[syhprum (OP)]

Television had many inventors and most countries claim theirs was the first in the world, what is the official line

[alancalverd]

AFAIK the principle of the raster scanning disk was first demonstrated by Nipkow (Russia) but Baird (UK) was the first to apply it to an image broadcast system with sound. Whilst this certainly stimulated a market, the mechanical scan system was an evolutionary dead end and was quickly replaced by electron beam scanning (orthicon - Farnsworth and Zworykin,  USA) that saw (lots of) daylight on special occasions such as the 1936 Olympics . The British Broadcasting  Corporation adopted the  superior EMI camera for a regular and practical national service but color broadcast depended on the development of the more stable vidicon (RCA, USA).

[syhprum (OP)]

Although the technical developments that made modern TV possible were they American they lagged behind Europe in getting a broadcast system going with Germany, UK and France ahead of them.