Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is an obsolete television system that relies on a mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and generate the video signal, and a similar mechanical device at the receiver to display the picture. This contrasts with vacuum tube electronic television technology, using electron beam scanning methods, for example in cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions. Subsequently, modern solid-state liquid-crystal displays (LCD) and LED displays are now used to create and display television pictures.
184-510: TF1 ( French: [te ɛf œ̃] ; standing for Télévision Française 1 ) is a French commercial television network owned by TF1 Group , controlled by the Bouygues conglomerate. TF1's average market share of 24% makes it the most popular domestic network. TF1 is part of the TF1 Group of mass media companies, which also includes the news channel LCI . It previously owned
368-455: A Jeffree cell to modulate a focused light beam from a mercury lamp . It used 39 vacuum tubes in its electronic circuits, and consumed around 1,000 Watts. Although producing impressive results and reaching the marketplace, the receiver was very expensive, costing around twice as much as a cathode-ray television. It was not a commercial success, and television transmissions in the UK were suspended for
552-415: A 2 by 2.5 inches (5 by 6 cm) screen (width by height). The large receiver had a screen 24 by 30 inches (61 by 76 cm) (width by height). Both sets were capable of reproducing reasonably accurate, monochromatic moving images. Along with the pictures, the sets also received synchronized sound. The system transmitted images over two paths: first, a copper wire link from Washington to New York City, then
736-744: A French official to teachers in the department of Finistère , in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language". The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the Basque language with French..." Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process
920-521: A Member of Parliament. The management of TF1 was notified about the e-mail by the Ministry for Culture and Communication, whose Minister Christine Albanel is also one of the authors of the HADOPI law. In 2004, Patrick Le Lay, CEO of TF1 made the following statement about the channel's aims: There are many ways to speak about TV, but in a business perspective, let's be realistic: at the basis, TF1's job
1104-551: A ball has struck a bat. Laser lighting display techniques are combined with computer emulation in the LaserMAME project. It is a vector -based system, unlike the raster displays thus-far described. Laser light reflected from computer-controlled mirrors traces out images generated by classic arcade software which is executed by a specially modified version of the MAME emulation software . The most common method for creating
1288-534: A bus equipped for remote reporting in the open air within two weeks, a new television studio and programs broadcast in the evening after dinner. The administrative system of public broadcasting was modified by a decree of 29 July 1939 signed by the President of the Council Édouard Daladier , making French Broadcasting, and therefore the television service attached to it, a State monopoly which ceased to depend on
1472-465: A commercial dispute. However, despite the resumption of encrypted broadcasts within the Canal+ and TNTSAT bouquets, this free-to-air broadcasting continues. LCI is therefore received free of charge in almost all of continental Europe. On 23 November 2024, Sky News reported that CVC Capital Partners , TF1, RedBird Capital Partners , All3Media , Mediawan and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts had been linked to
1656-431: A comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations,
1840-788: A day, three days a week, with sound/visions frequencies being 6.7 m (22 ft) and 6.985 m (22.92 ft). Likewise, a 180-line system that Compagnie des Compteurs (CDC) installed in Paris was tested in 1935, and a 180-line system by Peck Television Corp. started in 1935 at station VE9AK in Montreal , Quebec, Canada. John Baird's 1928 color television experiments had inspired Goldmark's more advanced field-sequential color system . The CBS color television system invented by Peter Goldmark used such technology in 1940. In Goldmark's system, stations transmit color saturation values electronically; however, mechanical methods are also used. At
2024-412: A five-foot (1.5 m) square screen. By 1927 he achieved an image of 100 lines, a resolution that was not surpassed until 1931 by RCA, with 120 lines. Because only a limited number of holes could be made in the disks, and disks beyond a certain diameter became impractical, image resolution on mechanical television broadcasts was relatively low, ranging from about 30 lines up to 120 or so. Nevertheless,
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#17327763830712208-522: A flying spot approach. A few mechanical TV systems could produce images several feet or meters wide and of comparable quality to the CRT televisions that were to follow. CRT technology at that time was limited to small, low-brightness screens. One such system was developed by Ulises Armand Sanabria in Chicago. By 1934, Sanabria demonstrated a projection system which had a 30-foot (9.1 m) image. Perhaps
2392-555: A foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050. French is the fastest growing language on the continent (in terms of either official or foreign languages). French is increasingly being spoken as a native language in Francophone Africa, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and
2576-407: A gala session combining excerpts from plays, comic operas, poems, songs and sketches performed by many famous comedians and music-hall artists invited by Béatrice Bretty, and whose numbers were announced at the screen by Suzy Wincker, the first official continuity announcer, on the air since June. The rue de Grenelle studio required 50,000 lux of light to compensate for the insufficient sensitivity of
2760-408: A high sensitivity infrared photo receptor (usually cooled to increase sensitivity), but instead of conventional lenses, these systems use rotating prisms to provide a 525 or 625 line standard video output. The optical parts are made from germanium, because glass is opaque at the wavelengths involved. Similar cameras have also found a role in sporting events where they are able to show (for example) where
2944-425: A horizontal image. Baird's "zone television" is an early example of rethinking his extremely narrow screen format. For entertainment and most other purposes, even today, landscape remains the more practical shape. In the days of commercial mechanical television transmissions, a system of recording images (but not sound) was developed, using a modified gramophone recorder. Marketed as " Phonovision ", this system, which
3128-493: A peak of 240-lines of resolution on BBC television broadcasts in 1936 though the mechanical system did not scan the televised scene directly. Instead a 17.5 mm film was shot, rapidly developed and then scanned while the film was still wet. An American inventor, Charles Francis Jenkins also pioneered the television. He published an article on "Motion Pictures by Wireless" in 1913, but it was not until December 1923 that he transmitted moving silhouette images for witnesses, and it
3312-705: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on
3496-452: A potential takeover bid for ITV plc and a possible break-up of core assets such as ITV Studios and ITVX . Some commentators accuse TF1 of being an excessively populist, commercialised channel. There is a clear emphasis on "light" entertainment programmes over more serious content, and the channel's success is sometimes seen as being founded on the ménagères de moins de 50 ans ( housewives under 50) audience segment. A large proportion of
3680-440: A price of £15 (US$ 45) per selenium cell, he estimated that a 4,000 cell system would cost £60,000 (US$ 180,000), and a 10,000 cell mechanism capable of reproducing "a scene or event requiring the background of a landscape" would cost £150,000 (US$ 450,000). Ruhmer expressed the hope that the 1910 Brussels Exposition Universelle et Internationale would sponsor the construction of an advanced device with significantly more cells, as
3864-590: A radio link from Whippany, New Jersey . Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality. Subjects of the telecast included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover . A flying-spot scanner beam illuminated these subjects. The scanner that produced the beam had a 50-aperture disk. The disc revolved at a rate of 18 frames per second, capturing one frame about every 56 milliseconds . (Today's systems typically transmit 30 or 60 frames per second, or one frame every 33.3 or 16.7 milliseconds respectively.) Television historian Albert Abramson underscored
