TELEVISION SET BUILT

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26129, 3 June 1950, Page 3

TELEVISION SET BUILT

ELECTRONICS PROJECT IN AUCKLAND CAMERA AND RECEIVER IN USE “The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND. May 31. A television camera and receiver have been built as a project by the Auckland branch- of the Institute of Electronics. In manv respects the set is not of the most modern type, and the impulses are transmitted along a wire, but it is claimed to be the first true television set in New Zealand.

Residents in the Tamaki district, where the set was built, and enthusiasts have already appeared before the television camera and shown up on the sin by 4in screen, completely recognisable. although the equipment has much lower definition than television as householder in England and America already know it. The gear is more bulky than the home set which may be commonly used here within the next few years., but this is 'because it is an industrial television set. and because it takes and sends the moving image as well*as receives it. Nearly all the gear used in the set has been given bv local radio and electronics firms. The parts alone are worth about £250. Although considerable complications and costs are avoided bv transmitting by wire, a process which has valuable application overseas, the essential features of television are retained.

The key pieces of the equipment are two glass tubes called an iconoscope and a kinescope. Around thorn and between them are mazes of intricate and brightly coloured wiring interconnected with nearly 40 radio valves, but the glass tubes are the things that make television what it is. The one receives the light image of whatever is being televised and converts it into electric impulses; the other turns these impulses back into the image on the television screen. The iconoscope proved unexpectedly hard to get. It could only be obtained from the United States, which involved the use of dollars. The institute also found that permission had to be obtained from the State Department for its export.