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October 1968 Radio-Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Electronics,
published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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Schemes for transmitting
newspapers via airwaves and cable had already been around for a couple decades by
the time this piece appeared in a 1968 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine.
Large publishers like the New York Times, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Los
Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, etc., wanted the ability to sell subscriptions to
entities and individuals who desired time-sensitive information even more quickly
than an overnight airline flight could provide a hard copy. The vision would ultimately
need to wait for the advent of the Internet before widespread, affordable service
would be available - primarily because the original vision of producing hard copies
of entire newspapers at remote locations was (and still is) impractical. Color television
was overtaking B&W as being dominant in households, and a lot of effort went
into improving picture quality. A big problem was inconsistent hue and brightness
between sets, even those of the same make and model. The IEEE and others convened
committees to investigate and remedy the issue. Analog signals complicated the problems,
but even today's LED and LCD displays show a huge variation between monitors even
though the digital input signals are exactly the same. A decade later, we're still
not there.
Looking Ahead/News Briefs - Looking Ahead
Newspapers may soon be added to the services presented on CATV
systems.
By David Lachenbruch, Contributing Editor
TV Newspaper Readout
Newspapers may soon be added to the services presented on CATV systems. UMC Facsimile
Corp., controlled by Universal Marion Corp., is testing via cable TV a system which
it claims can transmit a full-size newspaper page per minute on a standard FM station's
subcarrier - or faster if a full FM channel is used at night while the station is
off the air.
Its "variable velocity scanning" system saves time and bandwidth by eliminating
redundancies in the transmitted signal. Portions of the newspaper page - such as
the white spaces around the type - which do not contain printed information are
processed at a rate much faster than information-containing portions. Under UMC's
plan, a large metropolitan newspaper would be transmitted by FM subcarrier and stored
on a standard reel of magnetic audio tape for later playback at 7 ips on a vacant
CATV channel.
A more elaborate system would employ the tape recorder-player in the viewer's
home. "Playing" the newspaper index first, the viewer would decide which pages he
wanted to read on his TV screen, then use the fast-forward button to locate them.
At night, the tape would be erased automatically and the next morning's paper recorded.
Meanwhile, a new data conversion technique is being used by Bell Labs to transmit
newspaper page facsimiles over telephone lines (photo). In experiments a page has
been transmitted in 6 minutes. Each page is attached to the drum of a revolving
facsimile scanner. Scanner signals are fed into a data conversion terminal for conversion
to binary pulse. These encoded pulses are then transmitted over T-1 carrier telephone
line at rates of 1.5 million bits per second.
Off-Color TV
A multifaceted, full-scale engineering investigation is now under way in an attempt
to remedy the major weakness of American color TV - those annoying variations of
color intensity and hue from station to station, camera to camera, scene to scene
and program to program.
The study will examine the role played in color changes by station equipment,
maintenance, film processing, broadcast standards, measurement techniques, receiver
design, servicing, antennas - to cite just a part of the inquiry's scope. The end
result could be new instrumentation, equipment, procedures - or even FCC standards.
The inquiry is being conducted by an ad hoc engineering committee composed of
representatives of virtually every organization with an interest in television:
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers, Electronic Industries Association, National Association of
Broadcasters and National Community Television Association, with the FCC represented
on an "observer" basis.
Fast-Growing CATV
Television-by-cable mayor may not be the wave of the future - but at present
it's growing faster than ever. An analysis of CATV's growth last year shows that
the number of systems increased by nearly 15% to 1984, while the number of homes
served by cable rose 26% to 2,675,251 - that's 4.7% of all US television-equipped
homes, an increase of 3.9% in one year. Wyoming is the state with the greatest CATV
saturation - 28.5% of all homes get their programs by cable. Vermont and Montana
are next, with 27% and 23.8%, respectively.
Importance of Imports
While the demand for black-and-white TV sets continues to be surprisingly strong
in the "color age" (sales were up 2.5% from last year in the first half of 1968),
a sharply rising percentage is now foreign-made. Predictions are being heard that
monochrome TV will follow the transistor radio in becoming largely an import market
with the vast majority of receivers being manufactured outside the U.S.
In the first half of this year, more than 25% of all monochrome TV sets sold
in the United States were made overseas. Most of these imported sets, however, bore
American set makers' brand names - either built to their specs by outside firms
or, in some cases, made in their own plants in the Far East. The vast majority of
imported TV sets still come from Japan - the source of 557,298 receivers in the
first 6 months of 1968. At the same time, 53,403 came in from Taiwan (Formosa) and
a couple of hundred from Hong Kong. Aside from Canada, no other country ships any
quantity of TV sets to the United States.
Imported black-and-white sets, while still largely in the small-screen area,
are gradually increasing in size. The 12" receiver is gaining in popularity, while
the novelty-sized tinyvision sets are declining.
Technician Test
The National Electronic Association reports a 50% failure rate for its new electronic
technician certification test (see News Briefs, September). The test was written
by technician members of NEA, and covers electronic theory and. practical troubleshooting.
Supermagnets
New permanent-magnet materials with very high resistance to demagnetization make
it possible to cast extremely small magnets in shapes different from conventional
magnets. Solid cobalt, copper, iron and a rare earth element - either cerium or
samarium - are placed in disc-shaped molds in a copper hearth and fused by an arc
furnace. Coercive forces as high as 28,700 oersteds have been obtained in Bell Labs
magnets.
Posted August 2, 2023
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