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#17327763830714048-494: A relic of the old nominal case system of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated diphthongs such as -eau which would later be leveled to monophthongs. The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in
4232-587: A second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German ; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union ). French is also the 16th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers , and
4416-526: A second language. However it has also become a native language in a number of urban areas, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and the Democratic Republic of the Congo . In some North African countries, though not having official status, it is also a first language among some upper classes of the population alongside indigenous languages, but only
4600-941: A second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union . Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as
4784-467: A showcase for the exposition. However, the estimated expense of £250,000 (US$ 750,000) proved to be too high. The publicity generated by Ruhmer's demonstration spurred two French scientists, Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris, to announce similar research that they had been conducting. A matrix of 64 selenium cells , individually wired to a mechanical commutator , served as an electronic retina . In
4968-461: A small or large moving image to fit into a channel less than 40 kHz wide (modern TV systems usually have a channel about 6 MHz wide, 150 times larger). Also associated with this is slow-scan TV – although that typically used electronic systems utilising the P7 CRT until the 1980s and PCs thereafter. There are three known mechanical monitor forms: two fax printer-like monitors made in
5152-420: A system using high power lasers is used in laser video projectors, with resolutions as high as 1024 lines and each line containing over 1,500 points. Such systems produce, arguably, the best quality video images. They are used, for instance, in planetariums . Mechanical techniques are also used in long wave infrared cameras used in military applications such as night vision for fighter pilots. These cameras use
5336-638: A television system with a 40-line resolution that employed a Nipkow disk scanner and CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan. This prototype is still on display at the Takayanagi Memorial Museum in Shizuoka University , Hamamatsu Campus. By 1927, he improved the resolution to 100 lines, which was unrivaled until 1931. By 1928, he was the first to transmit human faces in half-tones. His work had an influence on
5520-547: A variant of Canadian French , is spoken in parts of New England . Missouri French was historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois (formerly known as Upper Louisiana ), but is nearly extinct today. French also survived in isolated pockets along the Gulf Coast of what was previously French Lower Louisiana , such as Mon Louis Island , Alabama and DeLisle, Mississippi (the latter only being discovered by linguists in
5704-480: A vertical "portrait" image made more sense to Baird than a horizontal "landscape" image. Baird chose a shape three units wide by seven high. This shape is only about half as wide as a traditional portrait and close in proportion to a typical doorway. Instead of entertainment television, Baird might have had point-to-point communication in mind. Another television system followed that reasoning. The 1927 system developed by Herbert E. Ives at AT&T's Bell Laboratories
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5888-523: A video on demand service. On 20 May 2021, it was announced that TF1 Group, owners of the channel, proposed a merger with Groupe M6, which owns M6 . On 16 September 2022, it was announced that the merger was officially abandoned. Since October 2022, the free DTT channels of the TF1 Group have been accessible free to air via the Astra 1 satellite. This broadcast follows a temporary interruption in encrypted broadcasting to Canal+ and TNTSAT subscribers, following
6072-437: Is 95%, and in the French collectivity of Wallis and Futuna , it is 84%. In French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, where oral and written knowledge of the French language has become almost universal (95% and 84% respectively), French increasingly tends to displace the native Polynesian languages as the language most spoken at home. In French Polynesia, the percentage of the population who reported that French
6256-779: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French
6440-472: Is a widespread second language among the Lebanese people , and is taught in many schools along with Arabic and English. French is used on Lebanese pound banknotes, on road signs, on Lebanese license plates , and on official buildings (alongside Arabic). Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon , with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English
6624-489: Is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and Médecins du Monde (used alongside English). Given
6808-430: Is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including
6992-462: Is an official language in 27 countries , as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. Most of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share
7176-652: Is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories ( Northwest Territories , Nunavut , and Yukon ). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, making up just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario , the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are available in
7360-503: Is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English
7544-434: Is helping Coca-Cola , for example, to sell its product. What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time. Nothing is more difficult than obtaining this availability. This is where permanent change is located. We must always look out for popular programs, follow trends, surf on tendencies, in a context in which information is speeding up, getting manifold and trivialized. Critics of TF1 also contend that its news coverage
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7728-404: Is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects . The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from
7912-469: Is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). MIT economist Albert Saiz calculated a 2.3% premium for those who have French as a foreign language in
8096-828: Is one of the official languages of such major international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , the Caribbean Court of Justice , the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States , the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , the International Court of Justice , the International Criminal Tribunal for
8280-488: Is slanted towards supporting right-wing politicians – they were in particular accused of supporting Édouard Balladur in the 1995 presidential elections , and of overstating crime during the 2002 electoral campaign to tilt the balance in favour of former French president Jacques Chirac , who campaigned on a law and order platform . Key figures within TF1 are close friends to some of the most powerful politicians in France, and
8464-576: Is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence , education, and diplomacy. In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat 's only two working languages ), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO ,
8648-553: Is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. French is an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu , where 31% of the population was estimated to speak it in 2023. In the French special collectivity of New Caledonia , 97% of the population can speak, read and write French while in French Polynesia this figure
8832-483: Is the native language of about 23% of the Swiss population, and is spoken by 50% of the population. Along with Luxembourgish and German, French is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg , where it is generally the preferred language of business as well as of the different public administrations. It is also the official language of Monaco . At a regional level, French is acknowledged as an official language in
9016-492: Is the second-most spoken language (after English) in the states of Maine and New Hampshire . In Louisiana , it is tied with Spanish for second-most spoken if Louisiana French and all creoles such as Haitian are included. French is the third most spoken language (after English and Spanish) in the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire . Louisiana is home to many distinct French dialects, collectively known as Louisiana French . New England French , essentially
