Television History under construction
“Any theory will account for some facts; but only the true explanation will satisfy all the conditions of the problem …”. William Crookes.
This blog follows-on along the now well trodden path taken by radio and radio astronomy – to find a true-as-is-possible history of television invention and development. To ask about the actual, as opposed to mythical contributions made by academic science; to dispel myths attached to well known names and fabricated scientific heroes.
In the following Wiki article, we see that J.J. Thomson, an English physicist is mentioned first and the actual inventor, chemist William Crookes, who did most of the work is mentioned last. This is due to scientific revisionism and its habit of claiming all invention for its beloved sons… Crookes was an occultist, something guaranteed to exclude him from the roster of the great and good in science.
Wiki: “The experimentation of cathode rays is largely accredited to J.J. Thomson, an English physicist who, in his three famous experiments, was able to deflect cathode rays, (untrue) a fundamental function of the modern CRT. The earliest version of the CRT was invented by the German physicist Ferdinand Braun in 1897 (untrue) and is also known as the Braun tube. It was a cold-cathode diode, a modification of the Crookes tube with a phosphor-coated screen.” 1
Let us see what really happened…
Around 1650 Otto von Guericke invented the vacuum pump and in 1671 he published his treatise “Experimenta nova Magdeburgia de vacuo spatio” or “New Magdeburg Experiments About the Vacuum”. As a result researchers were able to experiment with rarefied air and electricity. Circa 1705 it was noted by experimenters that electrostatic generator sparks travel a longer distance in rarefied air than in standard air. In 1838 when more was understood about the electrical process the self educated Michael Faraday passed a high current through rarefied air in a glass tube and noticed a strange light, an arc with its beginning at the cathode (negative electrode) and its end almost at the anode (positive electrode). The only place with no luminescence was just in front of the cathode, which came to be called the “cathode dark space”, “Faraday dark space” or “Crookes dark space”. It became known that when a voltage is applied to a tube containing rarefied air, a light is produced. Although Faraday has been elevated to the pinnacle of scientific greatness, contemporary writers and attendees at his lectures tell us that he freely admitted to gleaning his ideas from others. He may well have been a brilliant experimenter, but the waters have been so muddied by modern scientific revisionists of all political colours that the truth is hard to discern.
Michael Faraday is the earliest experimenter to record the cathode ray phenomenon.
We need next to look at the large and invaluable contribution made by William Crookes and the more important at the time, the X-ray and nuclear research during the development of Crooks type tubes that eventually became the cathode ray tubes used in TV until relatively recently. The cathode ray tube was also the forerunner of what was to become the particle accelerator, being used in the early days in just the same way as the Large Hadron Collider technology of today. In fact colliders are a development of cathode ray tubes. Although we will see that academic physicists were involved in cathode ray experimentation, they were only able build their reputations on a firm foundation provided by the almost unheard of today, chemist and psychical researcher William Crookes.
William Crookes
Historically, by far the most important component of electronic TV is the cathode ray tube, used in all TV sets and monitors until it was replaced by the flat screen display. (Flat Panel Display). The vacuum tube or valve may or may not have evolved from the Crookes tube, I have found no connection even though they work on the same principle. The vacuum tube was used in radio and later in TV for amplification, switching and rectification, to be eventually replaced by the transistor, yet another important technology like so many within these pages, originating from the work of non-academic inventors prior to the 1930’s, a time when everything in science changed.
