Temple South Rotarian, Mark Fihn spoke to our Club concerning flat panel display technologies in a presentation entitled "Beyond HDTV".  Mark owns "Veritas et Visus" which is Latin for "Truth and Vision".  Mark's company publishes five  periodicals covering varying aspects of the flat panel display industry.  Mark was accompanied by his wife, Cheryl Fihn, who is a member of the Temple Sunrise Club. 

Mark's presentation included many facts and statistics concerning the history and recent trends in display technologies.  There is some dissention in who is credited with inventing the television.  In 1924, an American named Philo Taylor Farnsworth developed the "dissector tube", which is the basis of all current electronic televisons.  In 1925, John Logie Baird, a Scotsman demonstrated the mechanical transmission of images over wire circuits.  The first television was sold in 1928 and the first commercial broadcast aired in 1930.  A leading pundit of the time noted that televisions would never overtake the radio due to the fact that television required more attention to watch and retain what was happening.  This coupled with the fact that the average American was entirely too busy to commit this time limit the popularity of the television.

By 1948, over 1 million televisions had been sold and color televisions were introduced in 1954.  One interesting fact was that by 1975, more homes had televisions than had indoor plumbing.  (Editor's Commentary -- It appeats that by 1975 we had gotten our priorities in line since the pundit's prediction mentioned above).  There were over 1 billion television sets worldwide by the year 1994.

High Definition (HD) television sets were introduced in 1994.  However, the old cathode ray (CR) television was still the predominate choice for the average person.  In 2002, only 1.2% of all televisions had flat panel displays.  It was projected that by 2006, there would be 14 million flat panel televisions sold.  This projection was wildly inaccurate as there were actually 46 million flat panels sold by 2006.  It is estimated that there have been 150 million sold to date.  It was noted that the economic crisis did not impact the sales of televisions in 2009. 

What is the future for television?  Larger sizes, higher resolution, larger aspect ratios, "Green" TVs,  3D and probably something we can only imagine right now.  A copy of the presentation will be posted to Mark's website www.veritasetvisus.com.