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September 7, 2027 will mark 100 years from the day when electronic television made its first appearance on Earth.  To generate interest in the  Centennial,  this website and accompanying podcast is going to Count Down the Top 100 Milestones from the First 100 Years of Television over 100 weeks until September 7, 2027.

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In the summer of 1936, athletic spectacle, technical innovation, and political propaganda converged in Germany for the first-ever televising of an international sporting event: the Berlin Olympics.  All the major players in the global race for television were on the scene, including the man whose invention nearly ten years earlier made the moment possible: Philo T. Farnsworth. 

Germany’s National Socialist government (aka ‘the Nazis’) – eager to showcase its technological superiority – invested heavily in a television initiative led by Fernseh AG.  Fernseh organized a consortium that combined the engineering expertise of Bosch with the optics of Zeiss Ikon and the radio capabilities of Telefunken.  

Despite all the German expertise, the breakthrough that made the television broadcasts possible came from abroad: In 1934, Fernseh secured a license from Philo T. Farnsworth for the use of his Image Dissector — the revolutionary camera tube at the heart of all electronic video.  For Farnsworth, the license provided some funding for his ongoing legal battle with RCA; For Fernseh, it gave German engineers the technology they needed to accelerate their television development in time for the Games.

Of course, television receivers had yet to find their way into any German homes, so the regime built 25 public viewing halls — known as “television parlors” — in Berlin and Potsdam. These venues, outfitted with projection screens and receivers, allowed audiences of 40 to 100 people to watch the Games in rotating shifts. 

The Fernseh-led consortium employed a hybrid system, utilizing both film and live video.  In some cases, Olympic events were recorded on film, quickly developed and then transmitted through film chains that employed the Farnsworth Image Dissector. While not as immediate as the live transmissions, the workaround improved image quality and reliability.

Notably, Philo Farnsworth and his wife ‘Pem’ (nee Elma Gardner) were present in Berlin during the Olympics. As a guest of Fernseh AG, he witnessed firsthand how his invention was used — not in American living rooms, but in the heart of Nazi Germany. 

Only select events were televised, including track and field, boxing, rowing, and gymnastics. The broadcasts were transmitted via VHF and received via closed-circuit transmission only in the official parlors. For the first time, a relatively large audience could witness live sports from a distance, a feat previously unimaginable.

The 1936 Olympic broadcast was as much propaganda as it was progress. It was designed to project an image of German supremacy in both sport and science. But behind the scenes, the televising was powered by American innovation, and personally witnessed by the inventor whose own country had yet to fully recognize or benefit from his work. 

Over the two-week span of the Olympics, more than 150,000 viewers tuned in as Jesse Owens – a black man from America – won the gold medal in four prestigious track events.  History has long since noted the irony of this black American track star dismantling the myth of Aryan supremacy that Hitler’s Games were meant to establish. And all the drama unfolded through the cameras and viewing halls that were themselves based on an American invention. 

The legacy was immediate and far-reaching. The BBC launched its regular television service the following year, having observed the Berlin model. NBC would follow three years later in the U.S.