Crookes, who was self taught, is now called a physicist, but he was educated to be a chemist and became an amateur physicist, something that does not exist today, or is not taken seriously by academia. He was also a spiritualist and a member of the Society for Psychical Research, an interest that would certainly cause concern for the materialist, humanist denizens of the scientific community of our day. If Crookes were alive in our time he would be referred to as a pseudo-scientist or at best a ‘tinkerer’, a derogatory expression when used by a physicist that denotes a departure from theory. But let’s look at his tinkering? 2
Radioactivity
Wiki: “In his investigations of the conduction of electricity in low pressure gases, he discovered that as the pressure was lowered, the negative electrode (cathode) appeared to emit rays (the so-called cathode rays, now known to be a stream of free electrons, and used in cathode ray display devices). Crookes investigated the properties of cathode rays, showing that they travel in straight lines, cause phosphorescence in objects upon which they impinge, and by their impact produce great heat. As these examples indicate, he was a pioneer in the construction and use of vacuum tubes for the study of physical phenomena. He was, as a consequence, one of the first scientists to investigate what are now called plasmas. He also devised one of the first instruments for the study of nuclear radioactivity, the spinthariscope.” 3 4
Wiki: ”In 1903, Crookes turned his attention to the newly discovered phenomenon of radioactivity, achieving the separation from uranium of its active transformation product, uranium-X (later established to be protactinium). He observed the gradual decay of the separated transformation product, and the simultaneous reproduction of a fresh supply in the original uranium. At about the same time as this important discovery, he observed that when “p-particles”, ejected from radio-active substances, impinge upon zinc sulfide, each impact is accompanied by a minute scintillation, an observation which forms the basis of one of the most useful methods in the technique of radioactivity.” 5
en.wiki:
“In 1861, Crookes discovered a previously unknown element with a bright green emission line in its spectrum and named the element thallium. Crookes also identified the first known sample of helium, in 1895. He was the inventor of the Crookes radiometer.” 6 7 8
Encyclopædia Britannica, Cathode Ray Tube:
“…he devoted himself from 1856 entirely to scientific work of various kinds at his private laboratory in London. His researches on electrical discharges through a rarefied gas led him to observe the dark space around the cathode, now called the Crookes dark space. He demonstrated that cathode rays travel in straight lines and produce phosphorescence and heat when they strike certain materials.” 9
In 1838 Michael Faraday first described the characteristics of the gas discharge tube, a glow witnessed in a partially evacuated tube with an applied a high voltage.
But,”Probably the most important research using cathode-ray tubes was performed in 1875 by the English physicist William Crookes. In order to confirm the experiments of Plucker and Hittorf, Crookes designed his own vacuum tube from which the air could be almost completely removed. So great an improvement over Geissler’s tubes were these that the “Crookes tube” quickly became the standard vacuum tube for use in scientific experiments. Crookes continued Plucker’s experiments with magnetic fields, confirming the glow was easily deflected.(See J.J.Thomson below who is said to be the first to achieve this) He also installed tiny vanes within his tubes. As the current was applied the vanes would turn slightly (it was as if they were blown by a gust of wind).” 10 11
Heinrich Geissler
discoveriesinmedicine.com:
“The German team of Heinrich Geissler (1815-1879) and Julius Plucker (1801-1868) pioneered the study of cathode-ray tubes. Geissler was a skilled glassworker, employed by the University of Bonn (Germany) as a maker of scientific instruments.
Crooks tubes were being produced on an almost industrial scale at the time. 12
en.wiki:
“Geissler was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1868.”
He did not have a qualification in physics when he did his important work and was not a physicist as stated in the Wiki article. 13
Johann Wilhelm Hittorf
discoveriesinmedicine.com:
“The next scientist to conduct important research using vacuum tubes was Johann Hittorf (1824-1914) in 1869″… 14
Hittorf was a scientist but did little to advance the cathode ray tube, his most noted work being in the area of ion movement using the Crookes tube in his experiments.
“He noticed that when there was any object placed between the cathode and the illuminating side of the tube, then the shadow of that object appeared.” Something already done by William Crookes. 15
Eugen Goldstein
“German scientist Eugen Goldstein (1850-1930) first dubbed Crookes’s rays “cathode rays” in 1876.” …and little else of benefit to TV cathode ray tube development. 16
Phillip Lenard
en.wiki: “As a result of his Crookes tube investigations, he showed that the rays produced by irradiating metals in a vacuum with ultraviolet light were similar in many respects to cathode rays. His most important observations were that the energy of the rays was independent of the light intensity, but was greater for shorter wavelengths of light.
These latter observations were explained by Albert Einstein, whose Serbian wife, Mileva Maric, worked in Lenard’s lab for a time, as a quantum effect.” 17
I don’t think Einstein’s wife “worked as a quantum effect”, it was the ultraviolet light.
discoveriesinmedicine.com:
“In 1892, Phillip Lenard (Nobel Prize winner for work on cathode rays.) followed up on Heinrich Hertz’s discovery that under certain conditions cathode rays could penetrate metal (X-rays?). Lenard succeeded in passing cathode rays through a window of thin metal set into the side of a Crookes tube. The rays exited the tube through the window into the air. Lenard proved that cathode rays were not a phenomenon exclusive to a vacuum. While performing a similar experiment in 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen (1845-1923) accidentally discovered an even more penetrating form of radiation, which he called X-ray radiation.”. 18 19
And so, Roentgen, so beloved by the scientific community, had discovered something already discovered by Lenard, Tesla and Hertz as we will see below, but because they failed to actually call them x-rays, they were disqualified from the discovery?
