The history of Dutch television is linked with Philips. The first Dutch experiments with television took place around the 1930s. Television pioneer Erik de Vries, employed by the scientific lab from Philips, built and experimented with the first transmitter. The first broadcast took place in 1930 from the little tower in the Amsterdam Carlton Hotel. The first person on television was the daughter of Koos Speenhoff. She worked at the Phillips administration office, but was chosen to act as a host for an experimental broadcast in 1935.
Philips built four vehicles in 1937-1938, two transmitting vehicles and two technical vehicles with film scanners and mobile TV cameras. The first caravan of vehicles was ready and showed at the Jaarbeurs Utrecht in 1938. After that, Erik de Vries gave demonstrations in several countries, including 1939 demonstration in Zagreb.
Between 1948 and 1951 Philips did 264 experimental broadcasts led by Erik de Vries. They were received by hundreds of receivers placed in Eindhoven mostly in possession of Philips employees.
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, dutch and/or television:
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Paradise endangered: garden snakes and mice are appearing in the shadowy corners of Dutch Old Master paintings.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)