Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

Photophone space at 411 Fifth Avenue, where con- venient studio facilities were available. In this location, television broadcasting was conducted daily from 7 to 9 p.m. on the assigned frequency of 2000 to 2100 kilo- cycles. Rotating Disc Was Used All this was before the days of iconoscopes and all- electronic television. Subjects were scanned by a rotat- ing disc with minute holes punched in a spiral near the periphery of the disc. Twenty complete pictures of 48 scanning lines each were transmitted every second. This was extremely crude by present day standards, but it was quite an advance then! The beginning programs were crude, too. They consisted of still photographs, painted signs, and occa- sional views of staff personnel. Closeness to the RCA Photophone recording studios made it possible occa- sionally to entice actors from the sound movie sets to appear before the new-fangled television cameras. It was here at "411" that "Felix the Cat" made his television debut. Felix was attached to a slowed-down phonograph turntable and placed in front of the me- chanical scanning disc camera. His antics, and those of the other performers, animate and inanimate, were radiated by W2XBS and viewed on six receivers located in various parts of the city to observe reception (com- pared with the six million or so receivers now in New York City!). The Laboratory did not overlook the systems aspects of television while these experiments, aimed primarily at home reception, were going on. Theater size tele- vision was envisioned, too. This vision, and hard engi- neering work, resulted in a public demonstration at the RKO Theater, at 57th Street and 3rd Avenue, in Janu- ary, 1930. The demonstration used a screen six by eight feet in size, and the transmission was by radio over a distance of about one mile. In these tests, the scanning disc was six feet in diameter, with small lenses replacing the previous simple holes around the rim of the disc. "Provocative and Stimulating" Results Results at the theater were reported as "provocative and stimulating". The pictures were judged acceptable when only head and shoulders of subjects were televised, but quality at best was far inferior to that of motion pictures. However, large-screen television had been accomplished. In July 1930, the conduct of further testing was taken over by the National Broadcasting Company, and the equipment was installed in larger quarters in the New Amsterdam Theater Roof, where it remained until 1933, when operations were transferred to the Empire State Building. In 1929 and 1930, fundamental changes in the organization of RCA occurred, beginning with the pur- chase of the Victor Talking Machine Company. The radio engineering activities of the Van Cortlandt Park Labora- tory, the General Electric Company, and the Westing- house Company were transferred to Camden, New Jersey, and the Van Cortlandt Park installation was closed. The General Electric and Westinghouse Companies had been active in television development during the period prior to the reorganization, and their television activities moved to Camden in January 1930. Particu- larly noteworthy among these was the work of V. K. Zworykin, which, with the kinescope for receiver repro- duction, and with the iconoscope for camera pick-up, completed the conversion of the previously limited mechanical system to an all-electronic system. Pioneering Stage Completed Thus was the pioneering stage completed. The sys- tems work of Goldsmith, Weinberger, Smith and Rod- win, the tube and circuit work of Zworykin, Vance, Bedford, Kell, Schade, Tolson, Holmes, Leverenz, and others, made a solid foundation for the new service of television, upon which it could grow soundly and se- curely into the future. The early whirling discs at Van Cortlandt Park, Pittsburgh, and Schenectady, had done their part in Perhaps the first star of TV was Felix the Cat, shown in this 1930 picture of tests at W2XBS, predecessor of today's WRCA-TV in New York. RADIO AGE 11