And then we find that…
en.wiki: “In April 1887, five years before Lenard, Nikola Tesla began to investigate X-rays using high voltages and tubes of his own design, as well as Crookes tubes. From his technical publications, it is indicated that he invented and developed a special single-electrode X-ray tube, which differed from other X-ray tubes in having no target electrode. The principle behind Tesla’s device is called the Bremsstrahlung process, in which a high-energy secondary X-ray emission is produced when charged particles (such as electrons) pass through matter. By 1892, Tesla performed several such experiments, but he did not categorized the emissions as what were later called X-rays. (Failing to use the correct phrase ‘X-ray’ makes them unqualified?)
Tesla generalized the phenomenon as radiant energy of “invisible” kinds. Tesla stated the facts of his methods concerning various experiments in his 1897 X-ray lecture before the New York Academy of Sciences. Also in this lecture, Tesla stated the method of construction and safe operation of X-ray equipment. His X-ray experimentation by vacuum high field emissions also led him to alert the scientific community to the biological hazards associated with X-ray exposure.” 20
Tesla was vilified and called a madman by academic science.
en.wkik:”Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845 1923) was a German physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays or Roentgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.” Yet again the prize goes to someone other than the discoverer. 21
Tesla must have researched X-rays for some time before Roentgen, as we see below, his lab’ and X-ray research being destroyed in the year that Rontgen made his first X-ray discovery:
en.wiki: “Tesla continued research in the field. He performed several experiments prior to Roentgen’s discovery (including photographing the bones of his hand; later, he sent these images to Roentgen) but did not make his findings widely known; much of his research was lost in the 5th Avenue laboratory fire of March 1895.” 22
Roentgen was well aware of Tesla’s experiments. In fact, Tesla knew about X-rays in 1887. He was lecturing on existing X-ray equipment, his experiments already completed and even to the extent of health and safety issues only two years after Roentgen’s so called discovery in 1895.
And we find at Wikiradiography.com:
“Historically, the first X-ray tube was invented by Sir William Crookes. It was used to make a visible fluorescence on minerals.” 23
Karl Ferdinand Braun
crtsite.com: “…Braun a German physicist, interested in the just discovered Cathode rays worked and experimented with Crookes tubes. When he was working at the Physics Institute of the Strasbourg University (from 1895-1918) he developed the first cold Cathode Ray tube with magnetic beam deflection (the same effect discovered by Plucker and Hittorf in 1869 and the cold cathode dates back to Faraday.) and a mica screen covered with phosphor to produce a visible spot. (already discovered by Crookes) The tube, built for him by Franz Mller successor of Geissler was called after its inventor, the Braun tube. Braun used this tube as an indicator tube for studying the effects of Cathode rays in order to visualize alternating currents (discovered by Nikola Tesla) and described this in 1897, this was in fact the first oscilloscope.” 24
There is some interesting info on Crookes at crtsite.com and here below we see that he was experimenting with fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals in 1881 well before Braun:
Here is a list of some common used minerals in Crookes tubes.
Color mineral
red calcite
yellow apatite
bright green willemite
blue scheelite
brown dolemite
violet magnesite
http://www.crtsite.com/page7.html
inventors.about.com: “In 1897 Braun introduced a CRT with a fluorescent screen, known as the cathode ray oscilloscope.” 25
4.nau.edu “Crookes also discovered that some minerals would glow if placed in the tube. This is the phenomenon of cathodoluminescence (production of visible light by electron bombardment”…) 26
crtsite.com:
“The Braun tube, (See the illustration at the link) this small early 1900 tube is in fact a cold Cathode Crookes tube with an internal mica screen covered with phosphorescent paint.” 27
It’s hard to point a finger at the contribution made by Braun. He used a Crookes tube and added a screen of material that had been researched by Crookes, using beam deflection by Plucker and Hittorf for ‘his’ oscilloscope? He gave the world the little screen with the green glow and the wiggly line, so beloved in early science fiction movies that added a missing mystique to science and the work of TV repair men.
