Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

The Road Ahead it causes the spot of the screen on which it strikes to glow visibly in proportion to the strength of the current. As the stream sweeps over the screen, it draws a reproduction of the image on the screen of the sending device. This image would be much like the one you would make if you were to draw a white pencil back and forth over a black paper, pushing hard on it where you wish the picture to be light, and very softly where you wish it to be dark. The image painted by the electric stream is not very bright. It must ordinarily be observed on the screen itself in a darkened room. As a result the picture is small, for the largest screens of this type are at present only about eight by ten inches. Efforts are being made to make this image bright enough to enlarge with a lens on a screen like that in a motion picture theatre, but at present this is not easily accomplished and immediate success is not expected. Static and noise in the radio cause jumps and spots in the received image, and it is very unusual at present to secure an image by this cathode ray or electrical stream method which can compare with that from a small home motion picture projector. But as late as the summer of 1937, two opposing television camps were literally glaring at each other. One talked of cheap television sets in every American home within two years. The other was not so optimistic. In such controversy there is plenty of fuel to start blazing fires in the minds of the young and the ambitious. It took forty years to bring the talking picture from the days of Edison's first dream. Who knows but [285]