From Pastime to Primetime The Pioneers of Television by Gene Fender

From Pastime to Primetime The Pioneers of Television by Gene Fender As a medium, we often take television for granted. Rather than consider it an important development in communication technology, we are comfortable ignoring the the device that has integrated itself into our lives. There was a time when television was merely a concept, and many visionaries during television s infancy possessed not only remarkable invention as part of their collective faculties but also a keen insight into the potential of television. One such visionary, C. Francis Jenkins, contributed perhaps less than the other inventors of television in terms of original technology, but he had a high understanding of the state of the art in his day. In his book Vision by Radio, Jenkins prediction of television s potential proved startlingly accurate: few of his predictions came to be during his lifetime. Jenkins believed that the requirement of a particular application rather than a particular machine needed to be defined before television could capture the attention of the public, but early television did not follow this pattern of development. Early devices were the the domain of tinkerers and hobbyists, and the technology required much refinement as well as the backing of radio giant RCA to evolve into television as we know it. Once reliable and inexpensive television sets came to market, the American public rapidly consumed them, and television stations raced to create enough content (and sell enough advertising) to the public. It is believed that the distant electric modulation of light for many purposes will soon become a common phenomenon and eventually of inestimable service in science, in engineering, in industry and in the home. Nor will this service be confined to radio. Present metallic channels now employed for other purposes (e.g., high tension power lines, railroad rails, city lighting wires and water pipes) can be made a new source of revenue and at a ridiculously insignificant cost. It is no surprise that he supposed television would become widespread or that there would be numerous educational and entertainment purposes for television, but his suggestion that other channels might be used to carry television was genius and something that has only become a recent telecommunications development as we watch videos on the Internet and on our cell phones pathways that had been reserved for other communication purposes. It is a pity that Television in the Nineteenth Century Television came very near to reality for the Victorian age thanks to the fundamental realization of a German engineering student, Paul Nipkow. He realized that the eye sees areas of light and dark and that the arrangement of intensities forms a complete image. Changes in the intensities create changes in the image which give the appearance of motion. He reasoned that it should be possible to use a device to divide an image into discreet parts. In 1884, Nipkow Image from Baird s Mechanical Television (Howe, Tom. CED Magic. 2005.) Electronic Explorer 53

applied his idea to the design of a theoretical scanning device and display mechanism. Either of these was based on a spinning disk. 1 His camera device would have been comprised, at its simplest, of a lens, a perforated disk, a motor and a selenium cell. The lens, as in any other camera device, focused an image onto the surface of the disk. The disk had a series of small aperture holes arranged in a spiral pattern. The motor turned the disk so that the holes arced across the area where the image was focused. This let varying amounts of light pass through each hole as it made a pass across the image (below). The intensity of the light passing through was detected by the selenium cell. The cell was photosensitive and generated an electric charge that varied according to the amount of light it was exposed to. The fluctuating charges from the selenium cell could be used to generate an electrical signal that could drive the receiver directly or be broadcast as a radio signal. The receiver worked on a similar principle and was comprised of another disk with a spiral of holes, a motor and a neon lamp. The neon lamp was placed behind the disk and fluctuated in intensity according to the signal generated by the selenium cell from the camera. The motor would spin the disk as light was emitted through the holes (above right). This caused a sweep of light that created scan lines to form an image by virtue of the eye s persistence of vision how the retina retains an image momentarily. Though the photoconductive properties of the element selenium were already established in Nipkow s time, the sensitivity and frequency at which a selenium cell could register changes 1 Yanczer, Peter F. Telorama. 28 February 2007. 54 Lens Disk Motor Nipkow s scheme for a scanning disk camera Selenium Cell was probably not enough to create a working television. Nonetheless, it is unknown if Paul Nipkow actually built a prototype of his television system. No form of mechanical television would become practical until the debut of the amplification tube in 1907. 2 Detail of scanning area on Nipkow disk The Mechanical Broadcasters Though the technology available to Nipkow prevented him from creating functional devices, his concept of the scanning disk lived on in the refined development of mechanical television that happened simultaneously in several countries. It seems everyone was developing something based on Nipkow s theory, but the grandest efforts were carried out by Scotsman John Logie Baird for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The commercially available machine of Baird s design that the BBC would ultimately adopt was a 30-line system in 1932. While very crude in resolution, the 30-line system was mature and exceptionally low-cost in engineering terms. The BBC used their existing audio transmitters for the low-bandwidth video. There were no wide-band transmitters available for service development anyway, and there was little point in spending a great amount to create one during this early phase. The BBC continued through 1935, until the development of electronic television led to the demise of the 30-line service. It was replaced with the world's first regular higher resolution (405 lines) television service by the BBC in 1936. 3 2 Bellis, Mary. The Television System of Paul Nipkow. 2007. 3 McLean, Don. The World s Earliest Television Recordings. 2007. Electronic Explorer