Heinrich Hertz
dartmouth.edu: “Heinrich Hertz, a leading German experimentalist, tried to deflect cathode rays with an electric field, but was not able to do so. Since he knew that charged particles are deflected by electric fields, Hertz concluded that cathode rays were not charged particles, but waves that could be deflected with magnetic fields.” 28
J.J. Thomson
Wiki: “The experimentation of cathode rays is largely accredited to J.J. Thomson, an English physicist who, in his three famous experiments, was able to deflect cathode rays, a fundamental function of the modern CRT.” 29
Wiki continues:
“In May–June 1897 Thomson investigated whether or not the rays could be deflected by an electric field. Previous experimenters (Hertz) had failed to observe this, but Thomson believed their experiments were flawed because their tubes contained too much gas.” 30
The New World Encyclopaedia says:
“In his second experiment, he investigated whether or not the rays could be deflected by an electric field (something that is characteristic of charged particles). Previous experimenters had failed to observe this, but Thomson believed their experiments were flawed because they contained trace amounts of gas. Thomson constructed a cathode ray tube with a practically perfect vacuum, and coated one end with phosphorescent paint. Thomson found that the rays did indeed bend under the influence of an electric field.” 31
The Cambridge Cavendish Museum tells us:
“Eventually Thomson realised that the absence of electric deflection was due to the residual gas in the tube being ionised by the rays. The ions were attracted to the electric plates and cancelled out the applied field. ‘The thing to do was to get a much higher vacuum. This was more easily said than done… However after running the discharge through the tube day after day without introducing fresh gas, the gas on the walls and electrodes got driven off and it was possible to get a much better vacuum. The deflection of the cathode rays by electric forces became quite marked…” 32
Is it possible to improve a vacuum by “running the discharge day after day”? Did the tube have a high static charge of its own that gradually drained away?
Deflection by magnetic/electromagnetic means (“a fundamental function”, see above) was known by Braun, certainly known by Crookes and as we can see above it was also known to Plucker and Hittorf in 1869 and Arthur Schuster in 1890 below).
And so, we see that Thomson added two new electrodes that had been known about for years in his famous experiment.
Thomson’s Cathode Ray Tube
Both the Thomson electrostatic and electromagnetic tubes were used for future applications. The Thomson electrostatic CRT being an alternative used mainly for oscilloscopes rather than an improvement.
web.lemoyne.edu: “In all modern CRT monitors and televisions, the beams are bent by magnetic deflection, a varying magnetic field generated by coils and driven by electronic circuits around the neck of the tube, although electrostatic deflection is commonly used in oscilloscopes, a type of diagnostic instrument.” 33
The electrostatic plates of Thomson were for the electrical measurements involved in his sub-atomic studies and not CRT improvements. His electrostatic CRT system was not in general use for TV tubes although it was occasionally used.
From notes on Thompson’s Nobel lecture:
“William Crookes was a productive researcher and highly original and speculative thinker in many areas of physics and chemistry. (See chapter 14, note 29.) His work on electrical discharges in vacuum tubes in the late 1870s laid some foundational work on which Thomson built; indeed, his “Crookes tubes” were widely used in cathode ray research…” 34
What the above is really saying, is that Crookes had already done the research. Thomson was not interested in improving cathode ray tubes, so much as making a name for himself in the field of subatomic physics – for which he received the Nobel prize.
Discovery of the Electron
en.wiki: “He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1906, “in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases.” 35
Again, he was following-up on the plasma work started by Crookes. When stealing the thunder of previous inventors, the sons of science retreat into an obscure theoretical quasi-land where anything goes and are thereby able to receive the prestigious honours that should have gone to those more deserving.
Wiki says: “Thomson is remembered mainly for his discovery of the electron.” 36
Wiki again: “Sir Joseph John “J. J.” Thomson, OM, FRS (1856 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel laureate. He is credited for the discovery of the electron…” 37
egglescliffe.org.uk: “One theory was that the rays were waves traveling in an invisible fluid called the “ether.” At that time, many physicists thought that this ether was needed to carry light waves through apparently empty space. Another possibility was that cathode rays were some kind of material particle. Yet many physicists, including J.J. Thomson, thought that all material particles themselves might be some kind of structures built out of ether, so these views were not so far apart.” 38
The ‘discoverer’ of the electron was an ether theory man who would be laughed to scorn by the science today. But the discovery and theory of the electron were based in, and emerged out-of, the debunked ether.
