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How electronic "paintbrushes" create pictures in our newest art form
There's not a single
moving part in a Kinescope
— but it gives you pictures
in motion
No. 4 in a series outlining high points in television history
Photos from the historical collection of RCA
• Ever watch an artist at work — seen how his brush moves over the canvas to place a dot here, a shadow, a line, a mass, or highlight there, until a picture is formed?
Next time you're asked how television pictures are made, remember the paintbrush comparison. But the "brush" is a stationary electron gun, and the "paint" is a highly refined coating of fluorescent material made light or dark in orderly pattern by electrons.
Developed by Dr. V. K. Zworykin, now of RCA Laboratories, the kinescope picture tube is one of the scientific advances which gave us all-electronic television . . . instead of the crude, and now outmoded, mechanical techniques.
New 16-inch RCA glass-and-metal kinescope picture tube, almost ■5 indies shorter than previous types, incorporates a new type of glare-free glass in its faceplate— Filter glass.
22 MAY 1950
An experimental model of the kinescope — developed by Dr. V. K. Zworykin of RCA Laboratories — is seen undergoing laboratory tests.
Today, through research at RCA Laboratories, these complex kinescope picture tubes are mass-produced at RCA's tube plants in Lancaster, Pa., and Marion, Indiana. Industrial authorities call this operation one of the most breath-taking applications of mass production methods to the job of making a precision instrument.
Thousands of kinescope faceplates must be precisely and evenly coated with a film of absolutely pure fluorescent material . . . the electron gun is perfectly synchronized with the election beam in the image orthicon tube of RCA television cameras . . . the vacuum produced in each tube must be 10 times more perfect than that in a standard radio tube — or in an electric light bulb!
Once it has been completely assembled, your RCA kinescope picture tube is ready to operate in a home television receiver. In action, an electrically heated surface emits a stream of electrons, and the stream is compressed bv finely machined cylinders and pin-holed disks into a pencil-thin beam. Moving back and forth in obedience to a radio signal — faster than the eye can perceive — the beam paints a picture on the face of the kinescope. For eaeli picture, the electron beam must race across the "screen" 525 times. To create the illusion of motion, 30 such pictures are "painted" in every single second.
Yet despite these terrific speeds, there are no moving mechanical parts in an RCA kinescope. You enjov the newest of our arts because electrons can be made to be obedient.
Mm Radio Corporation of America
WORLD LEADER IN RADIO — FIRST IN TELEVISION
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