Timeline of the introduction of television in countries

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A map showing when television was introduced in each country.

  1927

  1940

  1950

  1960

  1970

  1980

  1990

  2001

  No television

  No data

This is a list of when the first publicly announced television broadcasts occurred in the mentioned countries. Non-public field tests and closed circuit demonstrations are not included. This list should not be interpreted to mean the whole of a country had television service by the specified date. For example, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the former Soviet Union all had operational television stations and a limited number of viewers by the year 1939. However, in those countries, only very few cities in each country had television service. Television broadcasts were not yet available in most places.

Year	Countries
1928	United States (Mechanical television) [1]
1929	United Kingdom (Mechanical),[2]  Germany (Mechanical) [3]  Australia (Mechanical, experimental, after hours on two existing Melbourne radio stations),[4][5][6]
1931	France (Mechanical),  Canada (Quebec only),  Soviet Union (Mechanical)
1934	Australia (Electronic, experimental, Brisbane)[7]
1935	Germany (Intermediate film; semi-electronic),  Mexico (Experimental)
1936	United Kingdom (Electronic - BBC Television Service),  Germany (Electronic television - Deutscher Fernseh Rundfunk),  United States (Electronic; experimental and non-commercial until 1941 - NBC) [8]
1937	Free City of Danzig (Electronic),  France (Electronic),[9]  Poland (Mechanical) [10]
1938	Soviet Union (electronic)
1939	Empire of Japan (Electronic),[11]  Italy (Electronic),[12]  Poland (Electronic) [10]
1942	Occupied France
1944	France (Returned)
1945	Soviet Union (returned) [13]
1946	United Kingdom (Returned),[14]  Mexico (full service),[15]  Philippines (Experimental)
1948	Czechoslovakia (Experimental),[16]  Chile (Experimental),  Netherlands (Experimental)
1950	Cuba,  Brazil,   Switzerland,  West Germany (experimental)
1951	Argentina,  Denmark,[17]  Netherlands,  Japan (Returned)
1952	Canada,  Turkey,  Chile (Sporadically until 1956),  Dominican Republic,  West Germany (full service),  East Germany (experimental),  Poland (Returned),  Thailand (Experimental),  United Kingdom ( Scotland),  Venezuela
1953	United States ( Alaska),  Belgium,[18]  Czechoslovakia,  Philippines (thru ABS, now ABS-CBN),  United Kingdom ( Northern Ireland)
1954	Colombia,  United States ( Hawaii),  Italy,  Morocco  Puerto Rico,  Monaco,  Norway (experimental)
1955	Finland, ^30  Guatemala,  Luxembourg,  Romania (experimental),  Thailand (Official)
1956	Australia, Algeria,  Armenian SSR,  Austria,  Azerbaijan SSR,  Cyprus,  East Germany (full service),  Guam,  Georgia,  Iraq,  Nicaragua,  Romania,  South Korea,  Spain,  Philippines,  Panama,  Portugal (experimental),  Sweden,  Uruguay, Yugoslavia [19]
1957	Chile, (full-service)  Finland,  Hong Kong,[20]  Hungary,  Kuwait,  Lithuanian SSR (in 1990 declared independence as  Lithuania) [21]
1958	Bermuda,  China, Moldova,  El Salvador,  Iran,  Peru,
1959	Bulgaria,  Ecuador,  Haiti,  Honduras,  India,  Lebanon,  Nigeria, Ryukyu Islands [22]
1960	Costa Rica,  Albania,  Netherlands Antilles,  New Zealand,  Southern Rhodesia,  United Arab Republic,[23]  Norway (full service)
1961	Ireland,[24]  Northern Rhodesia,  U.S. Virgin Islands
1962	Côte d'Ivoire,  Republic of the Congo,  Kenya,  Malta,[25]  Indonesia,  Sierra Leone,  Republic of China,[26]  Trinidad and Tobago,  Gibraltar,[27]  Sudan
1963	Bolivia,  North Korea, French Polynesia,  Gabon,  Malaysia,  Singapore,  Jamaica,  Uganda,  Upper Volta
1964	American Samoa  Barbados, East Pakistan,  Ethiopia Guadeloupe,  Liberia, Martinique, Mauritius,  North Yemen, West Pakistan,  Réunion,  Suriname,  United Kingdom ( Wales) [28]
1965	Ghana,  New Caledonia,  Paraguay,  Senegal
1966	Cambodia,  Congo-Kinshasa,  Greece,  Tunisia,  Iceland,  Israel,[29] South Vietnam
1967	Djibouti, French Guiana,  Mongolia,  Saint Pierre and Miquelon,  Madagascar,  Saint Lucia
1968	Turkey (national),  Jordan,  Equatorial Guinea,  Libya
1969	Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands,  United Arab Emirates
1970	Qatar, North Vietnam
1972	Saint Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla
1973	Bahrain,  Niger,  Tanzania,  Togo,  British Virgin Islands
1974	Afghanistan,  Central African Republic,  Grenada,  Oman,
1975	Angola,  Dominica,  Brunei,  Tuvalu,  South Yemen, Wallis and Futuna Islands
1976	South Africa
1977	Bahamas,[30]  Guinea, East Timor
1978	Benin,  Liechtenstein,  Lesotho,  Maldives,  Swaziland
1979	Burma,[31]  Mali,  Mozambique,  Sri Lanka,  Somalia,  Zambia
1980	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
1981	Belize, Macau, South West Africa
1982	Mauritania[32]
1983	Andorra,  Antigua and Barbuda,  Cambodia (Returned),  Cameroon,    Nepal,  Seychelles,   Vatican City,[33]  Laos[34]
1984	Burundi,  Cape Verde,  Chad,  Comoros,  Faroe Islands
1986	Mayotte,  Niue,  Papua New Guinea
1989	Cook Islands,  San Marino,  Western Samoa
1991	Cayman Islands,  Falkland Islands,[35]  Fiji[36]  Guyana,  Nauru,  Sao Tome and Principe
1992	Botswana,  Solomon Islands,  Vanuatu
1993	Eritrea,  Rwanda
1995	Gambia,  Guinea-Bissau,  Kiribati,  Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha,  Turks and Caicos Islands
1996	Malawi,  Greenland,  Palau
1999	Bhutan[37]
2000	Tonga
2004	Kiribati (native - closed in 2013)
2007	Åland[38]
2008	Liechtenstein
2009	Papua New Guinea (native)

