The Television
Mechanical Televisions in the 1800s and Early 1900s
Prior to electric televisions, we had mechanical televisions. These early televisions
started appearing in the early 1800s. They involved mechanically scanning images then
transmitting those images onto a screen. Compared to electronic televisions, they were
extremely rudimentary.
One of the first mechanical televisions used a rotating disk with holes arranged in a
spiral pattern. This device was created independently by two inventors: Scottish
inventor John Logie Baird and American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins. Both devices
were invented in the early 1920s.
German inventor Paul Gottlieb Nipkow had developed the first mechanical television.
That device sent images through wires using a rotating metal disk. Instead of calling the
device a television, however, Nipkow called it an “electric telescope”. The device had 18
lines of resolution.
In 1907, two inventors – Russian Boris Rosing and English A.A. Campbell-Swinton –
combined a cathode ray tube with a mechanical scanning system to create a totally new
television system.
The First Electronic Television was Invented in 1927
The world’s first electronic television was created by a 21-year-old inventor named Philo
Taylor Farnsworth. Starting in high school, he began to think of a system that could
capture moving images, transform those images into code, then move those images
along radio waves to different devices. Farnsworth’s system captured moving images
using a beam of electrons (basically, a primitive camera).
The first image ever transmitted by television was a simple line. Later, Farnsworth
would famously transmit a dollar sign using his television after a prospective investor
asked, “When are we going to see some dollars in this thing, Farnsworth?”
By 1934, all TVs had been converted into the electronic system.
How Did Early Televisions Work?
The two types of televisions listed above, mechanical and electronic, worked in vastly
different ways.
Mechanical Televisions: relied on rotating disks to transmit images from a transmitter to
the receiver. Both the transmitter and receiver had rotating disks. The disks had holes in
them spaced around the disk, with each hole being slightly lower than the other.
To transmit images, you had to place a camera in a totally dark room, then place a very
bright light behind the disk. That disk would be turned by a motor in order to make one
revolution for every frame of the TV picture.
Baird’s early mechanical television had 30 holes and rotated 12.5 times per second.
There was a lens in front of the disk to focus light onto the subject.
When light hit the subject, that light would be reflected into a photoelectric cell, which
then converted this light energy to electrical impulses. The electrical impulses are
transmitted over the air to a receiver. The disk on that receiver would spin at the exact
same speed as the disk on the transmitter’s camera (the motors would be synchronized
to ensure precise transmissions).
The receiving end featured a radio receiver, which received the transmissions and
connected them to a neon lamp placed behind the disk. The disk would rotate while the
lamp would put out light in proportion to the electrical signal it was getting from the
receiver.
Ultimately, this system would allow you to view the image on the other side of the disk –
although you’d need a magnifying glass.
Electronic Televisions: There’s a reason we stopped using mechanical televisions:
electronic televisions were vastly superior.
Electronic televisions rely on a technology called a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) as well as
two or more anodes. The anodes were the positive terminals and the cathode was the
negative terminal.
The “Cathode” part of the Cathode Ray Tube was a heated filament enclosed in a glass
Tube (the “T” of CRT). The Cathode would release a beam of electronics into the empty
space of the tube (which was actually a vacuum).
All of these released electrons had a negative charge and would thus be attracted to
positively charged anodes. These anodes were found at the end of the CRT, which was
the television screen. As the electrons were released at one end, they were displayed
on the television screen at the other end.
Of course, firing electrons against a glass screen doesn’t make images. To make
images, the inside of the television screen would be coated with phosphor. The
electrons would paint an image on the screen one line at a time.
To control the firing of electrons, CRTs use two “steering coils”. Both steering coils use
the power of magnets to push the electron beam to the desired location on the screen.
One steering coil pushes the electrons up or down, while the other pushes them left or
right.
