A brief guide to the history of cable TV

Cable TV is very important to a large number of households nowadays and it offers a variety of ways to entertain the whole family as well as to learn something and to inform ourselves about what is happening in our country or around the world. Nowadays, about 60% of the people in most countries have access to cable TV and the middle-class households are the ones that account for most of the subscriptions. Cable TV was not nearly as popular the first time it came to life and there were a lot of obstacles to be tackled in order for it to gain popularity and become so convenient as it is nowadays.
The 1940s
Cable TV first came to life in 1948 and its first name was Community Antenna TV also known as CATV. At the time, the purpose of it was to make better the reception of any TV signals that reached mountainous areas. John Walson who owned an appliance store in Pennsylvania was the first one to put an antenna right on the top of a hill and this way make it possible for the residents of the city to watch TV with higher quality of the picture. He used coaxial cables in order to bring the picture to the homes of the people using CATV and then created some of the first amplifiers which were used.
1950s
By the year 1952 about 70 CATV systems had been placed all over the world and they were used in order to serve around 14 000 people that had subscribed to the service. Later on it was Walson who again started doing experiments with microwaves and they were used in order to pick up signals that came from some distant locations. CATV was brought to the homes of many subscribers now and it offered a large number of channels that could be picked up because of the increased range of the reception. This is what made CATV really attractive to a large number of people in America mostly.
1960s
By 1862 there were about 600 cable TV stations all around America and they functioned in order to satisfy the needs of the subscribers that were more than 800 000. The industry gathered some big investors and this meant that cable TV was going to grow in popularity even further. Local TV stations saw competition in cable TV providers and they made the progress of cable TV slower since they did not want to lose their whole profits.
In 1972 for the first time in the US there was a cable company which offered some paid cable TV services of higher quality that were worth paying for. This became really popular very soon and many people subscribed for it in the coming years. The development of cable TV continued rapidly and nowadays it is a big part of the home of almost every person all over the world. There is not a single person who has not heard of cable TV..