In many parts of the world, particularly in the U.S., amateurs created mechanical television receivers from kits or from scratch as an extension of the already popular radio hobby. This was in response to the surprising number of experimental broadcasts including those of the first U.S. television station, W3XK, owned by C. Francis Jenkins. The End of Mechanical Television By 1935, most people had given up on mechanical television. The low resolution had made very apparent that the mechanical system was too limited in its commercial application. Synchronizing the discs and modulating light sources at the higher speeds necessary to make an image acceptable were impossible to achieve. As early as 1908, another inventor, Campbell Swinton, recognized that better technique was needed because the mechanical method was not capable of practically generating higher definition (300-400 lines) television. He theorized that only by using cathode rays, which exhibit no inertia, could this be accomplished. In 1911, he developed his idea and published a schematic. Cathode ray television of today, all over the world, follows Swinton's ideas exactly, 4 but it would be yet another inventor to actually make it work. The Reivention of Television Though many others were developing theories and devices along the same lines, it was Philo T. Farnsworth who first made cathode ray tube television a reality thanks to his epiphany in his father s potato field. The parallel rows he plowed as a teenager inspired his idea that images could be scanned in lines using electrons to represent light and rasterize the image on a photosensitive plate. By age 19, he had raised enough capital to begin prototyping his concept, and this lead to the approval of his two most basic patents an electronic television camera and a television receiver. The Battle for Technology Farnsworth s experiments did not go unnoticed by the industry. David Sarnoff, acting president of NBC's parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), certainly noticed but was 4 Yanczer, Peter F. Telorama. 28 February 2007. unconvinced that a young man could develop a device to the commercial stage. Nonetheless, he feared that a breakthrough in visual broadcasting would disrupt the market for radio (Schwartz). Challenging RCA at that time a radio monopoly would be a daunting task for any competition, though. Since the late 1920s, RCA had the best scientists and engineers, held most of the radio technology patents and controlled licensing of the technology to the rest of the industry. No radio could be sold without a royalty flowing back to the company. To deflect any excitement the public might have had anticipating Farnsworth s invention, Sarnoff wrote a press release to suggest that television technology was far from being ready for a public product and that only RCA was capable of launching one. In reality, RCA was the company with no solution. Instead, Sarnoff devised a plot to take Farnsworth s 1930 Baird Televisior (Bennett-Levy, Michael. Television History: The First 75 Years. 2002.) technology from him legally or not though Farnsworth was not exactly resisting the idea of selling or licensing his invention. His financial advisors had suggested he sell the technology in the first place. Sarnoff put his plan into action by first hiring the head of television research at Westinghouse, Vladimir Zworykin. Zworykin was quite accomplished in his own work towards developing a commercial television solution and held patents on components to camera and receiver designs in the 1920s, even though he had never created a working prototype. He had already sold these patents to RCA (prices ranging from $50,000 to $100,000) in order to obtain funding to continue his research. Yet still, Zworykin s own patent for a complete television system was still pending while Farnsworth's own Electronic Explorer 55

