Television - As I See It
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Now that the inestimable Bob Pease is no longer with us to enlighten and entertain, is there a contemporary and immediately recognizable electronics technology name you see on a magazine article, book, or presentation? Maybe my tech literary world is pretty small, but nobody come to mind as I write this (apologies to the many great authors I am forgetting). In the early part of the last century, you can be sure that when the names Edison, de Forest, Tesla, Marconi, Bell, and Morse were featured in bylines, readers took note. Lee de Forest's 1945 article in this 1945 Radio-News magazine on the state of the art of television was an example. No doubt many reports on TV were written, published, and passed over, but when one of the Greats of the industry put pen to paper it will be noticed. It worked with me. Television - As I See It By Dr. Lee de Forest
In the Foreword of my recent book, "Television Today and Tomorrow," I wrote: "To see from a distance details that defy telescopic vision; to have sight through barriers, to recreate in the home, in a million homes, not merely messages and music for the ear, but actual scenes as they transpire miles beyond the horizon, across continents; "To summon the apparition of loved ones far removed; to bring into one's room an athletic field, a race track, a ship sailing a far sea; in fireside comfort to meet and hear the nation's leaders as they counsel, instruct, and inspire; to annihilate space and separation, to enrich the home lives of modern millions through the medium of the mightiest miracle which science has ever yet conceived - "This is Television!" These glowing sentences briefly epitomize, in my opinion, the future scope and humanitarian possibilities of this youngest and most attractive of all the offspring of what now is known as Radio. This child, after a discouraging and tedious infancy, was growing into attractive adolescence - during the last years of the second decade of the Electronic Era, when it was suddenly nipped in the bud by the total blackout imposed by our entry into this World War. But in a hundred research laboratories intense, war-incited work along electronic lines closely akin to those involved in television has been carried on, advancing the knowledge of phenomena and principles needed for the vastly improved forms of television which science and technology will present shortly to an eagerly waiting world, once the obliterating war clouds have rolled away. As was the case with radio after World War I, this war-incited development will be found to have hastened by many years the advancement of the television art, over what an orderly, peacetime evolution would have registered. So we shall find shortly that the new television picture, like a butterfly, has broken out from the small conical-shaped glass chrysalis of the cathode-ray tube, and spread its newly formed wings wide upon the screen wall, there to be beheld, not by a few huddled heads, but in the comfort of arm chairs and sofas at convenient distances, in the living rooms of ten million homes. And like a gorgeous butterfly, the new television picture will glow in brilliant natural colors - not always - there will be abundant black and white scenes - but from the more elaborate, somewhat costlier sets will be projected those fascinating motion pictures in color which now make Technicolor productions and Kodachrome home movies so incomparably more natural and attractive than drab black and white can ever be. How, you ask, can these things come to pass? By the enlightened rulings of the Federal Communications Commission which will give to the telecasting industry coveted niches in the upper regions of the radio spectrum, away from a great deal of interference which formerly plagued its audiences, regions where there exists abundant room for video band frequencies 20 or more megacycles wide. This calls for video carrier-wave frequencies well above 150 megacycles, perhaps as high as 700, or even higher. It now has been proven that powerful television transmitters operating on such frequencies not only can be constructed, but these have demonstrated a radiation efficiency in excess of those heretofore attained with much longer wavelengths, of the standard order of 5 meters. The receiving antenna for use with these new fractional meter wavelengths are smaller, less conspicuous, and more readily erected and serviced. They therefore can be located more easily and shielded from stray radiations which produce the annoying ghost images upon some television-receiver screens. Also, these small antennas are more immune to pick-ups from extraneous, manmade interferences. From them small coaxial cables will lead the picture and audio ether signals down to the receiver cabinet whence the picture will be projected to the viewing screen; either a trans-lux one, attached to cabinet for "rear projection" from the Kenetron tube, or on to a beaded screen hung upon the wall, or suspended from a tripod, as with the home-movie projector.
