It's called the persistence of vision — the physical principle that makes television possible. An image projected onto a human eye will remain briefly visible after its disappearance. Thus, a cathode-ray tube actually paints 30 distinct images onto our retinas in one second, but due to the persistence of vision, we think we see continuous motion. The flow is inexorable: Each moment replaces the one before it and then cedes its place to the one that follows.
Such is the dynamic of TV history as well. Moments come and go, blurring into the seamless whole of our viewing experience. But in our mind's eye, if not our physical one, some shine brighter than others. What follows are 100 of those moments. Some of them forever influenced or changed the medium. Some drew us together as a nation. Some were simply cool enough — or strange enough — that they remain tattooed on the backs of our eyelids. Mary Tyler Moore tosses her hat in the air; the 1980 U.S. hockey team toss their sticks into the crowd. Neil Armstrong walks on the moon; Michael Jackson moonwalks. JFK is shot in Dallas; J.R. is shot on Dallas.
People will argue about our choices. (What! No Milton Berle! No Oscar streaker!) Some will take issue with our rankings. For example, the last pair mentioned above rank in the top three. The juxtaposition of a national tragedy and a Hollywood melodrama might seem senselessly flip to some, but isn't that the legacy of the medium? For better or worse, television flattens experience, all experience, regardless of context. Kennedy's death and funeral transfixed a nation and forever changed the way we regard TV. The same can be said of Dallas. If there are moral distinctions to be made, they are left to the viewer. As a medium, television has only one message: Watch.
So turn your gaze to our 100 greatest moments. Much like TV itself, they were chosen to provoke, to entertain, to remind, and to engage. Simply put, these are the visions that persist. — Albert Kim
1950'sYou think you spend too much time with your TV? Philo Farnsworth — the Beaver, Utah, farm boy who had a workable idea for ''a way of sending pictures through the air'' by the time he was 16 — told his undoubtedly baffled bride on their wedding night, ''You know, there's another woman in my life. Her name is television.'' Think about it: It was only the mid-1920s, yet already the notion of television as mistress was alive in an American imagination besides that of Aaron Spelling.
By 1931, the Radio Corp. of America (RCA) had reached a deal involving Farnsworth's patents for television technology (no fool, our Philo — he demanded and got royalties, and the RCA lawyer was said to have cried when the contract was signed). Soon RCA, which would give birth to NBC, had rivals in the General Electric and DuMont companies, all racing to get shows — and this was a new, odd-sounding phrase back then — ''on the air.''
In 1931, William Paley, founder of what would become CBS, filed with the FCC to set up his first TV station, in Manhattan; it would feature, said its station director, ''boxing bouts, wrestling, football games, art exhibitions, classic dancing, palmistry, and news.'' Substitute sitcoms and dramas for art exhibitions, the Psychic Hotline for palmistry, and American Bandstand and MTV for classic dancing, and you could say that the essentials of television were already established. The American Broadcasting Co. (ABC) came along in 1943, and the three-way competition that was to dominate network television for the next five decades was in place.
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