Richard Laming
Wiki also says that: Between 1838 and 1851 “he (British surgeon Richard Laming c.1798-1879) published a series of papers speculating about the electrical makeup of atoms. He hypothesized that there existed sub-atomic particles of unit charge; perhaps one of the first persons ever to do so.” 39
1891 George Johnstone Stoney
Wiki: (Astronomer), “Stoney’s most important scientific work was the conception and calculation of the magnitude of the “atom of electricity”. In 1891, he proposed the term ‘electron’ to describe the fundamental unit of electrical charge, and his contributions to research in this area laid the foundations for the eventual discovery of the particle by J.J. Thomson in 1897.” 40
experiment-resources.com: 1897. “Thomson found out that the charge to mass ratio was so large that the particles either carried a huge charge, or were a thousand times smaller than a hydrogen ion. He decided upon the latter and came up with the idea that the cathode rays were made of particles that emanated from within the atoms themselves, a very bold and innovative idea.”41
Bold in as much as it was someone else’s idea, and innovative in that it won him a Nobel prize. Unlike Stoney and Schuster below, the actual originators of the idea, he decided to stick with the results of the experiments of others and bluff-it-out.
1890. Arthur Schuster
Wiki: “The German-born British physicist Arthur Schuster expanded upon Crookes’ experiments by placing metal plates parallel to the cathode rays and applying an electric potential between the plates.
The field deflected the rays toward the positively charged plate, providing further evidence that the rays carried negative charge.
By measuring the amount of deflection for a given level of current, in 1890 (Arthur) Schuster was able to estimate the charge-to-mass ratio of the ray components. However, this produced a value that was more than a thousand times greater than what was expected, so little credence was given to his calculations at the time.” 42
But precedence was given to Thomson for the same thing.
chemteam.info:
“1890 Arthur Schuster calculates the ratio of charge to mass of the particles making up cathode rays (today known as electrons) by measuring the magnetic deflection of cathode rays and Joseph John (J.J.) Thomson first becomes interested in the discharge of electricity through a gas at low pressure, that is to say, cathode rays.” 43
Thomson and Arthur Schuster attended the same college, did the same research and knew all about each-others work. The American Association of Physics Teachers think that Thomson was awarded the Nobel because he was a better experimental physicist than Schuster. 44
It seems that Nobel prize winners require an intangible something, “The Right Stuff”, that has little to do with contribution, originality or ideas. Just the staying power required whilst being transformed into a scientific celebrity.
The rays had already been deflected by a magnet and as magnetism and electricity are part of the same phenomenon it’s a fair bet to say that an electric field should also deflect the cathode rays or there is something seriously amiss with electronic theory.
chemteam.info:
“At this time there was great rivalry between German and British researchers. As concerning the nature of the cathode ray, the Germans tended to the explanation that cathode rays were a wave (like light), whereas the British tended to believe that the cathode ray was a particle. As events unfold over the next few decades, both will be proven correct.
In fact, J.J. Thomson will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 for proving the electron is a particle and his son, George Paget Thomson, will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1937 for showing that the electron is a wave.” 45
We are thus made aware of the flimsiness of scientific rationale and how much it depends upon reputations. But sometimes reputations are constructed on even less evidence:
dartmouth.edu:
“Heinrich Hertz, a leading German experimentalist, tried to deflect cathode rays with an electric field, but was not able to do so. Since he knew that charged particles are deflected by electric fields, Hertz concluded that cathode rays were not charged particles, but waves that could be deflected with magnetic fields.” 46
lemoyne.edu:
“The case of the electron raises several interesting points about the discovery process. Clearly, the characterization of cathode rays was a process begun long before Thomson’s work, and several scientists made important contributions. In what sense, then, can Thomson be said to have discovered the electron? After all, he did not invent the vacuum tube or discover cathode rays. Discovery is often a cumulative process. The credited discoverer makes crucial contributions to be sure, but often after fundamental observations have been made and tools invented by others. Thomson was not the only physicist to measure the charge-to-mass ratio of cathode rays in 1897, nor the first to announce his results. (See Pais 1986.) But Thomson did carry out this measurement and (later) the measurement of the particles’s charge, and he recognized its importance as a constituent of ordinary matter.” 47
As we see from the above, the early cathode ray tube, that went on to become a particle accelerator for physicists, was used to enhance the reputations of academic scientists in the field of theoretical particle physics and by default it became their property.
None of them saw its potential as a picture tube as this would have been technology, something anathema to academic science, that prefers obscure theory. The wholesale reassignment of ideas, and failure to give credit for the ideas of non-academic researchers is the rule and not the exception.
