Television isn't just moving pictures that fly through the air. There is sound, too. And the clear, static-free audio we take for granted owes its existence to another of the electronics industry's unsung heroes: Edwin Howard Armstrong.

• (00:00:00) - We Should Have Laughed at Edison
• (00:00:21) - 100 Years of Television: Countdown to 2027
• (00:01:29) - In the Elevator of Edwin Howard Armstrong
• (00:07:38) - 100 Years of Television

In the 1930s, video technology evolved rapidly in a world-wide race to deliver television to the marketplace.

In the United States, the principal contestants were the giant Radio Corporation of America and a tiny company spearheaded by the wunderkind inventor from Utah by way of San Francisco, Philo T. Farnsworth.

RCA had the capital, the technical resources, and the market clout to extend their dominance in all things radio into the nascent new industry of television.

All Farnsworth had were the fundamental patents for the technology that made television possible

In the spring of 1934, Farnsworth accepted an invitation from the prestigious Franklin Institute of Philadelphia to conduct the world’s first full-scale public demonstration of television in the summer of 1934.

The arrival of real (electronic) television was announced in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sept 3, 1927 - even as companies like AT&T were getting headlines for their mechanical systems along with independent experimenters like Britain's John Logie Baird. But once the news of Philo Farnsworth's invention hit the wire services, the race was on to reap the rewards of bringing a new medium to the marketplace.

• (00:00:00) - 100 Years of Television: A countdown to the 100th
• (00:01:46) - The Man Who Invented Television
• (00:12:00) - 100 Years of Television: Countdown to the Centennial