National Cancer Awareness Day - 7 November

World Television Day is observed on 21 November to highlight the daily value of television that it plays in communication and globalisation. Television educates, informs, entertains and influences our decisions and opinions.

History of World Television Day

World Television Day commemorates the first United Nations World Television Forum held in 1996. The first UN World Television Forum took place on 21 and 22 November 1996. Leading media figures met under the auspices of the United Nations to discuss the growing significance of television in today's changing world and to consider how they might enhance their mutual cooperation. That is why the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 21 November as World Television Day (through resolution 51/205 of 17 December 1996). 

Invention of Television

John Logie Baird was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. Baird’s system used a mechanical camera consisting of a large spinning disc, with a spiral of holes that Paul Nipkow had developed in 1884.

German physicist and Nobel laureate Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the first cathode ray tube in 1897. The technology was further developed a decade later by English inventor A. A. Campbell-Swinton  and Russian scientist Boris Rosing.

Philo Taylor Farnsworth successfully demonstrated electronic television in San Francisco, in 1927. He was an American inventor and television pioneer who invented the world's first all-electronic television system. Vladimir Kosmich Zworykin is another pioneer who invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes. Both  are arguably considered the fathers of American television.

Television in India

 Terrestrial television in India started with the experimental telecast starting in Delhi on 15 September 1959 with a small transmitter and a makeshift studio. Daily transmission began in 1965 as a part of All India Radio (AIR). Up until 1975, only seven Indian cities had television services.

One of India's largest broadcasting organisations in studio and transmitter infrastructure, Doordarshan was established on 15 September 1959. National telecasts (DD National) was introduced in 1982.  Colour television began in India with the live telecast of the Independence Day speech by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 15 August 1982.

Krishi Darshan debuted on Doordarshan on 26 January 1967, and is Indian television's longest running program

Further Reading for Curious Kids

• The invention of Television Technology (Encyclopedia)
• World Television Day
• Biography of Farnsworth on Britannica