Abstract
THE word 'Televisor' was coined by Mr. J. L Baird in 1925 to describe apparatus for television and was registered by him as a trade mark. On account, however, of the general adoption of the word in the United States and elsewhere to denote any kind of television apparatus, Baird Television, Ltd., has decided to abandon its registration as a trade mark, so that in future there will be no restriction upon the use of the word in connexion with television. 'Televisor' may thus be used in future as freely as 'telegraph' and 'telephone'. The word telegraph was first applied by Chappe in France, in 1792, to his invention of the semaphore system of transmitting messages to a distance ; and the word telephone was used by Sudré in 1828 for a system of signalling by musical sounds. It was employed in 1844 to describe a powerful wind instrument to convey signals at sea during foggy weather. Philipp Reis, in 1861, called his ingenious instrument a telephone, so that he may be regarded as the inventor of the name of the modern instrument. Alexander Graham Bell adopted the word in 1876 for his "Electrical Speaking Telephone".
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Televisor, Telegraphy, Telephone. Nature 140, 188 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140188a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140188a0