Countries without television

• Solomon Islands
• Kiribati (closed in 2013)
• Tuvalu (no native service)

See also

• Prewar television stations
• Timeline of the introduction of color television in countries

Notes and citations

1. See WRGB History, How Television Came to Boston: The Forgotten Story of W1XAY, W3XK: America's first television station, and "WRNY to Start Daily Television Broadcasts," New York Times, August 13, 1928, p. 13.
2. See J.L. Baird: Television in 1932.
3. See Museum of Broadcast Communications: Germany and Berlin 1936: Television in Germany.
4. Australian TV – The First 25 Years by Peter Bielby, page 173. ISBN 0-17-005998-7
5. Linking a Nation – Chap 9 – Australian Heritage Council
6. Peter Luck, 50 Years of Australian Television ISBN 1-74110-367-3 p.15
7. "Birth of Our Nation". Brisbane Courier Mail. Archived February 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
8. See The Birth of Live Entertainment and Music on Television, November 6, 1936, and 1937 RCA Publicity Photographs. "Eighty-seven video programs were telecast by NBC last year," "Where Is Television Now?", Popular Mechanics, August 1938, p. 178. Regularly scheduled electronic broadcasts began in April 1938 in New York (to the second week of June, and resuming in August) and Los Angeles. "Telecasts Here and Abroad," The New York Times, April 24, 1938, Drama-Screen-Radio section, p. 10; "Early Birds," Time, June 13, 1938; "Telecasts to Be Resumed," The New York Times, Aug. 21, 1938, Drama-Screen-Radio section, p. 10; Robert L. Pickering, "Eight Years of Television in California," California — Magazine of the Pacific, June 1939. Also note that many rural areas of the Southern United States didn't receive television until the late 1950s and early 1960s.
9. Although 180-line cathode ray tube receivers were manufactured in France in 1936, a mechanical scanning camera was still used at the transmitter in Paris until 1937.
10. See The Warsaw Voice: What's On? and Historia Przemysłowego Instytutu Telekomunikacji przed II wojną światową at the Wayback Machine (archived September 28, 2007) (in Polish).
11. See The Evolution of TV: A Brief History of TV Technology in Japan: “Can you see me clearly?”; Public TV Image Experiments.
12. See Early Television in Italy
13. Off from 1939 to 1945 for the Second World War.
14. Off from 1939 to 1946 for the Second World War.
15. Latin America's first experimental television station (Spanish)
16. See ; Czechoslovakia became two separate states, namely the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in 1993.
17. See History of DR.
18. Flemish-language BRT used the Belgian 625-line standard and French-language RTB used the Belgian 819-line standard (abandoned in 1963). Early Belgian sets were very expensive because they could receive 4 different standards: Belgian 625, European 625, Belgian 819, French 819. Later a 5th standard was added with the French 625-line standard.
19. The date refers to the launch of the TV channel in republics and autonomuous provinces of Yugoslavia. There were RTV Zagreb, in Croatia (1956), RTV Ljubljana in Slovenia (1958), RTV Belgrade in Serbia (1958), RTV Skopje in Macedonia (1964), RTV Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1969), and RTV Titograd (Podgorica) in Montenegro (1971). In Kosovo (RTV Priština) and Vojvodina (RTV Novi Sad), it was introduced in 1975.
20. Television was introduced in Hong Kong when it was a British crown colony.
21. http://www.lrt.lt/en/about/history
22. Television was introduced in the Ryukyu Islands (now part of Japan) when they were under U.S. administration.
23. The United Arab Republic was a short-lived political union between  Egypt and  Syria. The union began in 1958 and existed until 1961, when Syria seceded from the union.
24. Ireland had received broadcasts from the United Kingdom since 1949.
25. Previously received television broadcasts from Italy.
26. This is the year when television was introduced in territories under its administration. After the Chinese Civil War, the government of the Republic of China retreated to Taiwan and other islands, and Mainland China was controlled by the People's Republic of China.
27. Gibraltar had previously received television broadcasts from Spain.
28. Wales had received broadcasts from England since 1952.
29. The Israeli Ministry of Education in cooperation with the Rothschild Fund started limited broadcasts to schools in March 1966. A public state-owned TV channel started broadcasting in May 1968. Broadcasts were black and white (with a few exceptions) until the early 1980s.
30. The Bahamas had previously received broadcasts from the United States.
31. Test service available only in Yangon in 1979. Formal launch in 1981. See .
32. http://www.tvm.mr/fr/index.php?page=1&id=1
33. Although the Vatican did not have a television service of its own until 1983, broadcasts from Italy had been received since 1954.
34. Television available from Nong Khai city in Thailand since mid-1970s]]
35. Television broadcasts had also been received from Argentina.
36. Television came to Fiji part-time for the 1991 Rugby World Cup. It arrived full-time in 1994.
37. "Bhutan TV Follows Cyber Launch". BBC News. 2 June 1999.
38. http://www.nyan.ax/nyheter/?news_id=25344 (Swedish).

External links