9200-424: Is the sole official language in the province of Quebec , where some 80% of the population speak it as a native language and 95% are capable of conducting a conversation in it. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal , which is the world's fourth-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism
9384-535: The 1939 World's Fair in New York City . The last mechanical television broadcasts ended in 1939 at stations run by a handful of public universities in the United States. Early Cathode-Ray Television tube displays were small in size. The 'Scophony' television receiver of 1938, an advanced television receiver that used a mechanical display, was capable of displaying a 405-line picture (compatible with
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#17327763830719568-764: The Aosta Valley region of Italy where it is the first language of approximately 50% of the population, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands . It is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa . The language is taught as the primary second language in the German state of Saarland , with French being taught from pre-school and over 43% of citizens being able to speak French. The majority of
9752-462: The Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as
9936-462: The Chirac government [ fr ] decided to privatize one of the three public channels. Although initial reports had suggested Antenne 2 (now France 2), on 14 May the government announced that TF1 was selected. The channel was therefore more apt to confront with competition, but still considered left-leaning by the right-wing majority. In April 1987, the construction conglomerate Bouygues won
10120-539: The Democratic Republic of Congo . There is not a single African French , but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages . Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years. Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of
10304-465: The Eiffel Tower , and was on air three days a week from 11 am to 11:30 am and 8 pm to 8:30 pm and on Sundays from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. On 4 January 1937, the broadcasting hours were changed such that television programmes were aired from 5 pm until 10 pm on Wednesdays to Fridays, and from 4 pm to 8:30 pm or 9 pm on Saturdays to Tuesdays. Impressed by the sharpness of the 60-line images obtained from
10488-485: The European Union , French was the dominant language within all institutions until the 1990s. After several enlargements of the EU (1995, 2004), French significantly lost ground in favour of English, which is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French currently remains one of the three working languages, or "procedural languages", of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second-most widely used language within EU institutions after English, but remains
10672-559: The Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically,
10856-564: The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1934, was rapidly overtaking mechanical television. Farnsworth's system was first used for broadcasting in 1936, reaching 400 to more than 600 lines with fast field scan rates, along with competing systems by Philco and DuMont Laboratories . In 1939, RCA paid Farnsworth $ 1 million for his patents after ten years of litigation, and RCA began demonstrating all-electronic television at
11040-877: The International Olympic Committee , the Council of Europe , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the Eurovision Song Contest , one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency , World Trade Organization and the least used of the three official languages in the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. It
11224-626: The Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia , while Old French literature began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the Vie de Saint Alexis ), or wars and royal courts, notably including the Chanson de Roland , epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court , as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange . It
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#173277638307111408-513: The Scanimate system were also used, created by the American company Robert Abel and Associates with background music composed by Vladimir Cosma . The 1975 TF1 logo was later modified in 1984 and again in 1987. Colour television was first introduced to TF1 on 1 September 1975 when FR3 (now France 3 ) agreed to supply some of its colour programming to TF1, and the conversion to colour on TF1
11592-1012: The United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin
11776-424: The photoconductivity of the element selenium in 1873, laying the groundwork for the selenium cell which was used as a pickup in most mechanical scan systems. In 1885, Henry Sutton in Ballarat, Australia designed what he called a telephane for transmission of images via telegraph wires, based on the Nipkow spinning disk system, selenium photocell , Nicol prisms and Kerr effect cell. Sutton's design
11960-546: The "landscape" orientation – these terms coming from the concepts of portrait and landscape in art – that is common today. The position of a framing mask before the Nipkow disk determines the scan line orientation. Placement of the framing mask at the left or right side of the disk gives vertical scan lines. Placement at the top or bottom of the disk gives horizontal scan lines. Baird's earliest television images had very low definition. These images could only show one person clearly. For this reason,
12144-402: The 180-line mechanical camera with a double-spiral Nipkow disk rotating at 50 rotations per second. The dissipation of the heat of this very violent lighting was annoying and even dangerous for the artists. This is why a forced-air refrigeration system (temperature and humidity) was installed in the studio to lower its temperature from 55 to 25 °C by means of six aerators. The images filmed in
12328-412: The 1970s, and in 2013 a small drum monitor with a coating of glow paint where the image is painted on the rotating drum with a UV laser. Digital light processing (DLP) projectors use an array of tiny (16 μm ) electrostatically -actuated mirrors selectively reflecting a light source to create an image. Many low-end DLP systems also use a color wheel to provide a sequential color image, a feature that
12512-433: The 1980s, and was eventually liquidated in 1993. TF1, which originally stood for Télévision française 1 (French Television 1), was created on 1 January 1975 when law 74-696 of 7 August 1974, splitting the ORTF into seven separate organisations, came into effect. The name TF1 was a recommendation of the European Broadcasting Union , who demanded the television unit of the former ORTF rebranded as Télévision Française , with
12696-455: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;
12880-474: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed
13064-544: The 455-line high-definition equipment manufactured by Thomson for public demonstrations at the 1937 Paris International Arts and Techniques Exhibition, which was then transferred to the Radiovision-PTT studio for testing. Following successful trials of a "high-definition" 455-line electronic television system designed by Thomson-Houston which improved on the 405-line system originally designed by EMI-Marconi, Radio-PTT Vision renamed itself as Radiodiffusion nationale Télévision (RN Télévision) in July 1937. However, broadcasts using
13248-703: The Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it has a large population of federal government workers, who are required to offer services in both French and English, and is just across the river from the Quebecois city of Gatineau . According to the United States Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth most spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all dialects of Chinese are similarly combined. French
13432-917: The Caribbean that are collectively referred to as the French West Indies , namely Guadeloupe , Saint Barthélemy , Saint Martin , and Martinique . French is the official language of both French Guiana on the South American continent, and of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland in North America. French was the official language of the colony of French Indochina , comprising modern-day Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . It continues to be an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia, although its influence has waned in recent decades. In colonial Vietnam,
