How Soon Shall We Have Television?, May 1935 Short Wave Craft

If you think government bureaucracies meddling in the affairs of private business is a relatively new phenomenon, think again. Elected and unelected persons and agencies have since the inception of control over the populace made it their business to dictate which pursuits of technology are sanctioned and which are not. Often, the motivation lies in who within those bureaucracies stands to benefit monetarily from the decision. In this story lamenting the painfully and, in the author's opinion, unnecessarily long time experienced in bringing commercial broadcast television to the marketplace - in 1935. One of the primary stumbling blocks was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) preventing companies from televising paid commercials during programs because, in the FCC's view, picture quality was not good enough to serve advertisers' interests. In the process, development dollars were not forthcoming. Of course the arrogance in such an attitude is that it assumes the companies who would be paying for advertising services are not smart enough to determine for themselves whether it would be a good investment. As you know if you have read any of the other articles I have posted on the development of television, there were many major schemes in the works for television systems, some of which relied heavily on mechanical apparati with mirrors and spinning discs. An agreement among manufacturers on a 'standard' that would allow all systems to play well together ended up being another big reason for the delay.

It is unfortunate that our short-wave experimenters cannot today enjoy the reception of television programs, the transmitting stations being partly subsidized by the Government, if necessary - all of which would serve to greatly spur the development of television in this country.

What is delaying the development and application of television in America? Various factors, including the question of finance - failure of the Government to permit sponsored programs - lack of experimental image transmission - and other factors which are here discussed.

Television for the public has recently received considerable impetus, so far as the daily newspaper reports are concerned at least, and most of us have undoubtedly read the recent opinion expressed by Senatore Marconi that he hoped to see practical television established between Europe and America by means of microwaves. This means that he places great faith in the possibilities of long-distance transmission by microwaves, having such an extremely short length as 60 centimeters or 24 inches.

Dr. Alfred N. Goldsmith, well-known radio expert and consulting engineer to the Radio Corporation of America, said that the possibility of using radio waves of very short length to carry television across the ocean had both a bright and dark side. On the dark side, is the interference which such waves would cause to the radio systems of other countries. This would mean that the micro-waves spectrum would have to be considered on an international basis and allocated so that one nation's transmission would not interfere with others. If the micro-wave radio spectrum proves to be, upon development, the form in which television signals can cross the Atlantic, it is likely to be the only medium we can use for the purpose.

One of the new and interesting reports on television for the public comes from England where the engineers of the British Broadcasting Corporation are said to have planned swift action on the government authorization of a public television service. Working in cooperation with the Marconi and Baird television companies, they are about to decide on a site for a high television transmitting tower, which will be of sufficient altitude to provide an uninterrupted path for the ultra-short waves between the television transmitter and receiver over the 30 mile radius it is primarily intended to serve. It is possible that the Crystal Palace tower rising 280 feet above the level of the Thames, will be used for the first television broadcast. Demonstrations of the Baird experts at a distance of 25 miles from Crystal Palace have shown vision and sound to be satisfactory. Recently a demonstration by two Baird home television receivers operating on Crystal Palace transmitting signals gave brilliant black and white images. One model, which cost $250, gave an image 6x8 inches and the second larger machine, valued at $450, produced a brilliant image 9x12 inches, sufficiently large to be enjoyed by the whole family.

Another demonstration by the Baird engineers in England the other day, and which shows how far behind we have fallen in America, consisted of a demonstration or transmission of outdoor scenes. These scenes, due to the difficulty of being picked up well by the average televisor, were photographed on a motion picture "talkie" film and, with a delay of but 30 seconds for the development and drying of the film, it was sent through the television transmitter and the image picked up on short waves!

If you talk to some of the business and technical experts connected with our large American radio corporations, you will find several similar arguments they will give you as to why television has apparently been "put to sleep" for the past several years, and also why we can hardly hope to have practical television for the enjoyment of the vast radio public in this country for several years to come.