There is a huge difference between researchers/discoverers like Crookes and Tesla and academic scientists like J J Thomson, in that the former gave us a technology to prove every theory, whereas the latter did not think this was necessary.
Has the knowledge that an electron behaves like both a particle and a wave advanced technology? I think it would be difficult to say that it has, but science fosters the myth that it will someday be of use. The weapons of obscurity and inscrutability are what keep academics in a job.
When you switch on an electric light, the light does not use-up electrons like putting coal on a fire. When an electric motor is switched on, it does not use-up electrons like petrol in the fuel tank of a car. No electron is changed or used-up, they don’t alter at all. If the electron exists, it is as a carrier of energy, an energy that remains completely unexplained, unidentified by science.
There is a web site that graphically demonstrates an electric current fed into the primary of a transformer. The transformer had been split into two and the two halves are connected by a couple of meters of iron wire. Out of the secondary of the transformer appears an electric current. What this shows is that there is no need for electrons to drive our appliances and that the energy we call electricity can be transferred via the magnetic field of a transformer alone. Our homes could be wired with iron wires and our electrical appliances run from a transformer secondary, completely removing the need for electric current in the house wiring. It is but a short step to imagine the utility company supplying energy by magnetic impulse alone; no insulation required! 48
“Let’s add a core! Barium Titanate should work. Or PZT ceramic (Lead Zirconate Titanate.) Our “coil” should attract such a core, which means we could build a solenoid actuator. Or a motor. Or just use the PZT core to pick up certain things. Things like lint, and little bits of paper. It’s not an electromagnet, it’s an electro-electret!” 49
We start to realise that the idea that the electron is a particle or a wave or that it even exists, is a non-question and totally irrelevant as regards any of our existing technology. It makes not a jot of difference to anything that affects the lives of the average person. A scientist will tell us, with the usual circular logic, that all of our electronic technology is thanks to the discovery of the electron by JJ Thomson. It makes sense to those who believe the revisionism, but as we can see from the history in these pages, most of today’s technology was already around in its basic form before anyone had ever heard of JJ.
What has been achieved in the intervening years is development.
Neither Faraday, Crookes, Geissler, Tesla, Braun or Hertz used the word electron before it was made popular by Thomson. But we nevertheless see the fruits of their labours every day. The idea that technological invention or development has to wait for scientific theory is wrong, misleading and dishonest.
The discovery of the Higgs Boson will not affect the lives of the population in any way and is highly unlikely to lead to any improvement in technology. Such things are only important to scientists in as much as they help to keep them employed. The author has no problem with scientists studying irrelevant subjects, but what is a problem is educating and brainwashing us all to think that such things are important in our own lives. The work of science is largely the Emperors New Clothes and all those who can’t see them are supposed by science to be somewhat naive?
Real Television
Although we think of TV as being based on the cathode ray Crookes tube, there were, in its early development a number of mechanical systems used for relaying pictures before it became possible, due to contemporary technology, to use all-electronic systems:
Mechanical TV
1884 Paul Gottlieb Nipkow
inventors.about.com:
“Paul Nipkow (German technician and inventor) developed a rotating-disc technology to transmit pictures over wire in 1884 called the Nipkow disk. Paul Nipkow was the first person to discover television’s scanning principle, in which the light intensities of small portions of an image are successively analysed and transmitted.”50
This system was later used by engineer John Logie Baird.
Transmission of still pictures, not really TV related.
en.wiki:
“Between 1902 and 1907, Arthur Korn German-born physicist and mathematician invented and built the first successful signal-conditioning circuits for image transmission. The circuits overcame the image-destroying lag effect that is part of selenium photocells. Korn’s compensation circuit allowed him to send still pictures by telephone or wireless between countries and even over oceans, while his circuit operated without benefit of electronic amplification. Korn’s success at transmitting halftone still images suggested that such compensation circuits might work in television. Baird was the direct beneficiary of Korna’s research and success..” 51
en.wiki:
“He pioneered the use of light sensitive selenium cells which took over from the function of the stylus and used a Nernst lamp as a light source. On the 18th October, 1906, he managed to transmit a photograph of Crown Prince William over a distance of 1800 km.” 52
Korn’s rise to physicist status is somewhat unusual:
en.wiki:
“…He (Arthur Korn) then studied physics and mathematics in Leipzig at the age of 15, from where he graduated in 1890. Afterwards he studied in Berlin, Paris, London and Würzburg. In 1895 he became a lecturer in law at the University of Munich, and was appointed professor in 1903. In 1914 he accepted the chair of physics at the Berlin Institute of Technology.” 53
A somewhat confusing education for a physicist.