13616-550: The Eiffel Tower and a definition of 180 lines in the long term, as soon as Barthélemy had finalized his work. One thousand guests of the Minister, personalities, journalists and industrialists flocked to the studio at 103 rue de Grenelle on Friday, 26 April 1935 to attend the first official regular French television broadcast transmitted by radio with a definition of 60 lines3. At 8:15 pm, on the small greenish screen appeared
13800-538: The Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of
13984-415: The French 455-line transmitter of interest to Telefunken lead to discussions on the rehabilitation and use of this transmitter for television. Opposed to this dismantling, Kurt Hinzmann [ de ] , German television pioneer and former director of the programs of Berlin's Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow television station, who succeeded in convincing the German authorities to continue the broadcast of
14168-470: The French market to the German electrical industry by adopting the German 441-line broadcasting standard developed by Telefunken. Finally, from a military point of view, the repair of this transmitter could allow it to be used as a jammer for enemy planes. By order of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to the Ministry of PTT on 20 May 1942, the work to restore the transmitter in the Eiffel Tower to service
14352-484: The Germanic Frankish language , which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order , a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary ) including the impersonal singular pronoun on (a calque of Germanic man ), and the name of the language itself. Up until its later stages, Old French , alongside Old Occitan , maintained
14536-522: The Ministry of PTT to pass under the administration of the National French Radio, newly created for this purpose, endowed with an autonomous budget and placed directly under the authority of the President of the council. The rue de Grenelle studio went on annual vacation on 31 July 1939 and never reopened. Radiodiffusion nationale Télévision then only broadcast films, documentaries and news via its Grammont telecine and identified itself with
14720-538: The Nipkow disk system continued alongside the new electronic system until 10 April 1938. In July 1938, a decree of the French PTT agency fixed the French terrestrial television standard as transmitting on 455 lines VHF (46 MHz, positive modulation, 25 frames per second), to be adopted throughout France within three years. The adoption of the electronic standard marked the end of mechanical television in France, and
14904-568: The RTF TV network and became RTF's first relay outside Paris. RTF television services were also extended to French Algeria in 1956, which later became TV1 Algeria upon Algerian independence in 1962. Following the creation of RTF Télévision 2 (now France 2 ) in 1964, the first channel was renamed as Première chaîne de la RTF (First Channel of the RTF). With the creation of the ORTF on 25 July 1964,
15088-587: The Reichspost in Germany, and which was installed by technicians from Berlin. Fernsehsender Paris (Paris-Télévision) moved into a large 3,000-seat ballroom, a remnant of the former Magic-City amusement park closed in 1926, unused since the start of the war. This installation made it possible to start the programs on a regular basis on 7 May 1943 only in telecine, because the work on the V-shaped stage, allowing
15272-453: The USA, detected the light reflected from the subject and converted it into a proportional electrical signal. This was transmitted by AM radio waves to a receiver unit, where the video signal was applied to a neon light behind a second Nipkow disk rotating synchronized with the first. The brightness of the neon lamp was varied in proportion to the brightness of each spot on the image. As each hole in
15456-579: The United States' General Electric proved that flying spot scanners could work outdoors. The scanning light source must be brighter than other incident illumination. Kell was the engineer who ran a 24-line camera that telecast pictures of New York governor Al Smith . Smith was accepting the Democratic nomination for presidency. As Smith stood outside the capital in Albany, Kell managed to send usable pictures to his associate Bedford at station WGY , which
15640-689: The advent of electronic television to obtain much better image quality. While the BBC Television Service was able to broadcast the arrival of the President of the French Republic Albert Lebrun in London for his official visit on 21 March 1939, RN Télévision was otherwise unable to film a single image. The Minister of the PTT Alfred Jules-Julien [ fr ] thus promised on 31 March
15824-466: The best mechanical televisions of the 1930s used the Scophony system, which could produce images of more than 400 lines and display them on screens at least 9 by 12 feet (2.7 m × 3.7 m) in size (at least a few models of this type were actually produced). The Scophony system used multiple drums rotating at fairly high speed to create the images. One using a 441-line American standard of
16008-498: The callsign Télé-Cinéma Radiodiffusion nationale. When France entered World War II on 3 September 1939, military authorities ordered the cessation of broadcasts and took control of the Eiffel Tower transmitter. The French hardly noticed it because there were no more than 300 receiving stations throughout the territory, which were also watched in a few rare public places. A few broadcasts were still broadcast episodically for transmitter maintenance purposes, but these were not advertised in
16192-494: The cameras to be moved back for wider shots, had not been completed. It broadcasts in German and French four days a week from 10 am to noon, three days from 3pm to 8pm and every evening from 8:30pm to 10pm, broadcasting variety shows and theater for field hospitals (Kriegslazarett) of the Wehrmacht installed in the Paris region and German residents in Paris (about 1,000 receivers, including a hundred for French viewers). The station
16376-548: The cathode-ray tube control receiver during this broadcast, Georges Mandel gave the PTT technicians and René Barthélemy six months to set up the necessary installations for regular public broadcasting in 180 lines. Two months late, the official inauguration of 180-line television took place on Sunday, 8 December 1935, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm in front of the press, at the Radiovision-PTT studio at 103, rue de Grenelle in Paris, with
16560-555: The channel was renamed again to Première chaîne de l'ORTF (First Channel of the ORTF). This period marked the introduction of commercial advertising on 1 October 1968. On 8 January 1969, the ORTF created a subsidiary company called Régie française de publicité [ fr ] (RFP) to handle all advertising on the ORTF channels. The RFP held a monopoly on French TV advertising until the launch of privately owned TV channels in France in
16744-449: The channels being renamed TF1, TF2 and TF3. However, the fact that the three channels were to be independent caused TF1 to become the only channel to use the proposed Télévision Française name. The rebranding to the new name came into effect on 6 January 1975. TF1 adopted a multicoloured logo and cel-animated idents created by Catherine Chaillet [ fr ] , and from 1976 until 1985, analogue computer-generated idents produced using
16928-427: The company a rudimentary studio at number 93 of the same street. Barthélemy continued his experiments there with a new disc camera from Nipkow which offered much better shooting possibilities than with the previous system. The programs were broadcast in 30 lines on Tuesday and Friday at 5:00 pm by two transmitters, the images by the medium wave transmitter of the higher school of the PTT on the wavelength of 431 meters and
17112-590: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Mechanical television Mechanical-scanning methods were used in the earliest experimental television systems in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the first experimental wireless television transmissions was by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird on October 2, 1925, in London. By 1928 many radio stations were broadcasting experimental television programs using mechanical systems. However
17296-457: The day had a small drum rotating at 39,690 rpm (a second slower drum moved at just a few hundred rpm). Some mechanical equipment scanned lines vertically rather than horizontally , as in modern TVs. An example of this method is the Baird 30-line system. Baird's British system created a picture in the shape of a very narrow, vertical rectangle. This shape created a " portrait " image, instead of
17480-519: The demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future". However, some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to eradicate the use of French, and as of 2024 it was removed as an official language in Mali and Burkina Faso . Significant as a judicial language, French