applications were officially approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Zworykin made an appointment to visit Farnsworth's lab in 1930. Farnsworth agreed to this hoping Westinghouse (Zworykin failed to mention he was already working for RCA) might license his patents. During his stay, Zworykin picked up Farnsworth's image dissector, the world's first electronic television camera, and marveled at it. This is a beautiful instrument, he exclaimed. I wish I had invented it myself. 5 After his visit, Zworykin tried to reverseengineer Farnsworth s devices, but after one year and spending a great deal of RCA s money, he failed to create a working electronic television system. Adding to RCA s technological problems were the sharply declining sales of radios and phonographs due to the Depression. In his desperation, Sarnoff attempted to hire Farnsworth and buy his company and patents for $100,000 as an alternative to the previous failures. The inventor rejected the unacceptably low offer, and Sarnoff responded by launching a legal assault aimed at overturning his patents. This halted Farnsworth s commercial progress for years and delayed the introduction of television products to the public. The Patent Office finally rejected RCA s claims and restored Farnsworth s patents in 1935. By this time, Farnsworth found his own financial alternative by licensing his patents to Philco in the U.S. and Baird Television in Britain. He also licensed to AT&T, which, amazingly enough, had plans on producing picture phones! 6 A Television in Every Home Sarnoff lost in his attempt to swipe Farnsworth s technology, but he was determined to make RCA the top producer of television technology. He hired the best scientists away from Westinghouse, GE, and the Victor Talking Machines Company to converge in RCA s lab. By the late 1930s, RCA finally had its television system, but Farnsworth was never paid any licensing fees. Creating televisions was not enough, though. To ensure interest by the press and the public, Sarnoff had RCA sponsor the 1939 World's Fair Television Pavilion in New York City an event billed by Time magazine as the greatest show of all time. Sarnoff also secured the rights to broadcast the opening ceremony on the radio and on its technological successor. In this ceremony he proclaimed about the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society, with Franklin D. Roosevelt appearing afterwards becoming the first president to be televised. He stocked New York department stores with just-minted RCA television sets selling for $600 apiece. 7 Even with a successful debut of an actual product, RCA still could not make Farnworth s patents disappear. [Later] it was proven that Zworykin's system infringed on some of [them]. RCA reluctantly paid Farnsworth's company royalties until the patents ran out. But years of delay tactics had taken their toll. By the late 1940s, the last of Farnsworth's company was sold to International Telephone and Telegraph, and Farnsworth went to work for ITT as a scientist, devoting most of his remaining life to nuclear fusion. 8 RCA s first televisions were regarded as a pricey novelty, and during World War II, the commercial production of television equipment ceased. Cathode ray tubes were instead produced for radar units and other technological war uses. This laid the television momentarily dormant. Despite the fanfare that RCA had generated at The World s Fair, few Americans had even heard of television until after World War II, but this was to change quickly. According to one survey in 1950, before they got a TV, people listened to radio an average of nearly five hours a day. Within nine months after they bought a TV, they listened to radio but 5 Schwartz, Evan I. "Televisionary." Schwartz April 2002. 6 AT&T. Milestones in AT&T Television History. 2007. 56 7 Schwartz, Evan I. "Televisionary." Schwartz April 2002. 8 video/tv history. PC Magazine 2006. Electronic Explorer

only for two hours a day. They watched TV for five hours a day. 9 After the war, newfound affluence and a decrease in the price of television sets allowed a tremendous number of mostly suburban families to invest in a set. By 1949, Americans were buying 100,000 sets every week to watch 98 commercial television stations in 50 large cities. The End of Television Not only have mechanical televisions disappeared and cathode ray tubes found themselves on the verge of obsolescence, broadcast television as we know it is about to end. On February 17, 2009, all 1,700 U.S. analog television stations will shut down. Viewers who have cable or satellite will not be aware of this, but the 21 million hold-outs will pull nothing from their rabbit ears. Anyone who wants to watch television will have to upgrade to digital television, but is this really television anymore? Digital television is not merely an upgrade in the quality of the image and sound. Programming is served in a huge number of titles that are instantly accessible to anyone who can afford them. Set-top boxes allow recording and viewing options that far eclipse anything the humble VCR could ever do. We no longer even need a television to watch television. That is to say, television is no longer tied to a particular device. It is a visual medium that can cross multiple platforms, and in doing so has ceased being only a passive viewing activity. With video content easily distributed on the Internet, for example, anyone can be a broadcaster with little technical expertise. This new media participant is rather removed from the difficulties and perhaps the joy that was experienced by the earliest hobbyists and television viewers despite the ability to take part in the content. 9 Ganzel, Bill and Claudia Reinhardt. TV Turns On. Wessels Living History Farm. 1999. Electronic Explorer 57