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INTERNATIONAL P H O T O G R A 1> H K R
January, 1936
Is This The Answer?
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What Is Holding Up Television?"
A Fool Proof Invention
By Delmar A. Whitson
"What is holding up television?" This remark is heard on all sides, today, and is practically replacing the classical weather subject as a topic of universal interest. However, unlike a remark attributed to Mark Twain: "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," it seems that everybody of any scientific importance has been, or is working on it, and the practical instrument is said to be a near reality.
In the meantime the patient public has divided itself into two general divisions of opinion, i.e. that, either the large electrical companies are holding out on them because of some commercial policy, or that they have found it to be a scientific "joker" and the public is left to be weaned of its expectations by fiction writers. However encouragement is maintained by the announcement from time to time that, this or that big electrical combine is to erect immediately elaborate television stations, involving large New Deal sums, meaning, of course, that the saving in admission for the Saturday foot-ball game will soon be applied to the payments on the home television set. And, adding to the anxiety, the spot-light inventors are busy hastening from coast to coast explaining to Sunday magazine reporters a bagful of reconditioned television fossils which will very soon ruin the movies.
However, a confidential peep behind the scenes reveals the important fact that we have a house divided against itself, on the part of the inventors working in the field. One class champion the Nipkow revolving disc scanner and its modified rotating lenses and prisms and the other class choose their corner on the cathode ray scanner.
The cathode ray inventor claims that the problem of synchronization is successfully solved by his inertialess, weightless stream of scanning electrons, as against the leading and lagging of his opponents' revolving scanning system, which cannot be made to keep in step for high quality vision.
The cathode ray inventor is vigorously met by his opponents' criticism that the cost of the cathode ray tube, in view of its short life, places too high a premium on the operating cost from the standpoint of the average pocketbook, and is also discouragingly limited to a small image, in the neighborhood of several inches, while his wares in turn are enchanced by a much greater image, several feet, in fact, and a low operating cost.
While both systems have their offsetting merits, they are each admittedly affected by what seems to be a defeating element peculiar to their respective scanners, and, as a consequence, have been unable to graduate from the laboratory.
Food for thought may be found in the fact that the television inventors have apparently fallen into the same hypnosis which impelled our automobile
body maunfacturers to copy the horse drawn carriage for the greatest number of years and, likewise, our radio manufacturers to repeat the same idiosyncrasy, by copying "His Master's Voice" type of horn, for quite a number of years, despite the fact that the phonograph people were greatly advanced in cabinet design when broadcasting was at first commercially introduced.
The present system of television, excepting the amplifiers, that is, the scanners, are fossils of early television schemes. Nipkow invented the Revolving Disc in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and Prof. Rosing proposed and actually used the Braun tube or cathode ray scanner about 1910 or 1911 and, with all our modern electronic technique, we are still laboring with these outmoded hangovers.
However,it is the growing conviction of a large number of recognized scientists, that the real answer to the problem will be found in a new principle or a new result from an old principle not yet applied to television. Such was the parallel state of quandary in the radio art. then called wireless, when, by an inspiration Dr. Lee De Forest introduced a simple grid shaped wire into what is known as the Fleming Valve and, Presto! . . . wireless was reborn and swept the world as radio!
In view of the conviction that history repeats itself it is not thought passing strange that Dr. De Forest should appear again at this stymied period, with what is undoubtedly the key to practical television, but this time it is as god-father. It was the writer's good fortune to be invited by the Doctor to inspect in his laboratory a scanning system regarding which he stated: "Will sweep the country with the same degree of success that attended the original reception of radio broadcasting in the early twenties."
Such a statement, coming from a recognized world pioneer in electronics, was rather startling, although incredulous.
The invitation was accepted, with the result that the readers of this article have the opportunity to ponder for themselves the prediction of Dr. De Forest, whose accurate scientific prognostications are historic.
The Doctor predicated the essentials of successful
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