17664-587: The design practical. Scottish inventor John Logie Baird in 1925 built some of the first prototype video systems, which employed the Nipkow disk . On March 25, 1925, Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge's Department Store in London. Since human faces had inadequate contrast to show up on his primitive system, he televised a ventriloquist's dummy named "Stooky Bill" talking and moving, whose painted face had higher contrast. By January 26, 1926, he demonstrated
17848-687: The disc to the NTSC system. In Col-R-Tel, the electronics provide the saturation values (chroma). These electronics cause chroma values to superimpose over brightness (luminance) changes of the picture. The disc paints the hues (color) over the picture. A few years after Col-R-Tel, the Apollo Moon missions also adopted field-sequential techniques. The lunar color cameras all had color wheels. These Westinghouse and later RCA cameras sent field-sequential color television pictures to Earth. The Earth receiving stations included electronic equipment that converted
18032-453: The discs in Dr. McLean's collection are a number of test recordings made by television pioneer John Logie Baird himself. One disc, dated "28th March 1928" and marked with the title "Miss Pounsford", shows several minutes of a woman's face in what appears to be very animated conversation. In 1993, the woman was identified by relatives as Mabel Pounsford, and her brief appearance on the disc is one of
18216-455: The disk passed by, one scan line of the image was reproduced. Baird's disk had 30 holes, producing an image with only 30 scan lines, just enough to recognize a human face. In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow . In 1928, Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and
18400-469: The duration of the Second World War, sealing its fate. No complete receiver survives, although some components do. Since the 1970s, some amateur radio enthusiasts have experimented with mechanical systems. The early light source of a neon lamp has now been replaced with super-bright LEDs . There is some interest in creating these systems for narrow-bandwidth television , which would allow
18584-448: The economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige). In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged." Knowledge of French
18768-594: The elites primarily spoke French, while many servants who worked in French households spoke a French pidgin known as " Tây Bồi " (now extinct). After French rule ended, South Vietnam continued to use French in administration, education, and trade. However, since the Fall of Saigon and the opening of a unified Vietnam's economy, French has gradually been effectively displaced as the first foreign language of choice by English in Vietnam. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as
18952-563: The face of the actress and friend of the minister, Béatrice Bretty, member of the Comédie-Française, with at her side, Jean Toscane, the most famous voice of Radio PTT, and René Barthélemy. Lips and eyes made up in black for the needs of television broadcasting, Miss Bretty recounted of her last tour in Italy with the troupe: "We had a great trip...". These were the first words broadcast on French television. This first television program
19136-516: The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, while the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of law in the Kingdom of France . During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ( lingua franca ). It retained this role until approximately the middle of
19320-433: The first shore-to-ship transmission. In 1929, he became involved in the first experimental mechanical television service in Germany. In November of the same year, Baird and Bernard Natan of Pathé established France's first television company, Télévision- Baird -Natan. In 1931, he made the first outdoor remote broadcast, of The Derby . In 1932, he demonstrated ultra-short wave television. Baird's mechanical system reached
19504-512: The flying spot method until 1935, and German television used flying spot methods as late as 1938. However, flying spot techniques remained in use in many applications after the demise of mechanical television. The German inventor Manfred von Ardenne designed a flying spot scanner with a CRT as the light source, and CRT-based flying spot scanners became a common technique for telecine . In the 1950s, DuMont marketed Vitascan , an entire flying-spot color studio system. Laser scanners continue to use
19688-915: The former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body . It is the sole internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union , and makes with English the European Court of Human Rights 's two working languages. In 1997, George Weber published, in Language Today ,
19872-810: The frequency of 206 meters by the transmitter of Radio Tour Eiffel. The very large public crowds in front of the receivers installed at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers at 292 rue Saint-Martin, at the National Tourist Office of the Champs-Elysées, at the Salon de la France d'Outre-Mer at the Grand Palais, at the Maison de la Chimie, and at the town hall of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, which simultaneously broadcast
20056-829: The gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish. The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the Petit Robert , which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240. Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life ( chêne , bille , etc.), animals ( mouton , cheval , etc.), nature ( boue , etc.), domestic activities (ex. berceau ), farming and rural units of measure ( arpent , lieue , borne , boisseau ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being
20240-524: The greatest French artists, such as Sacha Guitry, Serge Lifar and Maurice Chevalier, to the cameras of the Radiovision-PTT studio. At that time, there were only about 100 individual television receivers. Grammont carried out its tests in 441 lines, the Compagnie Française de Télévision (association of the CdC and SFR-CSF) in 450 lines and Thomson-Houston in 455 lines . The PTT administration chose
20424-458: The growth of television as an accepted mass medium in France. On 29 May 1949, the first news programme aired on RTF TV, and on 30 July 1949 a television licence fee was introduced. Residents living outside Paris could view RTF TV for the first time in February 1952 when Télé Lille (now known as France 3 Nord-Pas-de-Calais ), a regional broadcaster operating since 10 April 1950, was co-opted into
20608-442: The heavy administration of the PTT for which he was responsible by modernizing, Georges Mandel decided to inaugurate as soon as possible a regular and experimental public television service in France. In March 1935, he went to the CdC to measure the state of progress of the research. René Barthélemy gave him a demonstration of his new mechanical disc camera with 60 lines of definition (25 images per second), his new telecine (of which he
20792-546: The image quality of 30-line transmissions steadily improved with technical advances, and by 1933 the UK broadcasts using the Baird system were remarkably clear. A few systems ranging into the 200-line region also went on the air. 180-lines broadcast tests were carried out by the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft in 1935, with a 16 kW (21 hp) transmitter in Berlin . Transmissions lasted 90 minutes
20976-558: The images in 180 lines. Indeed, if Barthélemy's Emyvisor was put on sale at the end of 1935, its price was still exorbitant (8,000 to 10,000 francs at the time, or around 6,000 euros today) and only the privileged few could enjoy television at the time. Robert Jardillier [ fr ] , new PTT Minister of the Popular Front , launched on 24 October 1936 a call for tenders from radio-electric manufacturers in order to provide television with higher definition equipment exploiting
21160-454: The language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. French is the second most commonly spoken language in Canada and one of two federal official languages alongside English. As of the 2021 Canadian census , it was the native language of 7.7 million people (21% of the population) and the second language of 2.9 million (8% of the population). French
21344-479: The language, although it has now given way to Tamil and English. A former French mandate , Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used. Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The French language in Lebanon
21528-612: The language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario . Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The Ontarian city of Ottawa ,