This new-era television probably will grow up alongside of the old fashioned prewar type and standards (a 525-line picture radiated on what we now must regard as "long" wavelengths - of the order of 5 meters). The existing "television plant," comprising those large companies, which deserve much of the credit for developing this art from its inception, have many millions of dollars invested in their prewar transmitter stations. Also there are some thousands of prewar receivers, and the radio manufacturing companies are all set up to turn out their "archaic" types of television receivers in mass production, to operate with existing transmitters. The evolving situation, however, will resemble much the manner in which FM is growing up alongside of its older brother, AM, there being identical programs on both. Telecasting stations will send out the same picture program from both the old and new type of transmitters, low- and high-carrier frequencies; moderate definition pictures for direct tube-end viewing; and high definition, 700 to 1000 line, pictures for screen projection, comparable in every way with our 16-mm. motion pictures. The prewar standards are wholly ill-suited for three-color pictures, whereas color attachments for use with the new, projection type of c.b. tubes will be so small and simple as to add but slightly to the cost of the black-and-white receiver instruments. Synchronism has proven to be no problem. So it would appear that the not-too-distant future of television in the home is indeed promising. We know now how this vastly important advancement of the art actually can be realized. Only the element of time required for its realization remains undecided. But we know this need not be long. Two years should be more than ample; 1946 should witness this vastly significant transformation. And now a word as to the economics involved. Lacking a highly desirable, well-deserved, governmental "lend-lease" television policy, the new industry obviously must "lift itself up by its boot-straps." I mean, before it can pay for the live spot entertainment that will cause millions to view, and continue to view, their television screens, the industry must go into the financial infrared. The high cost of producing good, live, nightly shows, creditably enacted by skilled name artists - shows which are perfectly rehearsed at high expense, then flashed on the screens of but a single city, or even two or three, only once, and then vanish forever - such cost would swiftly bankrupt any broadcasting organization. This situation would last at least until the audiences could be built up, by relay and coaxial chains, into the millions which alone will interest lavishly paying sponsors. And each telecasting chain will cost enormously in coin and time. The economic solution of this "insoluble" paradox is quite simple - to some executives uninterestingly commonplace and undramatic. It resides in celluloid! The necessary telecasting chains exist already - the postal service, railway and air express - and the humble tin film-carrying can! And here is where the motion-picture industry stands complete, all ready to help solve this ridiculous riddle. Erect television transmitters (new type) in 50 cities (already more than that number of applications are before the FCC). Produce your entertainment in the motion picture studios - shorts and semilongs, all of good quality - made perfect for presentation by cutting and splicing, like in any moving picture. Ship the prints to every transmitter, to be used whenever desired and as often as desired, passing them on from city to city so that the rapidly swelling audience volume will be kept entertained constantly. Thus, any television picture will be viewed by such numbers as to be interesting to the commercial sponsors. The cost per viewer thus will be so reduced that profits in the making and telecasting processes soon will become apparent-and very enticing. Nine-tenths of television entertainment will be from film - which factor at once eliminates a host of problems, financial and otherwise. Spot news, athletic games, horse racing, unusual events, providing these chance to occur at suitable hours, will prove intensely interesting to theater audiences, of course, as well as the viewer at home. But this quality of "simultaneity" in television has been vastly overstressed. Who fails to be interested or delighted in a motion picture simply because they know that the figures on the screen had enacted that scene many months before? Far better a good picture than a low-quality show. The film is certain to play in television an even more vitally important role than does the transcription and phone-record in broadcasting. Vastly more, for upon film entertainment will depend the very life of television. One word more covering television in the theater. Cinema screen television pictures have long been a demonstrated fact - in New York by R.C.A. and in London by Scophony and Beard. The new projection tubes now under development will throw upon the theater screen pictures almost as brilliant as we now see thereon. I have in mind one such tube which will permit the use of the regular theater projection arc light, instead of depending on a terrifically bombarded, short lived, fluorescent projection area. Such an optical device will enable us to place brilliant pictures in all the richness of living, natural colors before the eyes of large theater audiences. For color in television will soon dominate that art, even as Technicolor is now rapidly assuming a capital importance in the motion picture industry. For the theater also it will readily be possible to register the incoming telecast picture upon film, so that the evening audiences may witness the same exciting horse-race finish, or football game which had thrilled the afternoon audiences a few hours earlier. Thus, the home owner will have a permanent record, perhaps an exclusive one, for his ensuing audiences. The possibilities along these lines are a challenge to our imagination. Science will provide all the needed implements. It will be up to the motion picture industry amply to employ them. Therefore it well behooves the great motion picture industry to look well, and now, to television. For this new instrument is most emphatically certain to play a heavy role in that industry, and at an early date. They had best book this show, for it can help or harm them ,"colossally"! Like the sound-on-film, television cannot be suppressed, dare not be ignored. Let the film magnates forget not the lesson learned in the late twenties, or television will cost them plenty! Color and Monochrome (B&W) Television Articles
Posted November 29, 2021 |
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This noted inventor presents the many economic
problems confronting the television industry. 