The electronic basis of TV - biography of the inventor?

[avocollector]

Apologies if this is the wrong space or I've missed the obvious. I understand it was an american who designed the electronics for television either during or just after WW2 and after John Logie Bairds partial mechanical system that started up in the late 30's. However the last source I looked at a few years back now said the biography of that American engineer has not been written as another person had got hold of the relevant records and despite promises has failed to produce a biography.

Is this still the same situation, or are there really good works out there that describe how he conceived of doing it all electronically? I'd be intrigued to know how he came to the idea of valve circuits vs the mechanical baird systems (such as the Nipow disc).

[Cobaltblue]

I will leave it to the TV guys to give you chapter and verse but there was a fully functioning fully electronic TV system in the UK before WW2 sets were being sold from 1936 on wards.

Cheers

Mike T

[rontech]

The EMI Company in the UK designed the all electronic, 405 line 50 Hz TV system in the mid 1930's. Using a cathode ray tube display system.

The BBC launched the system in 1936 with regular broadcasts from Alexandra Palace. The frequency was about 45 MHz and covered the area around London.

[rontech]

Looks like we crossed replies Cobalt!

[G6Tanuki]

Vladimir Zworykin - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Zworykin - was, to my mind, the really important guy behind the delivery of practical all-electronic TV - he invented the Iconoscope - which then went on to become the foundation of the pre- and post-WWII EMI TV cameras.

[Restoration73]

Farnsworth's camera lacked charge storage and Zworykin prevailed;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Restoration73

Farnsworth's camera lacked charge storage and Zworykin prevailed;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth

Yes, Farnsworth's ideas were relevant but they required crazily-high illumination of the thing-to-be-videoed and were obsoleted by Zworykin's developments - though it has to be admitted that to produce a good picture the pre-WWII EMI Iconoscopes still needed murderously-high illumination levels. Even in the late-1940s outside-broadcast TV often needed extra lights over and above what the sun was able to provide.

"Klieg Eye" - conjunctivitis caused by the high brightness of photoflood arc/discharge-lights used in the movie and early-TV stage-sets in order to get enough illumination - was a bit of a problem up until the 1950s.

https://medical-dictionary.thefreedi....com/Klieg+eye

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by avocollector

Apologies if this is the wrong space or I've missed the obvious. I understand it was an american who designed the electronics for television either during or just after WW2 and after John Logie Bairds partial mechanical system that started up in the late 30's. However the last source I looked at a few years back now said the biography of that American engineer has not been written as another person had got hold of the relevant records and despite promises has failed to produce a biography.

Is this still the same situation, or are there really good works out there that describe how he conceived of doing it all electronically? I'd be intrigued to know how he came to the idea of valve circuits vs the mechanical baird systems (such as the Nipow disc).

There was a notorious situation in the 70s where somebody obtained nearly all the A D Blumlein papers from the family in order to write his biography. When he died twenty years later it had not been begun and the papers had disappeared. Subsequently a technical biography appeared under the auspices of the IEE, conentrating on his 600-odd patents, at about the same time as a sprawling, more general work, which was riddled with technical inaccuracies and was a strain to read.

[avocollector]

Many thanks to all for your replies - it was Blumlein who was the person I'd heard about (English NOT US) as Ted says and there appears to be some biographies out there now.

I have the book "Television" by Zworykin and Morton, it is a bit smaller than A4 in plan and 2" thick. A very good read, well worth getting, prices on 'tinternet vary a lot from a fiver to fifty quid or more, I would put it at a £20 book, got mine for a fiver though!

[Ted Kendall]

I've looked it up now - the phantom biographer was Francis P Thomson. Blumlein filed around 130 patents, not 600 - the 6 came from the fact that he filed one patent for every six weeks of his working life, on average. There is a piece by Scroggie in the September 1960 Wireless World, which is a good introduction.

[peter_scott]

A.A. Campbell Swinton is the name to ponder.

See: http://www.nostalgiatech.co.uk/Emitron.htm

Peter

[emeritus]

Zworkin's and Campbell-Swinton's (and others') early works are mentioned in the Science Museum booklet "Broadcasting in Britain 1922- 1972" : Keith Geddes; HMSO 1972.

"Very simple calculations suffice to prove that television inevitably involves much higher frequencies than can conveniently be handled by mechanical systems, and in 1908 a noted consulting engineer, W Campbell-Swinton, proposed, for the first time, using a deflected beam of electrons as the scanning medium at the transmitter. In 1911 he elaborated his proposals, describing a transmitting tube in which an electron beam scanned a mosaic of light-sensitive photo-emitting elements, mutually insulated. This was a remarkably close prediction of the way in which Zworkin was to achieve high-definition television by all-electronic means some 20 years later.
Swinton did not attempt to realize his scheme. In 1924, he re-presented his proposals in a lecture to the Radio Society of Great Britain, together with some suggestions for their modernization. In the ensuing discussion, a 'selenium' pioneer, Llewellyn B Atinson, said: 'I do not believe there is sufficient call for seeing by electricity to lead anybody or any corpration to lay out the large sum of money which is necessary to complete the investigation.' Capbell-Swinton ruefully agreed. *

* Another speaker was more optimistic: 'I should advise Mr Atkinson to preserve his relics of 40 years ago very carefully in case they are required for storage and exhibition in one of our national museums when the problem has been solved.' In 1930 Mr Atkinson did indeed present to the Science Museum relics of his experiments of 1882. "

The early electronic cameras were certainly insensitive. The Farnsworth electronic cameras installed to televize the Munich Olympics of 1936 could only be used in direct brght sunlight. As the weather was mostly overcast, the mobile intermediate film camera truck had to be used for most of the broadcasts.

[peter_scott]

At the Berlin Olympics there were also three iconoscope cameras. Two made by Telefunken at the track side in the main stadium and a third made by the Reich's Post Office at the swimming pool.

Peter

[Robert Gribnau]

To give an idea of the research on television before WW2 at Philips:

See from pages 16 and 321 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1936.pdf

See from pages 33 and 249 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1937.pdf

See from page 1 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1938.pdf

See from page 342 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1939.pdf

[red16v]

Originally Posted by Robert Gribnau

To give an idea of the research on television before WW2 at Philips:

See from pages 16 and 321 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1936.pdf

See from pages 33 and 249 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1937.pdf

See from page 1 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1938.pdf

See from page 342 going: http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschr...eview-1939.pdf

May I copy these links to a Facebook site I am a member of? The site is for people who worked in broadcast television in a professional capacity and no doubt some would be interested in the historical information.

[Robert Gribnau]

The links lead to publications in the online library of the NVHR (Dutch Society for the History of Radio) which is part of their internetsite: http://www.nvhr.nl/frameset.htm?&ContentFrame

The library (under the tap "Bibliotheek") is public (no registration needed). So I think you can post them.

[avocollector]

Again many thanks to everybody for all this information - I had been under the impression the only system operating briefly pre WW II was Baird's with the rotating disks so this is all certainly an eye opener.