One of the first arguments is that it did not pay to keep on broadcasting television images, because the Federal Communications Commission would not issue licenses to the operating companies for "sponsored" television pro-grams, owing apparently to the fact that sufficiently clear images were not produced.

This is part of a vicious circle as it were, and another argument is and has been the lack of any great amount of capital for developing television during the past few years, and, added to this, a pronounced lack of interest on the part of the radio public.

According to the best authority, the television dream of one or two of the large American radio corporations is illustrated in this picture. Must we wait 3 to 5 years more until this grand television scheme can be placed into operation, before we can enjoy television In our homes?

There are several answers to some of these questions, a few of which may be catalogued in the following manner: If television broadcasting by first-class stations, such as that operated by the Columbia Broadcasting System up to about two and one-half years ago, had been maintained and experiments continually conducted which were aimed to improve the clarity of the image, we would be two and one-half years nearer our goal of practical and satisfactory television for the public. The writer's contact with that section of the radio public who at one time or other had occasion to see some of the television images demonstrated both on "home-type" machines, as well as public exhibition screens as large as 6 to 8 feet square, shows that undoubtedly a pretty bad impression resulted as the images would frequently fade and become "fuzzy," etc. It is the writer's contention, however, that if some of the radio broadcasting companies, such as CBS, NBC, and others as well as private plants of the large radio concerns - like those operating station WLW, had "followed through", as they did in the early days of American sound broadcasting, we would have had a very different state of television affairs today than we have at present.

At present, there are twenty-eight American television broadcasting stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission - half a dozen of these are actively broadcasting television images, one or two in the eastern part of the United States, two or three in the central part of the country and one or two on the west coast. So far as the public and the great army of half a million or more "live" radio experimenters are concerned, there is practically a complete dearth of television images to be picked up.

As Dr. O. H. Caldwell, former Federal Radio Commissioner, recently put it - "England's move to start television broadcasting in earnest will undoubtedly furnish the necessary impetus to spur America to develop, or rather apply, practical television for the benefit of the public." Dr. Caldwell said further that the results of putting television into active use at once will be far-reaching and will go a long way in pulling us out of the depression. In Germany, he stated further, Hitler is supplying money to advance the transmission of images by radio. The only thing that is holding back the development of the industry in America on a scale comparable to the early days of broadcasting, is the need for capital to finance the construction and equipment of image transmitters. To provide television programs throughout the country would require an initial investment estimated at 50 to 200 million dollars or more. This sum seems staggering to private capital, but to a government that is handing out billions for purposes that seem less constructive, even $200,000,000 for television is not unthinkable. Television transmitters really have a sounder claim to government financing, in the present unemployment situation, than do other enterprises that have received generous Federal aid. Each television transmitter built will be the means of initiating the manufacture of thousands of television receivers, involving new factories, restoring employment and injecting new impetus into the machine of national business.

American capitalists have never been slow to offer their financial cooperation for the development of any new and promising invention. Undoubtedly one of the reasons why some of the ambitious television inventors in this country have found it difficult to find capital to carryon and develop practical television to the stage it should have reached by this time, is due to another link in the vicious circle already mentioned, namely, the rather poor images obtained a few years ago; and for one reason and another, the failure of those radio broadcasting companies, who could have easily kept on broadcasting images, to carry on, and thus keep the television engineers continually on the job, which would have certainly resulted in a much finer image today than we were used to seeing say 3 years ago. It is certainly to be regretted that there has been nothing, practically, during the past three years to sustain experimental interest in television, such as would have been the case had a number of stations been broadcasting images regularly.

"The British are to be commended for their enterprise ... What they plan exactly parallels tests made in New York and other cities several years ago. England's problem is compara-tively simple ... As the area of the United States is 38 times as large as the British Isles, our television problem is more than 38 times as large as theirs."

"We will follow England's experiment with keen interest. Experiments two years ago with television transmission gave us a sympathetic understanding of the difficulties to be encountered to sustain public interest in images possessing limited detail ... A conservative policy of watchful investigation will best serve our interest."

