Japan's First TV started with “i”

So this is the development of television a long time ago.

According to the inventions of phototube and various vacuum tube, commercialization of television has become possible. Inspired by the research of abroad, Kenjiro Takayanagi on the year 1920s in Japan, Kawarada Masataro, and Sone, they all began the research for the television.

And at last on year 1927 (Showa 2) Takayanagi was able to picture this katakana character of the "i" in this brown square. Then, in 1953 NHK Tokyo TV station started broadcasting, and that was the first time Japan began this broadcast on TV.

Explanation of why it was “i”

Some of you maybe wondering why it was “i”. Well, we sure need some explanation here. Apparently, Japanese alphabet (hiragana and katakana) was not in the order we know now. It started with “i”, then it continues “i ro ha ni ho he to….”. From what I learned, it is arranged so that it makes one sentence using every alphabet only once. Hence, the start of TV began with the first character in the Japanese alphabet back in the days.

Unlike the TV that we have nowadays, the first TV that was discovered by the Japanese, is not flat but a little bit round.