There were two basic designs for T.V then: the mechanical television, based on Nipkow's electric telescope, and the electric television, which harnessed cathode ray tubes. The mechanical television was never fully operational until in 1906 Boris Rosing combined the cathode ray tubes with the electric telescope to create a working version of the mechanical television. During that same time, Lee de Forest created the Audion Vacuum, which had the ability to amplify signals. Less then a year later, Swinton and Rosing, each came up with their own methods of scanning electronically to reproduce images. .
Two groups were then made. The people working on the mechanical television, which were Charles Jenkins and John Baird, and the people working on the electronic television, Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin. Around 1923, Zworykin invents the iconscope, which he called the "electric eye." This piece of equipment became a resource for further television development. He also attempted to patent a color television 2 years later, but it failed miserably. .
After Zworykin's iconscope, the mechanical television group finally came out with something. The device they created was the first to transmit silhouette moving images. A few years later, in 1926, Baird operated a system that was at 30 lines of resolution and 5 frames per second.
In 1927, for the first time ever, was the first long distance use of television between Washington D.C. and New York City. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover commented, "Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world's history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown." .
Zworykin then created a new tube, called the kinescope, which showed the first practical system for transmission and reception. During this time Baird also opened the first T.V. studio, but regretfully, the image quality that he put was highly poor.