View Full Version : Hoary old question.........


Combwork
10-21-2006, 04:24 PM
Who invented television? Ok, as worded it's an impossible question to answer, but in a book called `Victorian Inventions' by Leonard de Vries (compiled in colaboration with Ilonka van Amstel) published in 1971 there's an artical about `Dessaud's Teleoscope'; essentially a mechanical scanning disc based television with a frame rate of 10 per second. I don't know how well it worked (if at all) but it's very clever and purely mechancally, it looks as if it maybe could have done. Final paragraph reads "Monsieur Dussaud is at present engaged in improving his system, and it is hoped that he will succeed in completing his experiments in time for the Exhibition to be held in Paris in 1900"

I wonder how many inventions were quietly made and then forgotten long before they were officially `invented'. Hiram Maxim's Steam Flying Machine was decades before the Wright Brothers but was effectively a rich mans toy with no apparent practical value, so having built the thing (it had several stacked wings, the longest of which had a span 125 feet!), he more or less lost interest. Imagine working for someone like this. One day you're head gardner, next day it's "stand there, pull that lever when I tell you and send me a postcard when you get wherever you're going"....... Jim

David Roper
10-21-2006, 06:22 PM
"Monsieur Dussaud is at present engaged in improving his system, and it is hoped that he will succeed in completing his experiments in time for the Exhibition to be held in Paris in 1900"
I'm sure that deadline ran out. Even allowing for a direct-wired (cable? ;) ) setup to count as "television" there just wasn't any way it could have been practically accomplished prior to the invention of the amplifying vacuum tube.

I'm in the Farnsworth camp myself. Props to Baird for producing the first picture by mechanical means, but more than a decade later, in a competition with EMI to determine British TV broadcast standards, he rose to the level of his own incompetence by refusing to envision a TV system that didn't somehow incorporate a motor.

Sandy G
10-21-2006, 06:57 PM
Now, now, boys, y'all KNOW that it was His Eminence The General's guy Zworykin who invented television-along w/automobiles, aeroplanes, telephones (Bell was Zworykin's butler, you know...), penicillin, the phonograph, & a buncha other stuff I've forgot about....There's evidence Sarnoff even gave The Almighty a few pointers when He developed electricity...But yeah, somehow the idea a bright kid with a crazy idea-Farnsworth-was the one who thought it up...

rld-tv01
10-21-2006, 07:12 PM
Paul Nipkow patented the first mechanical television system in 1884. He was not able to get a working model. Selenium in a glass tube was tried in early experiments previous to the neon tube but could not change state fast enough. They were able to transmit facsimile still images using Selenium. Also don't forget the Bell Lab's Television experiments around 1928 where Bell Lab's TV receiver addressed each pixel directly.

Combwork
10-22-2006, 08:18 AM
he rose to the level of his own incompetence by refusing to envision a TV system that didn't somehow incorporate a motor.


Pardon? Are we talking about John Logie Baird, acknowledged Father of television or James Leslie Baird; renowned Fishmonger and sometime wireless experimenter of Billingsgate, London? If the former, I must take issue with you young Sir. Mr. Baird, forever ignored by the BBC because he fell out with them big style in the early years did perhaps persevere with his mechanical scanning system for a bit too long, but it has to be remembered that his workshop/studio at Alexander Palace mysteriously caught fire in the middle of the pre war BBC trials of both systems, effectively handing the award to EMI without fair contest. Mechanical scaning has its problems; but Baird managed to get the system up to 200+ scaning lines on a budget that would not have kept EMI in light bulbs. What people forget about the Baird system is that it was first envisioned as a `vision only' add on to existing radio technology; some pre war U.K. radio sets even have `television' marked on the tuning dial; they carried television sound plus sync pulses for the scanning disc.

Just imagine what things would have been like if he'd had a decent R & D budget. Would he have seen the limitations of mechanical scanning and given up on it, or researched ways to overcome these limitations in order to reap the benifits of narrow bandwidth and extreme long range that the system had to offer? Hmmmmmmmmmm? Jim

KB9KXH
10-23-2006, 12:09 AM
Philo T. Farnsworth

Combwork
10-23-2006, 07:04 AM
Philo T. Farnsworth

Cryptic, to the point but sadly inaccurate. Charles Jenkins in the USA had a commercial mechanical scanning system available to the public, but this was after Baird had made public broadcasts over the BBC's radio transmitter in London. The great advantage of Baird's system was it's extreme long range; transatlantic television almost 40 years before Telstar. There's a link to an interesting site here.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcharlesjenkins.htm

The problem is that Baird died young, and a lot of his R & D work seems to have died with him. Apart from good newspaper coverage at the time, little is known of his `Telechrome' set, built in the 1940's apart from the fact that it was a fully compatible 405 line b & w plus 600 line colour television receiver with radio tuner and automatic record player. 600 line colour in the 1940's? Not bad for a Scotsman working in London.... Jim.

Sandy G
10-23-2006, 08:24 AM
Wasn't Baird also more-than-a-bit erm, "eccentric" ?

Combwork
10-23-2006, 09:10 AM
Wasn't Baird also more-than-a-bit erm, "eccentric" ?

He was indeed, and by reputation extremly difficult to work with. This is what fascinates me.

http://www.tvhistory.tv/EarlyTVBaird.htm

The incredible thing here is that by 1941 he was able to accept that mechanical scanning had its limits, adopt and improve EMI's 405 line electronic system, then add his own 600 line full colour system in a way that was fully compatible with the BBC's black & white broadcast standard. No one knows (or at least no one is telling) what happened to this set; the BBC deny all knowledge of it (I tried to get information from them; no joy), but there is a persistant rumor that RCA acquired at least parts of the thing just after WW2. Maybe some day it will come to light................. Jim.

Sandy G
10-23-2006, 09:23 AM
Yeah-I saw a picture of Baird, he looked like the prototypical "Mad Scientist"-unruly hair, wild look in his eyes...I thought, yeah, YOUR elevator don't stop on all floors...I think he also suffered from ill health-lots of respiratory troubles or somesuch. But how many of the folks that developed a lot of this stuff were "teched"-somewhat "odd" or "quirky" ?

Bobby Brady
10-23-2006, 09:39 AM
But how many of the folks that developed a lot of this stuff were "teched"-somewhat "odd" or "quirky" ?

I also wonder about that. It would be very intereting to have lunch and talk about whatever comes up with one of those men!