WONDERS OF TELEVISION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19608, 9 April 1927, Page 11

WONDERS OF TELEVISION.

PICTURES SENT BY RADIO. SEEING BY THE TELEPHONE. DISTANCE OF 250 MILES. 4 DEMONSTRATION IN AMERICA. i. " : By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. (Received April 8, 5.5 p.m.) A. and N.Z. NEW YORK, April V. The first public demonstration of talevision. or visible radio, was held in the laboratory of the Bell Telephone Company in New York. A group of 50 men simultaneously hoard and saw the Secretary of Commerce, Mr. H. C. Hoover, deliver an address on radio from Washington. i . The invention is the work of Mr. Francis Jenkins, a Washington scientistHe is now working on a machine to be carried on an aeroplane in time of war, which will take impressions of the landscape over which the aeroplane is flying. It will then transmit them over 100 miies back to a projecting-screen at headquarters

Mr. Jenkins invented the modern projection machine for the cinema and also a method of transmission of still pictures by radio. , Instruments are now in use by which weather maps can be transmitted from the shore to ships at sea.

The experiment with radio was repeated with the use of a telephone wire with equally good results. The synchronisation of the speaker's voice with his actions was extremely lifelike,' although verisimilitude was more nearly approached when tho picture was projected on a small screen. As many as 18 pictures a second were projected to a distance of 250 miles on a screen two inches long by three inches wide, and then oft to a screen two feet by three feet. After that the vice-president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Mr. Curty, who was in Washington, conversed with various men in New York.

Upon the screen before him, looking straight at him, he saw the individuals whom he addressed.

This experiment was followed by the projection of a variety entertainment from a studio at New Jersey into New York by wireless. This was a much shorter distance, and the effects were excellent. The officials declined to discuss the commercial prospects of television, but they indicated that its greatest possibilities lie in the field of entertainment;.