Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World (Apr-Jun 1930)

April 12, 1930 Exhibitors Herald-World 27 They're secretive, these scientists. Television Today By DOUGLAS FOX WHEN people gather in the name of the motion picture industry, one of the topics (if they are not film salesmen) that almost invariably bobs up into the conversation, is television — television, that ultimate thing in projection which the “visionaries” say will solve the entertainment problems of the world. Television is a word to conjure with. Your professional exploiter of ideas and personalities goes wild when you mention it to him. Already amazed at the tremendous reach of the radio, whereby he has brought to the ears of the civilized world the voices of persons who, 25 years ago, could have been heard by only a few thousand specially privileged persons a year, he stands aghast at the unplumbed possibilities of television, a medium which will project the images as well as the voices of performers into every nook and cranny which boasts of receiving apparatus. The motion picture exhibitor, whether he owns a single theatre or heads a vast chain, already views television as a definite factor in the show business. But is it a threat or a promise? How soon will it make its presence felt as an ally or a competitor? Far-sighted theatre men like Harold B. Franklin, president of Fox-West Coast Theatres, believe in taking the attitude that the new medium is “just around the corner” and that they should prepare themselves to meet it. In his brilliant article in a recent issue of Better Theatres, Mr. Franklin aptly said, “As the ‘movie’ found the voice to compete with the ear-craving which the radio had developed, so will we of the theatre have to enrich, embellish and improve our shows to meet this new competitor . . . and, if necessary, we will tie in.” The vast corporations of the electrical industry are keen on the mark. They are spending thousands of dollars a year on experimental work to develop television to the practical status of telephony, of which, certain facts indicate, they desire to make it a part. While conceding its possibilities as a medium of popular entertainment, they are more concerned in making it an essential pub lic utility. Electrical experts in their employ are expending their energies in the direction to which the dollar points. Like their employers, they are more interested in television as an adjunct to communications systems, than they are in relation to the radio and the motion picture industries merely as agencies of entertainment. They realize, too, that they are spending money to make money and they are not anxious to let anyone get in ahead of them. They never talk about what they are doing until they have made a demonstration, and they never make a demonstration until every little cell and gadget of the mechanism is carefully buried under a heavy load of patents. Today they are “tighter” with their information than they ever were. And is not that an indication that they are really getting somewhere? J UST how far they have got by now, none but these scientists and their immediate executives can say. Just how soon they will announce the practicabil But persistence won Mr. Fox significant notes on their activities today, and they tell us important things about tomorrow ity of their work even they do not know definitely. But this remains: Television is imminent and has been for the past two or three years. It may take one year and it may take five, but practical television, in one form or another, will be with us by 1935. The obstacles in its way, all of a scientific nature, have narrowed today down to two : enlargement and clarification of the image received, and simplification of the apparatus necessary for a transmission and reception. Television today? Here it is : “In the present system, the initial signal wave is obtained by sweeping a spot of light over the subject (say, a girl’s face) in parallel lines, completely scanning it once every eighteenth of a second. The light reflected from the face, or subject, is collected by large photoelectric cells which control the transmitted current. At the receiving station the picture current controls the brightness of a neon lamp, from which the received image is built up by means of a small aperture moving in synchronization with the spot of light at the transmitting station.” That is a description by the Bell Laboratories, research headquarters of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. For presentation to a large audience, television images may be produced by a neon lamp in the shape of a grid having a large number of separate electrodes. A high frequency excitation, controlled by the picture current, is distributed to the successive electrodes in synchronism with the spot of light at the transmitting end. This distribution is achieved by 2,500 wires to successive electrodes of the grid, from a like number of bars on a high-speed distributor. The brush on the distributor, as it contacts the bars and commutates The mechanisms which form the heart of a television-motion picture transmitter. The scanning disc is shown, as well as the dot of light which is thrown on the motion picture film. Above the disc is a “synchronizing tube,” which keeps the disc turning at a predetermined rate of speed. I PHOTO BY COURTESY OF WESTINGHOUSE ELEC. MEG. CO.]