21712-479: The last to hold onto Gaulish. The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc . Langue d'oïl grew into what
21896-523: The later work of Vladimir K. Zworykin . In Japan he is viewed as the man who completed the first all-electronic television. His research in creating a production model was halted by the US after Japan lost World War II . Herbert E. Ives and Frank Gray of Bell Telephone Laboratories gave a dramatic demonstration of mechanical television on April 7, 1927. The reflected-light television system included both small and large viewing screens. The small receiver had
22080-445: The medium wave transmitter of Radio PTT. The Barthélemy system was officially adopted in preference to that of Baird, due to the greater stability of the images, for the continuation of experimental transmissions in 1932. The Minister of the PTT, Henri Queuille , then authorised the CdC to continue its experiments using the PTT superior school transmitter located at 103 rue de Grenelle in the 15th arrondissement of Paris and assigned
22264-521: The money of the time. Inexpensive adapters allowed owners of black-and-white NTSC television sets to receive color telecasts. The most prominent of these adapters is Col-R-Tel, a 1955 NTSC to field-sequential converter. This system operates at NTSC scanning rates, but uses a disc like the obsolete CBS system had. The disc converts the black-and-white set to a field-sequential set. Meanwhile, Col-R-Tel electronics recover NTSC color signals and sequence them for disc reproduction. The electronics also synchronize
22448-420: The necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". When public education was made compulsory , only French was taught and the use of any other ( patois ) language was punished. The goals of the public school system were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany . Instructions given by
22632-684: The night. The new French Minister of the PTT of the Flandin Government, Georges Mandel , during a visit to the general manager of the British Broadcasting Corporation at the end of 1934, attended a live broadcast of the Epsom Derby on a televisor built by John Logie Baird . Convinced by this demonstration and of the interest of this invention for the future, but also very aware that the ministerial instability must lead him to quickly imprint his mark on
22816-589: The official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick); Belgium ( Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region ); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont); Monaco;
23000-534: The other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language. All three countries are full members of La Francophonie (OIF). French was the official language of French India , consisting of the geographically separate enclaves referred to as Puducherry . It continued to be an official language of the territory even after its cession to India in 1956 until 1965. A small number of older locals still retain knowledge of
23184-481: The point where the spot fell reflected varying amounts of light, which was converted to a proportionally varying electronic signal by the photoelectric cells. To achieve adequate sensitivity, instead of a single cell, a number of photoelectric cells were used. Like mechanical television itself, flying spot technology grew out of phototelegraphy (facsimile). This scanning method began in the 19th century. The flying spot method has two disadvantages: In 1928, Ray Kell from
23368-472: The possibilities offered by the iconoscope and electronic television. Already exploited by the British, Germans and Americans. A test period would enable the best standard to be chosen. The broadcasts became regular from 4 January 1937 with broadcast from 11am to 11:30am and from 8pm to 8:30pm on weekdays and from 5:30pm to 7:30pm on Sundays. The Deputy Secretary General for Broadcasts, Wladimir Porché, brought
23552-471: The preferred language of certain institutions or administrations such as the Court of Justice of the European Union , where it is the sole internal working language, or the Directorate-General for Agriculture . Since 2016, Brexit has rekindled discussions on whether or not French should again hold greater role within the institutions of the European Union. A leading world language , French
23736-586: The press so that the Germans could not use the transmitter signal to locate and bombard Paris. On 6 June 1940, technicians from RN Télévision sabotaged the transmitter to make it unusable by the Germans who were at the gates of Paris. The German occupying forces initially took no interest in the Eiffel Tower transmitter until an order in May 1941, aimed at reducing transmission sites in the occupied zone in order to recover raw materials, and thus recover certain elements of
23920-576: The programs of the station during the war by proposing its use to entertain and distract the war wounded in hospitals, took up this idea to apply it to the French capital and thus save the Parisian transmitter. He recommended putting the Eiffel Tower transmitter back into service to broadcast a television channel intended to entertain the German soldiers hospitalized in the Kriegslazarette in Paris. In addition, this television channel would open up
24104-636: The raw colour video signals into the NTSC standard. The advancement of vacuum tube electronic television (including image dissectors and other camera tubes and CRTs for the reproducer) marked the beginning of the end for mechanical systems as the dominant form of television. Mechanical TV usually only produced small images. It was the main type of TV until the 1930s. Vacuum tube television, first demonstrated in September 1927 in San Francisco by Philo Farnsworth , and then publicly by Farnsworth at
24288-406: The receiver, a type of Kerr cell modulated the light and a series of variously angled mirrors attached to the edge of a rotating disc scanned the modulated beam onto the display screen. A separate circuit regulated synchronization. The 8 x 8 pixel resolution in this proof-of-concept demonstration was just sufficient to clearly transmit individual letters of the alphabet. An updated image
24472-410: The relationship between Bouygues and the public-sector contracting system often raises suspicions. Immigration and violence are arguably conflated in the channel's news programmes. In addition, it is occasionally alleged that news reports from TF1 tend to ignore issues yielding a bad light on their parent group (Bouygues), while stressing the problems of competitors (such as Vinci SA ). Such criticism
24656-471: The rest largely speak French as a first language. As a French Creole language , Haitian Creole draws the large majority of its vocabulary from French, with influences from West African languages, as well as several European languages. It is closely related to Louisiana Creole and the creole from the Lesser Antilles . French is the sole official language of all the overseas territories of France in
24840-483: The restart, the official resumption of television broadcasts took place with one hour of programming each day. On 20 November 1948, the Secretary of State for Information, François Mitterrand , decreed the adoption of the 819-line high-definition VHF standard, which was in use from 1949 until 1983. Radiodiffusion française was renamed as Radiodiffusion-télévision française (RTF) on 9 February 1949, and thus began
25024-475: The resulting auction for the sale of TF1. On 16 April, its president, Francis Bouygues , presented a check of three billion francs to the government, completing the privatisation of TF1. TF1's current logo was unveiled on 2 February 1990. It launched a news network, La Chaîne Info (LCI), in 1994. The channel was available in Italy alongside LCI on digital terrestrial television from 2004 to December 2006 on Dfree multiplex. In 2005, TF1 launched TF1 Vision,
25208-500: The satellite TV provider TPS , which was sold to Canal+ Group . The network is a supporter of the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HBBTV) initiative, promoting and establishing an open European standard for hybrid set-top boxes for the reception of terrestrial TV and broadband multimedia applications with a single user interface. The government operated the sole television channel in France for 28 years. It
25392-530: The scanned part. Kell's photocells couldn't discriminate reflections off Smith (from the AC scanning beam) from the flat, DC light from the floodlamps. The effect is very similar to extreme overexposure in a still camera: The scene disappears, and the camera records a flat, bright light. If used in favorable conditions, however, the picture comes out correctly. Similarly, Kell proved that outdoors in favorable conditions, his scanner worked. The BBC television service used