"Television will go a long way in pulling us out of the depression ... The only thing that is holding back the development of this new industry is capital to finance the construction and equipment of image transmitters. To provide television programs here would require an initial investment of from $50,000,000 to $200,000,000 or more."

On the brighter side of American television developments, we have had the secret reports which leak out now and then from the laboratories of such great operating companies as the R.C.A., that first-class television images have been obtained in their laboratory tests - images in fact equivalent in quality to those projected by home movie machines! The writer has been told by people who have seen some of these images that such is the fact, and this being the case, it is indeed unfortunate that apparently the public, as well as a great section of the army of the unemployed, as Dr. Goldsmith has pointed out, cannot benefit by the immediate or at least early application of this television service.

Unofficially, from bits of information gathered from various sources, the "grand" television scheme for we Americans seems to be all tied up, due to patents, lack of finances by the smaller radio and television concerns, etc., in a plan whereby one or two of the largest American radio companies are planning to erect a series of ultra-short-wave television transmitting stations in all the larger cities across the country. In other words, these images are to be transmitted on waves of 5 to 6 meters or less, which, of course, with their extremely high frequency, lend themselves ideally to the practically perfect transmission of a first-class clear image, one of good size on a "home televisor" and having possibly 300 to 400 scanning lines. At least two large laboratories have been busy the past few years on the development of cathode-ray televisors, and according to reports given by those who have seen the images produced by this type of televisor, the results are well worth waiting for.

This is but one angle of the situation, however, and it does seem too bad that during the past few years we could not have had a number of stations broadcasting television images in this country, even though mechanical scanning had to be used. John V. L. Hogan, well-known American radio engineer, who, let it be said to his credit, has kept on broadcasting television images for the benefit of the experimenters during the past few years, told the writer there is no reason why we cannot obtain good clear television images of sufficiently fine detail by mechanical scanning. In other words, it is not an immutable law that we have got to have cathode-ray tube televisors to give us satisfactory images at the receiver. Another point in this same direction, and one which will be vouched for by thousands of people who saw daily demonstrations some years ago by the Bell Telephone Laboratories and the New York Telephone Company, is the fact that very good likenesses of people's faces were televised over a distance of several miles by wire - all by mechanical scanning.

About 5 years ago, the Bell Telephone Laboratories' television experts, headed by Dr. H. E. Ives, gave several remarkable demonstrations to editors and others in which not only outdoor scenes picked up directly by one of their televisors and projected over a circuit to a receiver in another part of the laboratory, but television images in colors were transmitted and received with wonderful fidelity and one of the onlookers remarked that one of the strawberries "looked so real" that it seemed that one of them could be picked out of the image!

One of the writer's main contentions is that with all this really remarkable television development, which was in actual operation 5 and 6 years ago, we, in this country, should be miles ahead of the point at which we now find ourselves. But in fact - insofar as the radio public is concerned - we have no television!

The question of how soon shall we have television for the American public is, therefore, practically unanswerable at the present time. It has been reported several times in the past 2 years, that one of the large radio companies would put their perfected cathode-ray television receivers on the market, and "start the ball rolling" - but so far as any definite word from any of the American radio business leaders is concerned, they will say nothing definite.

One of the best hopes for an early break in television for the public seems to lie in a Government subsidy, which could be later paid back to the Government, and as already pointed out, some immediate action in the development and application of television would help to start factories going and help us to catch up with the television activities of our British and German friends. What the writer and many others who have been in close touch with American television would like to see, would be a rebirth of the activity shown a few years ago on the part of the smaller television and radio companies, who started doing a very creditable job with mechanical scanning systems. Furthermore, there is nothing to stop these companies from procuring the services of competent engineers who could devise for them new systems of cathode-ray scanning or its electro-mechanical equivalent, for it is foolishness to believe that all of the real genius in television engineering is encompassed within the brains of possibly half a dozen engineers in the employ of two or three large radio concerns.

How Soon Shall We Have Television?May 1935 Short Wave Craft

How Soon Shall We Have Television?
May 1935 Short Wave Craft