[4] Parallel to the experiments by John Logie Baird in the United Kingdom, by Herbert E. Ives and Charles Francis Jenkins in the United States, as well as by Kenjiro Takayanagi in Japan, television pioneers like Dénes Mihály and Manfred von Ardenne had organised experimental television transmissions in Berlin since 1928.

From 1929 television test programs were regularly aired from the Funkturm Berlin transmitter (Rundfunksender Witzleben).

At first the station could only be received in and around Berlin, later also in other German cities via special Reichspost long distance cables.

After the collapse of East Germany in 1990, about 280 rolls of 35mm film were discovered of Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow programs.

[citation needed] In Germany, the rediscovered footage has been first used in the 1996 documentary Televisionen im Dritten Reich ("Tele-Visions in the Third Reich") made by WDR and NDR, as well as in Michael Kloft's 1999 documentary Das Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz ("Television Under the Swastika").