1907
Electronic-mechanical TV
Boris Rosing
inventors.about.com:
“Russian scientist Boris Rosing (who worked with Vladimir Zworykin) (below) used a CRT in the receiver of a television system.” 54
bairdtelevision.com:
“Rosing’s system employed a mirror-drum apparatus as camera and a cathode-ray tube as receiver to transmit black-and-white silhouettes of simple shapes. The cathode-ray tube had been developed a decade earlier by a German, Karl Ferdinand Braun (in 1897). Rosing’s system was primitive, but it was one of the first experimental demonstrations where the cathode ray tube was employed for the purposes of television. Vladimir Zworykin (before emigrating to the U.S.A.) was a student of Rosing and assisted him in some of his laboratory work.” 55
1908 A. A. Campbell-Swinton
discoveriesinmedicine.com:
“During the first three decades of the twentieth century, inventors continued to devise uses for cathode ray technology. Inspired by Braun’s oscilloscope, A. A. Campbell-Swinton suggested that a cathode ray tube could be used to project a video image upon a screen. Unfortunately, the technology of the time was unable to match Campbell-Swinton’s vision.” 56
Engineer Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton’s letter published in the 18 June 1908 issue of Nature was a suggestion rather than any kind of practical invention. Philo T Farnsworthan (See below) was already hard at work on the idea before the letter was sent. 57
1923
Electro-mechanical TV
en.wiki:
“Vladimir Zworykin,(not a scientist) Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology, helped Boris Rosing (a scientist) with experimental work on television in the basement of Rosing’s private lab at the School of Artillery of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Rosing had filed his first patent on a television system in 1907, featuring a very early cathode ray tube as a receiver, and a mechanical device as a transmitter. Its demonstration in 1911, based on an improved design, was among the first demonstrations of TV of any kind.
He summarized the resulting invention in two patent applications. The first, entitled “Television Systems”, was filed on December 29, 1923, and was followed by a second application in 1925 of essentially the same content, but with minor changes and the addition of a Paget-type screen for color transmission and reception. He was awarded a patent for the 1925 application in 1928 and two patents for the 1923 application that was divided in 1931, although the equipment described was never successfully demonstrated.” 58
1923
Mechanical TV
“Charles Jenkins (not a scientist) invented a mechanical television system called radiovision and claimed to have transmitted the earliest moving silhouette images on June 14, 1923.” 59
Mechanical TV
tvhistory.tv:
John Logie Baird
“On January 23, 1926, John Logie Baird (Scottish engineer and inventor) gave the world’s first public demonstration of a mechanical television apparatus to approximately 40 members of the Royal Institution at his laboratory on Frith Street. These were images of living human faces, not outlines or silhouettes, with complete tonal gradations of light and shade.” 60
en.wiki:
“In 1928, he developed an early video recording device, which he dubbed Phonovision.
The system consisted of a large Nipkow disk attached by a mechanical linkage to a conventional 78-rpm record-cutting lathe. The result was a disc that could record and play back a 30-line video signal. Technical difficulties with the system prevented its further development, but some of the original phonodiscs have been preserved, and have since been restored by Donald McLean, a Scottish electrical engineer.” 61
Electronic TV pictures
Kalman Tihanyi
en.wiki:
Hungarian inventor, “Tihanyi called his fully-electronic television system “Radioskop”, and his application contained 42 pages detailing its design and mass production. Though it bears certain similarities to earlier proposals employing a cathode ray tube (CRT) for both transmitter and receiver…
From 1929, Tihanyi worked on television guidance for defence applications, building prototypes of a camera for remotely guided aircraft in London for the British Air Ministry, and later adapting it for the Italian Navy. In 1929, he invented the first infrared-sensitive (night vision) electronic television camera for anti-aircraft defense in Britain.
Tihanyi’s U.S. patents for his display and camera tubes, assigned to RCA, were issued in 1938 and 1939, respectively.
