G'day all.

I understand that Videokarma has many sub forums covering all forms of electronic television and broadcast gear and other electronic related gadgetry but there does not seem to be a forum dedicated to mechanical television for those who have collected vintage mechanical TV sets and hobbyists like Peter Yancer and many others who enjoy building mechanical TV sets and I wonder why as mechanical television is just as important as electronic television?

I do know there is a big Narrow-Bandwidth Television Association forum dedicated to NBTV and mechanical TV in general http://www.taswegian.com/NBTV/forum/index.php and I have lately developed a big interest in mechanical television lately and have built some myself but I feel Videokarma is a bit incomplete without a sub forum dedicated to mechanical television as not everyone knows about NBTV's forum.

Anyhow just a suggestion to the moderators could we possibly have a mechanical television sub forum on Videokarma?

Lastly here's some mechanical TVs I've constructed in the last few months and have posted to NBTV forum:
32 line NBTV 20cm cardboard Nipkow disc TV: http://www.taswegian.com/NBTV/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1527
32 line NBTV 40cm plywood Nipkow disc TV: http://www.taswegian.com/NBTV/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1530
30 line TeKaDe tin can drum TV: http://www.taswegian.com/NBTV/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1550

Please don't degrade all Aussies with the "Oi Oi Oi"!!! :D

Great to see another AU on the forums though!

I understand there was a separate section dedicated to mechanical TV many years ago when the TV forums were still part of AudioKarma. Maybe there would be enough traffic in such a section today, but apparently there wasn't at the time and so it was folded into this one. This was before my time, so prior to 2005.

According to the ETF Database there are less than 100 sets in the hands of private collectors, that probably isn't enough to justify a separate Forum.

We could change the title of this forum to include Mechanical TV, I believe that is how it was originally.

You are more than welcome to discuss them here in any case.

There may only be 100 complete sets but there are numerous Mechanical TV artifacts out there. I don't have a complete mechanical TV but I have neon tubes, nipkow disks, mirror drums and Daven mechanical tv amplifiers. I also have built a mechanical TV camera and receiver from one of Peter Yancers kits. Mechanical TV includes physics, optics, electrical and mechanical attributes. There are numerous books, magazine articles, pictures, sales literature and US and foreign patents on the subject. I have original sales literature from Baird, Jenkins, Western Television, Shortwave and Television Corporation. Nasa has used mechanical tv technologies and it is used in VCRs/VTRs.

Richard

The ETF website has links to many online PDF format mechanical and electronic TV books. Most of the pre 1935 books have a lot of info on mechanical TV. The Collins "experimental television" book is a popular book since it was reproduced in paperback in the 1970s.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/biblio.html

Richard

Thanks for the ETF books link, downloaded them all, there's a lot of mad cool early TV stuff them which would give me great ideas for replicating old mechanical televisors though with modern parts!;)

Anyhow for the mechanical TV enthusiasts, here's a link to my latest mechanical TV project which is a multi-standard 30/32/60 line mechanical televisor which does both horizontal and vertical scanning, am still in the process of constructing it:
http://www.taswegian.com/NBTV/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1566

Thinking about there being very few mechanical televisors in existence in collectors hands opposed to electronic sets, I now wonder if any of the early mechanical televisors made in Australia between say 1929 and 1935 have survived? During that period quite a few Aussie radio amateurs were experimenting with broadcasting mechanical pictures with resolutions ranging from 30 lines to 180 lines.