25576-461: The schedule consists of gameshows, sensational documentaries and dubbed versions of TV series. The channel's news service is perceived as consisting of more celebrity news and human-interest stories than its public-sector competitors. On 16 April 2009, the employee responsible for the "Web innovation" department was fired for criticizing the HADOPI law in a private email (on 19 February) sent to
25760-576: The significance of the Bell Labs demonstration: "It was in fact the best demonstration of a mechanical television system ever made to this time. It would be several years before any other system could even begin to compare with it in picture quality." In 1928, General Electric launched their own experimental television station W2XB , broadcasting from the GE plant in Schenectady, New York. The station
25944-594: The sound by the transmitter of the CdC in Montrouge connected to the studio by a telephone line. These experimental broadcasts only reached a very limited public of amateurs of technical innovation who tinkered with receivers connected to a radio, thus constituting a radiovision receiver. At the same time, the BBC Television Service had been broadcasting an experimental but regular television service since 22 August 1932, with broadcasts taking place Monday to Friday from 11.00 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., and at night on medium wave on 205 meters after BBC radio programmes closed down for
26128-404: The studio were routed live by a 2,500 meter long telephone cable to a new transmitter designed by SFR-CSF and temporarily located at the north pillar of the Eiffel Tower, from where a feeder connected it to the four 2 kW shortwave transmitting antennas located at the top of the tower 320 meters high and which can be received 100 km around Paris11. The sound was transmitted in medium wave on
26312-406: The studios, leaving the French with a fully operational and among the most efficient television station in the world, which enabled French television to be the first in Europe to resume its broadcasts from the old studio and with the equipment from Fernsehsender Paris, from 1 October 1944 intermittently and in closed circuit test transmissions, because the Americans had administered the Eiffel Tower at
26496-560: The technology never produced images of sufficient quality to become popular with the public. Mechanical-scan systems were largely superseded by electronic-scan technology in the mid-1930s, which was used in the first commercially successful television broadcasts which began in the late 1930s. In the U.S., experimental stations such as W2XAB in New York City began broadcasting mechanical television programs in 1931 but discontinued operations on February 20, 1933, until returning with an all-electronic system in 1939. A mechanical television receiver
26680-443: The television systems of Ernst Alexanderson , Frank Conrad , Charles Francis Jenkins , William Peck and Ulises Armand Sanabria . ) These inventors realized that television is about relationships between people. From the very beginning, these inventors allowed picture space for two-shots. Soon, images increased to 60 lines or more. The camera could easily photograph several people at once. Then even Baird switched his picture mask to
26864-414: The then 405-line television system used in the United Kingdom) on a display that was 24-inches wide and 20-inches high. A version intended for theater audiences had a 6 feet wide display. It was also capable of being set up for the US 441-line television system . For 405 lines, it used a high-speed scanner running at 30,375 r.p.m. and a low speed mirror drum running at around 250 r.p.m., in conjunction with
27048-407: The time and prohibited the use of its transmitter until 1 October 1945. Television broadcasts in France resumed on 1 October 1944 under the name Télévision française , and following the creation of Radiodiffusion française on 23 March 1945, the television service was renamed as RDF Télévision française. Following the return of the Eiffel Tower to the French precisely one year (1 October 1945) after
27232-414: The total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050, largely due to rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa . OIF estimates 700 million French speakers by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. In a study published in March 2014 by Forbes , the investment bank Natixis said that French could become the world's most spoken language by 2050. In
27416-435: The transmission of image of a face in motion by radio. This is widely regarded as being the world's first public television demonstration. Baird's system used the Nipkow disk for both scanning the image and displaying it. A brightly illuminated subject was placed in front of a spinning Nipkow disk set with lenses which swept images across a static photocell. The thallium sulphide (Thalofide) cell, developed by Theodore Case in
27600-403: The transmission of simple images over a telephone wire from the Palace of Justice at Brussels to the city of Liege, a distance of 115 km (71 mi). This demonstration was described at the time as "the world's first working model of television apparatus". The limited number of elements meant his device was only capable of representing simple geometric shapes, and the cost was very high; at
27784-442: The transmitter and receiver. Constantin Perskyi had coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on August 24, 1900. Perskyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others. However, it was the 1907 invention of the first amplifying vacuum tube , the triode , by Lee de Forest , that made
27968-436: The transmitting camera, a mechanical disc filters hues (colors) from reflected studio lighting. At the receiver, a synchronized disc paints the same hues over the CRT. As the viewer watches pictures through the color disc, the pictures appear in full color. Later, simultaneous color systems superseded the CBS-Goldmark system, but mechanical color methods continued to find uses. Early color sets were very expensive: over $ 1,000 in
28152-619: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French
28336-508: The urban intellectual elite. The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable Romanization . Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French contributing loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by
28520-425: The use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is an official language at the federal level along with Dutch and German. At the regional level, French is the sole official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons , which are German-speaking ) and one of
28704-408: The use of a camera with Weiller mirror drums by the engineer René Barthélemy , head of the radio laboratory of the Compagnie desmètres (CdC) of Montrouge. In charge of French broadcasting, the PTT administration carried out some rudimentary television experiments from December 1931 by broadcasting experimental 30 to 45 minute broadcasts at variable times from Monday to Saturday with Baird equipment from
28888-441: The video signal was the "flying spot scanner", developed as a remedy for the low sensitivity that photoelectric cells had at the time. Instead of a television camera that took pictures, a flying spot scanner projected a bright spot of light that scanned rapidly across the subject scene in a raster pattern, in a darkened studio. The light reflected from the subject was picked up by banks of photoelectric cells and amplified to become
29072-430: The video signal. In the scanner the narrow light beam was produced by an arc lamp shining through the holes in a spinning Nipkow disk. Each sweep of the spot across the scene produced a "scan line" of the picture. A single "frame" of the picture was typically made up of 24, 48, or 60 scan lines. The scene was typically scanned 15 or 20 times per second, producing 15 or 20 video frames per second. The varying brightness of
29256-481: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of
29440-402: The world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie , an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories can speak French as either a first or a second language . This number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as
29624-566: Was a large-screen television system and the most advanced television of its day. The Ives 50-line system also produced a vertical "portrait" picture. Since AT&T intended to use television for telephony, the vertical shape was logical: phone calls are usually conversations between just two people. A picturephone system would depict one person on each side of the line. Meanwhile, in the US, Germany and elsewhere, other inventors planned to use television for entertainment purposes. These inventors began with square or "landscape" pictures. (For example,
29808-417: Was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French
