Radio digest (1922)

When we begin going places and SEEING things by air our first set will look something like this one used by Dr. DeForest. // Won V Be Long Now Until a We-ll be SEEING THINGS By Doty Hobart tt~M~^v ABIES will be born from glass bottles within the next hundred years. This ('ectogenetic birth ) is neither J incredible nor, indeed, impossibly remote. Research " shows that the connection between the mother and the child is purely chemical and there is no reason why one day biologists should not be able to imitate that chemical connection in the laboratory." This startling prediction is made in all seriousness by the Earl of Birkenhead, British scholar and diplomat, in his new book, "The World in 2030." The Earl makes a great many other predictions of the progress we may expect along scientific lines. While the above is unquestionably the m<fst startling of the lot he has something to say which will be of interest to all Radio fans. He claims that television in natural colors will be with us long before the century mark is reached. About the time the Earl's book came out Joseph Burch, transmission engineer of the Jenkins Television Corporation, at a hearing before the federal Radio commission, made the prediction that baseball games will be heard and seen over the air by means of television zvithin the year! Lieutenant E. K. Jett, engineer for the commission, testified, at the same hearing, that he did not share the optimism of Mr. Burch and indicated that he considered television in the experimental laboratory stage as yet. Between the statements of the two engineers and the Earl of Birkenhead I became all steamed up about television. Never having witnessed either end of a television performance I determined to go on a scouting expedition. I wanted to find out "what all the shouting was about" and give the readers of Radio Digest a first hand report on what present day television has to offer the general public. AT THE laboratory I visited I was escorted to the transmission room of Station W2XCR. (For the uninitiated let me translate W2XCR. W stands for United States. 2 means Second District. X is for Experimental. CR are the call letters of the station.) The transmission equipment, to the eyes of a layman, is quite similar to that of a Radio broadcasting outfit, though I suspect an electrical engineer would be able to point out a few hundred details which were quite dissimilar. Onj| feature which caught my attention was the humming or droning sound always present in the control room during a television broadcast. This sound, absent in Radio control rooms, varies in tone according to the density of the light waves created by the subject broadcast. The control operator told me that he could tell by the pitch of tone the number of persons in the close-up scenes being broadcast. This ever-present hum of course does not reach the television receiving set as that machine picks up only the electric impulses carrying light rays. The television receiving set is practically noiseless when in operation. From the transmission room I was taken to the broadcasting studio where I met the chief announcer for Station W2XCR, John Glyn Jones, and the program directress, Miss Irma Lemke. It was afternoon and a program of silent motion pictures was being put on the air. This I learned was the usual daylight broadcast. Every evening a program of living entertainers, whose vocal and instrumental efforts are microphoned as well as televisioned, is sent out. The microphoned part of the program is sent by wire to a nearby Radio broadcastjng station for air transmission. This means that anyone owning both a Radio receiving set and a television receiving set can see as well as hear the broadcast.