1936 Tihanyi described the principle of “plasma television” and conceived the first flat-panel television system.” 62
en.wiki update:
“Klmn Tihanyi (28 April 1897, zbg – 26 February 1947, Budapest), was a Hungarian (not a) physicist, (but an) electrical engineer and inventor. One of the early pioneers of electronic television, he made significant contributions to the development of cathode ray tubes (CRTs), which were bought and further developed by the Radio Corporation of America (later RCA),[1][2] and German companies Loewe and Fernseh AG.[citation needed] He invented and designed the world’s first automatic pilotless aircraft in Great Britain.” 63
Philo T. Farnsworth 1922, American inventor and television pioneer.
Discoveriesinmedicine.com:
Image Focusing
“It was not until 1922 that Philo T. Farnsworth (See below) used a magnet to focus a stream of electrons onto a screen, producing a crude image. Though the first of its kind, Farnsworth’s invention was quickly superseded by Vladimir Zworykin’s kinescope, the ancestor of the modern television.” 64
Although the Zworykin kinescope never worked?
nationalvanguard.org:
1929 “According to the book Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father of Television by Donald G. Godfrey, the first human images transmitted by Farnsworth were of his wife and her brother, Cliff Gardner. A 3 1/2-inch-square image of his wife with her eyes closed was transmitted on October 19, 1929, Gardner wrote. The book lists her as first woman on TV’.
1957 “Farnsworth an American inventor and television pioneer…predicted HDTV and solid-state flat-screen technology in a 1957 interview: (See Klmn Tihanyi above)
“[W]e think we can eventually get in excess of 2000 lines instead of 525 and do it on an even narrower channel which will make for a much sharper picture. We believe in the picture-frame type of a picture, where the visual display will be just a screen. And we hope for a memory, so that the picture will be just as though its pasted on there.” 65
“Sadly, credit for his pioneering work was almost taken from Farnsworth when Jewish-controlled conglomerate RCA under David Sarnoff, with a potential profit in the hundreds of millions if they prevailed, claimed the innovation was the work of one of its house engineers (Klmn Tihanyi above)?. But in 1935, the courts ruled that Farnsworth was the real inventor…
…Nevertheless Farnsworth received little recognition or monetary compensation in later years, because of what some say was purposeful revenge by the Jewish establishment for his defeat of Sarnoff. Many scholars also blame Sarnoff for setting back the development of FM radio (see chapter Radio) for decades because it threatened the AM networks and AM receiver technology in which RCA was heavily invested and for thereby causing the suicide of another European-American innovator, Edwin Armstrong, who invented FM radio in 1933” 66
See Chapter 3.
“At the time he died, Farnsworth held 300 U.S. and foreign patents. His inventions contributed to the development of radar, infra-red night vision devices, the electron microscope, the baby incubator, the gastroscope, and the astronomical telescope.
en.wiki:
Farnsworth said in an interview, “In television, we’re attempting first to make better utilization of the bandwidth, because we think we can eventually get in excess of 2000 lines instead of 525 … and do it on an even narrower channel … which will make for a much sharper picture. We believe in the picture-frame type of a picture, where the visual display will be just a screen. And we hope for a memory, so that the picture will be just as though it’s pasted on there.”” 67
Flat Panel Display Plasma, LED and Liquid Crystal
The Panaplex display, an early flat screen.
en.wiki:
“The first ever flat panel display was invented in 1964 at the University of Illinois.” 68
en.wiki:
“Burroughs Corporation, a maker of adding machines and computers, developed the Panaplex display in the early 1970s. The Panaplex display, generically referred to as a gas-discharge or gas-plasma display, uses the same technology as later plasma video displays, but began life as seven-segment display for use in adding machines. They became popular for their bright orange luminous look and found nearly ubiquitous use in cash registers, calculators, pinball machines, aircraft avionics such as radios, navigational instruments, and stormscopes; test equipment such as frequency counters and multimeters; and generally anything that previously used nixie tube or numitron displays with a high digit-count throughout the late 1970s and into the 1990s. These displays remained popular until LEDs gained popularity because of their low-current draw and module-flexibility, but are still found in some applications where their high-brightness is desired, such as pinball machines and avionics. Pinball displays started with six- and seven-digit seven-segment displays and later evolved into 16-segment alphanumeric displays, and later into 128×32 dot-matrix displays in 1990, which are still used today. ” 69
If Tihanyi described the principle of plasma television and conceived the first flat-panel television system in 1936 and Farnsworth predicted HDTV and solid-state flat-screen technology in a 1957, the principles must already have been known. How can the “first ever flat panel” have been “invented at the University of Illinois in 1964”? Prevarications from the groves of academe. 70
alixus 