<Li> 1936: The 1936 Summer Olympics becomes the first Olympic Games to be broadcast on television </Li> <Li> 1937: The BBC Television Service broadcasts the world's first televised Shakespeare play, a thirty - minute version of Twelfth Night, and the first football match, Arsenal F.C. vs. Arsenal reserves . </Li> <Li> 1938: DuMont Laboratories manufactures and sells the first all - electronic television sets to the public . Baird gives the first public demonstration of color projection television . The BBC broadcasts the world's first ever television science fiction (R.U.R.), and television crime series (Telecrime); in one of the lengthiest experimental television broadcasts, the BBC broadcasts a 90 - minute version of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Leslie Banks, Constance Cummings, and James Mason </Li> <Li> 1939: The BBC suspends its television service owing to the outbreak of the Second World War . Broadcasts from 1939 New York World's Fair . Japan is the first Asian country to air television . </Li>

When did the first television go on sale