The Fernsehsender "Paul Nipkow" (''TV Station Paul Nipkow'') , also known as Deutscher Fernseh-Rundfunk (''German Television Broadcasting''), in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, was the first regular television service in the world. It was on the air from 22 March 1935, until it was shut down in 1944. The station was named after

Paul Gottlieb Nipkow Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (; 22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German electrical engineer and inventor. He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televis ...

, the inventor of the

Nipkow disk A Nipkow disk (sometimes Anglicized as Nipkov disk; patented in 1884), also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, rotating, geometrically operating image scanning device, patented by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in Berlin. This scanning disk was a f ...

History

Parallel to the experiments by

John Logie Baird John Logie Baird (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first mechanical Mechanical television, television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the fi ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, by Herbert E. Ives and

Charles Francis Jenkins Charles Francis Jenkins (August 22, 1867 – June 6, 1934) was an American engineer who was a pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies. His businesses inc ...

in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, as well as by Kenjiro Takayanagi in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, television pioneers like Dénes Mihály and

Manfred von Ardenne Manfred baron von Ardenne (; 20 January 190726 May 1997) was a German researcher, autodidact in applied physics, and an inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear techn ...

had organised experimental television transmissions in Berlin since 1928. In the same year,

Telefunken Telefunken was a German radio and television producer, founded in Berlin in 1903 as a joint venture between Siemens & Halske and the ''AEG (German company), Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ("General electricity company"). Prior to ...

presented a television set prototype during the Internationale Funkausstellung industrial exhibition. From 1929 television test programs were regularly aired from the

Funkturm Berlin The Berliner Funkturm or Funkturm Berlin (Berlin Radio Tower) is a former broadcasting tower in Berlin, Germany. Constructed between 1924 and 1926 to designs by the architect Heinrich Straumer, it was inaugurated on 3 September 1926, on the ...

transmitter (''Rundfunksender Witzleben''). The first public transmission was introduced in the Kroll Opera House on 18 April 1934. At first the station could only be received in and around Berlin, later also in other German cities via special

Reichspost ''Reichspost'' (; "Imperial Mail") was the name of the postal service of Germany from 1866 to 1945. ''Deutsche Reichspost'' Upon the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the break-up of the German Confederation in the Peace of P ...

long distance cables. It became very popular when it covered the

1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad () and officially branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, then capital of Nazi Germany. Berlin won the bid to ...

in Berlin. About 160,000 viewers saw the Olympic games on a few private televisions and in many public television parlours. Television was used more for mainstream entertainment rather than propaganda, as

Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and philologist who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief Propaganda in Nazi Germany, propagandist for the Nazi Party, and ...

preferred radio as a mass-medium. The heavy and slow equipment made it difficult to report, and almost all programming was broadcast live. From 1942 to 1944, the Germans also restarted a

TV station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's ...

in Paris to broadcast programs in German and French. In 1944, the station was shut down, as were most other cultural events, as a consequence of the approach of the Allied Armies in the Normandy Campaign. After the collapse of East Germany in 1990, about 280 rolls of 35mm film were discovered of Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow programs. In recent years, much of that material has been aired on German and international channels, mostly by The History Channel. In Germany, the rediscovered footage has been first used in the 1996 documentary ''Televisionen im Dritten Reich'' ("Tele-Visions in the Third Reich") made by WDR and NDR, as well as in Michael Kloft's 1999 documentary ''Das Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz'' ("Television Under the

Swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍, ) is a symbol used in various Eurasian religions and cultures, as well as a few Indigenous peoples of Africa, African and Indigenous peoples of the Americas, American cultures. In the Western world, it is widely rec ...

").

References

1935 establishments in Germany 1944 disestablishments in Germany Defunct television channels in Germany Experimental television stations German inventions of the Nazi period History of telecommunications in Germany Mass media in Berlin Mass media of Nazi Germany Television channels and stations established in 1935 Television channels and stations disestablished in 1944 {{germany-tv-station-stub

History

See also

References