Inventor of Television

I've never heard of Vladimir K. Zworykin? What about John Logie Baird? Or maybe you know the name of Paul Nipkow? If not, what about Charles Francis Jenkins? No? So you've probably heard of Philo T. Farnsworth!

Who are these people? All are entitled to the title of "father of television". What, if any, is the rightful owner, however, this nickname?

The creation of television, one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, with roots firmly planted in the 19th century. That was a logical extension of the technology of telegraphy and photography. Since the 19th century, inventors have been filing patents on devices that allow the transmission of moving images to the child.

Almost all the technologies that shows live images depends on a phenomenon called persistence of vision. If the human eye is presented with a series of still images very quickly, faster than about 10 per second, but do not see them as individual images, but a coherent picture. A film camera uses a long strip of film to take the picture after picture of a scene that captures every movement in the series of images. As these parts using a projector, it gives the viewer the illusion of a scene of continuous movement.

Inventors who want to transmit moving images electronically would have to find a way to do something similar to capture the image after the image and sends them down the wire to be reconstructed for display in another place.

Mechanical Television

A German, Dr. Paul Nipkow, built the first machine brutal to do in 1884. Nipkow camera device is based on a rotating disk with 24 small holes in it. The holes were arranged in a spiral so that the disc was rotated by one, would be an exploration area which focuses the image on the disc with a lens. On the other side of the disc was a light-sensitive photocell to generate an electrical signal when he was beaten for the light that passes through the holes. In this way, the image is converted into an electrical signal. Every time the disk rotates one full turn, a different image would be sent on the wire.

Receiving element Nipkow worked in the back of his camera. Instead of a photo cell, there was a neon lamp. Engineering neon lamp varies with the signal from the camera and the light passes through another rotating disk, synchronized with the first, then the other side of the disk image would be blurred form.

There were many problems with Nipkow's invention, and never out of the laboratory: For one thing the neon bulb does not generate enough light to make a useful image. When a bright light bulb became available in 1917, other inventors began to have an interest in the work of Nipkow. In America, Charles Francis Jenkins began to build a system using a variation of the rotation of the disks designed by Nipkow. In England, an inventor named John Logie Baird began experimenting with a similar system.

Baird was 34 when he began building his "TV" system. Working on a tight budget, he built his first device with the objects found in the attic where it was experimentation. An old tea box was used to support the electric motor that resulted from the disks. The discs have been reduced from cardboard. Other parts were mounted on pieces of scrap wood. The goal came from an old bicycle lamp. Colle, sealing and son held the device together.

Surprisingly, the system of capital was able to produce a small flick of the image. In 1926, Baird demonstrated a more refined version of its system of mechanical television to members of the Royal Institute. This led to news coverage in the Times of London and money from donors so that he can perfect his device. In 1930 Baird sent pictures via BBC transmitter at night after normal radio programs were closed. This was the first regular television service.

Despite the success of Baird, this form of television, which is returned to television because of engine operation and mechanics of disks involved, had many technical limitations. The engineers working on mechanical television could not get over about 240 lines of resolution means still images would be a bit fuzzy. The use of a rotating disk can also limit the number of new images per second that can be seen and this led to excessive blinking. It became evident that if the mechanics of television could be removed, higher quality and more stable images could be the result.

Electronic Television

The first man to imagine an electronic television was a British engineer named A. Electric Campbell Swinton. In a speech in 1911, Swinton has described the project, using a cathode ray tube and to capture the light and see a picture. The CRT is a glass bottle with a long neck at one end and a flat screen to another. A bottle of clean air has been pumped to the "electron gun" in the neck could shoot electrons to the flattened tube, which was covered with a phosphor coating material. When the electrons hit the material glow. Sweep up the flow of electrons back and forth in rows from top to bottom, and a variable intensity of the flow, based Swinton, the image can be plotted in a similar way Nipkow disks do not.

A modified version of the tube can also be used as a camera. If the flat end could get a sandwich of metal, a non-conductive material and a material photoelectric light focused on the flat end with a goal would give a positive charge inside the surface. By scanning electron flow through the flat end, back online, the costs could be read and the image can be transformed into a signal that could be sent to the screen to be seen.

Swinton concept almost exactly describes how the modern television, electronics. While his vision is almost perfect, Swinton, nor anyone else knew at the time actually engineer such a system and make it work. An electronic system if this could be made to work, however, would operate at speeds much faster than any mechanical system could and would give the impression of being composed of several rows, increasing the quality of image.

 

It was eleven years after the conference that the adolescent Swinton Utah became interested in the electronic television. Philo T. Farnsworth had read the Nipkow disk system, and decided that a good picture quality ever. If the test is in power, said one of the high school teachers that he thought he could design a better system. He proceeded to give out of a man surprised by the blackboard in the classroom. The teacher encouraged the Farnsworth and Farnsworth went to California to build a laboratory, where he could test his ideas. Working in dark rooms in Los Angeles and then San Francisco, Farnsworth had to work so secret that his lab was once a police raid, he thought he still used for the illegal production of alcoholic beverages.

From September 1927 Farnsworth was sent to sixty-line camera images on the screen using a fully electronic system. It was at this stage of his work has attracted the attention of David Sarnoff. Sarnoff was the head of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA): radios main power radio and parts of the United States.

Many of the RCA radio as soon as the patent expires, so Sarnoff was looking for another market, could have a TV corner was the obvious choice. When hiring, Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian immigrant who had experienced mechanical television a decade Sarnoff has sent him to California to see the work of Farnsworth. Later, Sarnoff would visit the Farnsworth laboratories.

Sarnoff and Zworykin quickly realized the value of the invention, Farnsworth and Sarnoff tried to buy girl for $ 100,000. Farnsworth, thinking I could do more in the payment of patent royalties that the RCA to sell his invention to them, refused. Sarnoff, irritated, said: "While there is nothing here, it is necessary" and sent Zworykin to build your own version of the technology.

Farnsworth keep the designs appear in the work and follow Zworykin lawsuits between the two companies. RCA was forced to pay Farnsworth $ 1,000,000 in license fees, but the beginning of World War II delayed the introduction of television in most U.S. and the market of electronic television did not really off after the war. By then, many key patents had expired and was never the money Farnsworth probably deserved for his contribution to electronic television.

To make matters worse, the majority of television history is written by employees of the RCA and perhaps in revenge for the license you were forced to leave, contributions to the Farnsworth left completely out of the story.

The closure of mechanical television
So what happened to the mechanical television program is broadcast in the UK? Baird soon realized he had to get help from the BBC to make its mechanical system a complete success. In 1930, however, the BBC has learned that the future of TV is not electronic, mechanical. Launched in November 1936, Baird's mechanical system will be sent a week alternatively an electronic EMI. British citizens were invited to choose what they liked best. The electronic system was much better, and Baird took off the air. Although Baird tried to sell the system for movie theaters, these plans stopped when World War II began, and the BBC television service was closed until the hostilities were over.

In 1939, RCA and Zworykin decided to show their new system of electronic television at the World Exhibition in New York. Not much development has taken place only after the Second World War was over, but in 1946 people could buy a tabletop ten-inch for $ 375.

So who was the real father of television? This invention is omnipresent, like many others, has played a role in its creation. However, it is obvious that much of the credit to electronic television should probably go to Philo Farnsworth. Farnsworth v. Court after the hearing Zworykin to recognize that his ideas found their way into the first commercial systems built on RCA. Many of the processes that operate inside the TV today, was developed in the dark her, a secret laboratory in California.