces of which aren’t hard to . . .

Christian Science Monitor | Arts & Entertainment

Jazz in the spotlight
Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500
Some old-timers impress with their strengths and some one-of-a-kind talents display growing versatility.
New York's freshest shows
Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500
From ancient sculpture to Van Gogh's night inspirations, the best of this season's art.
Six Picks: Recommendations from the Monitor staff
Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500
Classic puzzlers in a crisp new book, Jack Bauer is back in a '24' movie, Stephen Colbert croons his way into Christmas, and more.

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