The 'Golden Age of Television' is what many call the period between the 1950s and 1960s in which television began to establish itself as a medium prevalent in the United States. In 1947, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and the Du Mont Network were the four major television networks that operated stations with regular programming. (Television, 2003) Although regular television programming was a new innovation, television itself had been commercially available for over twenty years before the 1950s. It was conceived by many worldly innovators and went through several stages of testing before finally being completed in the late 1920s. The three main innovators were Niplow - who first developed a rotating disk with small holes arranged in a spiral in 1884, Zworykin - who developed the iconoscope capable of scanning images and breaking them down into electronic signals (an early form of the cathode ray tube ). in 1923, and finally Fansworth - who first demonstrated that it was possible to transmit an electric image in 1927. (Rollo, 2011) However, one of the many reasons why this medium became successful in the 1950s was due to the fact which became more accessible to the public. Televisions were more affordable for middle-class citizens, which created further interest in the new technology. Through a historical account of the medium, the spread of television in America during this particular decade will be examined. First, in order to illustrate the cultural context of this decade, I will refer to Lynn Spigel's paper entitled “Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and the Postwar Suburbs.” After World War II... middle of paper... did not stop television from being one of the most successful means of disseminating information. Works Cited Paul S. Boyer. "Television." The Oxford Companion to United States History. 2001. Retrieved November 24, 2011, from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-Television.htmlBretz, Rudy, 1957 “Video Tape: A TV Revolution” The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television, vol . 11, No. 4 pp. 399-415 Published by: University of California Press Article Stable URL: www.jstor.org/stable/1210000Ganzel, Bill. (2007). Television in the 50s and 60s. Retrieved from http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/life_17.htmlRollo, Mike. 2011 ¬“Video History” Film/Video I Lecture notesSpigel, Lynn. 2001 Welcome to the Dream House: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs / Lynn Spigel Duke University Press, Durham, NC. :