FUTURE OF TELEVISION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 96, 6 April 1934, Page 6

FUTURE OF TELEVISION

Amazing Predictions IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT SYDNEY, March 29 One of the greatest authorities in the world to-day on wireless, Mr E. T, Fisk, general manager of Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia), Limited, in a special interview, said that at the present television was a toy. However, he painted an amazing picture of possible future developments. A glimpse into the future, when micro-ray apparatus stationed on the top of big city buildings would be capable ot being revolved in various directions to summon directly fire brigades and police, and when television would have attained enormous political and social possibilities, was given by Mr Fisk. He spoke in level, matter-of-fact tones, yet he conjured up a vision of enormous forces which some day would powerfully affect mankind. lhe work which he had done >n furtherance of television, he said, was not on the spectacular lines of recent demonstrations in London, and was directed rather at the optical aspect than the electrical. He had tealised that until comparatively recently the electrical aspect of television was being developed on lines that could not ultimately be successful—that was with the scanning mirror and definitions of the order of 30 to 60 lines to the inch

COSTLY RESEARCH WORK. “Research work in that direction has been very costly,” Mr Fisk said, “and, in my opinion, is not likely to lead to success. I have therefore confined myself to following closely what is being done overseas, while refraining from spending money in the same direction. At the same time 1 realised that very little attention was being paid to the optical problem, and what 1 have done links up with tho new developments now taking place “In my view the greatest thing in television yet developed is tho iconoscope, which reproduces in an electrical apparatus the principles of the retina of the human, eye. When some day that is joined with tho micro-ray. I think that wireless broadcasting and certain other things will be altered beyond recognition. But the time for that is not yet. Very much the some thing applies to television that • pplied to moving pictures. Huge sums were spent in experiments upon pictures, and there were spectacular flashes, just as you have them in tele vision to-day.

BIG PUBLIC SERVICE “Broadcasting provides another parallel. In 1906, while in New York, 1 listened to the first broadcast, but it was not until 1921 that it became really practicable in America, and it was not officially established in Australia until 1923. I think television is going to be the most interesting toy for the next few years, and then it is going to bo a big public service, with many headaches for technicians and programme managers. It will do for broadcasting what the talkies have done for the cinema. “When the public really takes tho thing up it will demand a high grade of entertainment. To produce every day in the st»dio a new play of the requisite standard will be enormously costly. You may say, ‘YVhy not use films?’ But the film companies will obviously require compensation for the effect upen theatre patronage- The micro-ray will probably contribute a great deal toward making television practicable. It will also be very use tul for telephone services in many instances in place of lines. I think it will also be used for power control, fire and burglar alarms and so on. But we shall not see these things for 10 years, anyway.”

Explaining the operation of television, Mr Fisk said only ono dimension could be transmitted by wire or I radio. To transmit a picture two di | mensions of length and breadth had to i be converted into one. That meant that it had to be divided into extreme ly thin strips of dots, which, when transmitted, had to be assembled so as to produce the picture. To transmit satisfactorily a moving picture approximately 1,000,000 dots a second had to “be pumped like peas through a pea-shooter,” correctly assembled and reproduced- The utmost that the ordinarv broadcasting wave could transmit was 10,000 dots a second There was no alternative to this method of transmission, but development was taking place in the apparatus to make it possible. i