29992-489: Was also called a televisor . The first mechanical raster scanning techniques were developed in the 19th century for facsimile , the transmission of still images by wire. Alexander Bain introduced the facsimile machine in 1843 to 1846. Frederick Bakewell demonstrated a working laboratory version in 1851. The first practical facsimile system, working on telegraph lines, was developed and put into service by Giovanni Caselli from 1856 onward. Willoughby Smith discovered
30176-422: Was broadcast live until 8:30pm on the 175-meter medium-wave frequency within a radius of 100 km. Radiovision-PTT, the first French television channel, had just been born. Radio-PTT Vision began operations on 26 April 1935 as the first television station in France, using a 30-line mechanical television system based on the Nipkow disk . It was operated by the French PTT agency with a transmitter located atop
30360-403: Was broadcasting Smith's speech. The rehearsal went well, but then the real event began. The newsreel cameramen switched on their floodlights. Unfortunately for Kell, his scanner only had a 1 kW lamp inside it. The floodlights threw much more light on Governor Smith. These floods simply overwhelmed Kell's imaging photocells. In fact, the floods made the unscanned part of the image as bright as
30544-432: Was common on many early color television systems before the shadow mask CRT provided a practical method for producing a simultaneous color image. Another place where high-quality imagery is produced by opto-mechanics is the laser printer , where a small rotating mirror is used to deflect a modulated laser beam in one axis while the motion of the photoconductor provides the motion in the other axis. A modification of such
30728-484: Was completed in 1977, though the old 819-line analogue network remained entirely black-and-white until it was decommissioned in 1983. Since TF1's privatisation in April 1987, the abbreviation is no longer expanded, so as to avoid confusion with the current public television broadcaster France Télévisions . From 1984 to 1986, the French television landscape evolved significantly with the launch of three private television channels: Canal+ , La Cinq and TV6 . In March 1986,
30912-421: Was converted into a television studio on 17 April 1935 and its bleachers were dismantled to enlarge it. The CdC's 60-line mechanical camera was placed in the adjoining room, behind double-thick insulating glass to mask the sound of the motor spinning the camera disk. This same room also housed the 60-line, 500-watt transmitter designed by the Compagnie des Comptes. The project provided for a short wave transmitter on
31096-420: Was created as Radio-PTT Vision on 26 April 1935, making it among the oldest television stations in the world, and one of the very few prewar television stations to remain in existence to the present day. The first public demonstration of a 30-line mechanical television took place on 14 April 1931. The image rendering was an improvement upon Baird's thanks to the development of the "moving light point" system and
31280-531: Was during the period of the Crusades in which French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that became a lingua franca ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the Arabs during the Crusades who referred to them as Franj , numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as algébre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero). Within Old French many dialects emerged but
31464-407: Was entrusted to the Compagnie des comptes de Montrouge and the German firm Telefunken, following a collaboration agreement between the two companies to jointly build the technical infrastructure of this new television channel. The equipment of the Compagnie des Compteurs being considered uninteresting, Telefunken supplied the new television transmitter to the German standard of 441 lines, recovered from
31648-400: Was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Arpitan . The evolution of Latin in Gaul
31832-495: Was heavy in the satirical show Les Guignols de l'info , broadcast on rival network Canal+ . However, TF1 now competes in this category with M6 , which was initially a generalist channel focusing on musical programmes, but now has programming more resembling TF1 (notably, reality shows that TF1 started running just after M6 introduced them). French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] )
32016-469: Was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha . Spoken by 19.71% of the European Union's population, French is the third most widely spoken language in the EU, after English and German and the second-most-widely taught language after English. Under the Constitution of France , French has been the official language of the Republic since 1992, although the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates
32200-458: Was never fully perfected, proved to be complicated to use as well as quite expensive, yet managed to preserve a number of early broadcast images that would otherwise have been lost. Scottish computer engineer Donald F. McLean has painstakingly reconstructed the analogue playback technology required to view these recordings, and has given lectures and presentations on his collection of mechanical television recordings made between 1925 and 1933. Among
32384-415: Was officially inaugurated on 30 September 1943 with the start of live broadcasts. A week before the liberation of Paris , Fernsehsender Paris ceased broadcasting on Saturday 12 August 1944 at 11:30 p.m. On 17 August, the order was given to Hinzmann to blow up the Eiffel Tower's transmitter, which he refused, contenting himself with firing a few symbolic shots into unimportant equipment. The Germans left
32568-561: Was on June 13, 1925, that he publicly demonstrated synchronized transmission of silhouette pictures. In 1925 Jenkins used Nipkow disk and transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles (8 km) from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, D.C., using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution. He was granted the U.S. patent No. 1,544,156 (Transmitting Pictures over Wireless) on June 30, 1925 (filed March 13, 1922). On December 25, 1925, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated
32752-586: Was popularly known as " WGY Television", named after the GE owned radio station WGY . The station eventually converted to an all-electronic system in the 1930s and in 1942, received a commercial license as WRGB . The station is still operating today. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union , Léon Theremin had been developing a mirror drum-based television, starting with 16 lines resolution in 1925, then 32 lines and eventually 64 using interlacing in 1926, and as part of his thesis on May 7, 1926, he electrically transmitted and then projected near-simultaneous moving images on
32936-415: Was published internationally in 1890. An account of its use to transmit and preserve a still image was published in the Evening Star in Washington in 1896. The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of images was made by a German physicist, Ernst Ruhmer , who arranged 25 selenium cells as the picture elements for a television receiver. In late 1909 he successfully demonstrated in Belgium
33120-411: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of
33304-451: Was the inventor) with 180 lines, as well as a receiver with 60 cathode ray tube lines; a tube for which the CdC has just launched production. He also informed him of his ongoing work on a 180-line camera. Pressed to carry out his project, the minister granted Barthélemy the means requested for his success. The amphitheater of the PTT superior school, located in the premises of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications at 103 rue de Grenelle,
33488-437: Was the language they use the most at home rose from 67% at the 2007 census to 74% at the 2017 census. In Wallis and Futuna, the percentage of the population who reported that French was the language they use the most at home rose from 10% at the 2008 census to 13% at the 2018 census. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie ,
33672-412: Was transmitted "several times" each second. In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the " Braun tube" ( cathode-ray tube or "CRT") in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell
33856-415: Was very laggy". As a 23-year-old German university student, Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the Nipkow disk in 1884. This was a spinning disk with a spiral pattern of holes in it, so each hole scanned a line of the image. Although he never built a working model of the system, Nipkow's spinning-disk " image rasterizer " was the key mechanism used in most mechanical scan systems, in both
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