AMATEUR TELEVISION

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 3231, 26 June 1928, Page 6

AMATEUR TELEVISION

EXPLOITATION CRITICISED

Attempts by the Baird Television Development Company to popularise television among- amateurs in Britain have had a set-back. The public was lod to believe early this year that tele vision sets for home use would soon be on the market. This moved a well-known wireless weekly to offer Mr Baird £1000 if i with his laboratory apparatus he would j ; "televise" certain objects over a dis- I tance of 25 yards and produce recognisably clear results in the presence of a committee. The objects wore: The faces of three persons known by sight to the committee, five simple geometrical models, dice and marbles on a tray, four animal toys and a clock-face with movable hands. Some of the objects were to be in slow motion. Mr Baird was given six weeks in which to reply, but at latest advices he had not accepted the challenge. Some of his entourage were reported to have accused the paper of seeking to prejudice the public against him. Apparently the human face had beeen used for the most part in his experiments, and, as was pointed out, it was much easier to produce a blurred image, recognisable as that of a face ihan a reasonably detailed image of a cloek- . dial or marbles on a tray. Simultaneously with the challenge, so high an authority on physics as Sir Oliver Lodge published an article in which, he declared that mechanical means, such as Mr Laird's, could never yield more than the crudest results. "Even to give 100 spots to every square inch in 1 -12th of a second is by no means easy," lie wrote. It involves very rapid movement on the part of the tracing point and very rapid response throughout. And to give a picture of any reasonable size in this way, say four inches square, by means of vibrating mirrors or rotating lenses, would seem to be almost impossible. The problem is to Jiad a means of moving something equivalent to a beam of ■ light with a rapidity above acoustic frequency; in other words, of vibrntiug it. at a speed approaching radio frequency. Can this be done J. . . Nothing mechanical is likely to work at the ' required rate.'' After suggesting lines of research along which an electrical solution of ' ( the problem might some day be found, ' Sir Oliver said: "1 think it advisable • and prehaps necessary to issue a caution, reiterating my assertion that the subject, of television is quite in its infancy, that it is not yet possible to purchase any apparatus likely to be successful, and that no' amateur is likely to be able to adapt apparatus working in connexion with a wireless re- - ceiver for the purpose of seeing mov- . ing objects at a distance. If television 2 is in its infancy, home reception of its i results by wireless aid is still more in ? the future, and in all probability in the somewhat distant future.'' t More lately component parts of a r simple form of Baird television trans- > mitter and receiver have been on sale ) at Self ridge's, in London. The apT paratus was stated to be capable of , transmitting silhouettes, but published . reports upon the working of the appar- . atus when put together are distinctly , unfavourable. On the other hand the New York - Herald Tribune of May 13 gives an ac- > count of the transmission of silhouette 5 cinematograph pictures and animated cartoons, and their reception on a t small apparatus for home use invented . by Mr C. Francis Jenkins, of Washing- , ton. The paper prints a photograph ; of members of the Federal Radio Com- , mission watching the receiver at work." . Apparently mechanical means were em- . ployed, including a revolving drum pierced with holes. Whether the images contained a really satisfactory amount of detail is not stated. No attempt . seems to have boon made to convey impressions of light and shade. i It is worth noting that as late as . March last the engineers of the Elec- . trie Company and the Bell Telephone Laboratories, which have been doing . much television research, declared that , the amateur's time would not come for . fully five years. The Radio Corpora- . tion of America recently declared that ,it was not manufacturing television equipment because research had not yet , revealed methods of building economt ical enough to be applied to home re- . caption.