grammar - Why do we say "talk about the telephone" but "talk about televison"?

Teachers and native speakers :)
I was doing exercises about passive, came across these two sentences:
"When was the telephone invented?"
and
"When was television invented?" (without "the")
And we say "the history of television" not "the history of the television"
We use "the" when we talk about instruments, telephone but not television.
Why is that?

Answer

I disagree with the premise: you are confusing two separate phenomena.

The television is primarily a technological artifact.

"The history of the television" relates to the history of the device -- i.e. to the discoveries in materials science and the invention and development of the components of a TV set that made it possible to physically build it, plus the work to condense all the necessary information, materials and expertise into a device capable of transmitting pictures plus sound.

Television (without the the) is primarily a cultural construct.

"The history of television" encompasses the development of the practical techniques, together with the philosophical and artistic underpinnings, connected with the informational content for which the physical device which we call a television or a television set is merely the conduit.