It’s comforting to know that the media industry’s fascination with screwing their customers by telling them how they can use their own TVs is nothing new.
Pay-as-You-Look Television
“Phone vision,” developed by Zenith Radio Corporation, offers paying television audiences the cream of latest stage plays and movies. A combination home receiver brings in free programs as usual. Special features reach it partly by air, partly by phone line. Blurred when viewed alone (above, right), the radio image becomes clearer (left) with key frequencies received by phone. “Admission charges” go on phone bill.
I’m a big fan of any media you have to peel.
Recorder stores TV stills
This German recorder makes stills of moving TV images.
Video pulses are fed through a recording head to a magnetic-foil disk (background above) spun at 3,000 r.p.m. Scanning speed is 2,000 inches a second. A pushbutton starts the cycle for an instantaneous single picture.
A playback feeds the stills to another TV set. Up to 10 can be recorded on one foil, which can be peeled off for filing.
Did you think all those Wi-Fi hackers had invented the cantenna? This has them beat by a good 45-50 years.
-
Airmen’s “Can-Tenna”
At the Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma there’s a short-wave antenna that proves you should never throw away anything! It is the antenna for a Globe King transmitter and is made of 84 beverage cans that have been soldered together, end to end. Its height is 27 feet, 10 inches, about a quarter wave length of the 40-meter band.
-
Color Converter for Black-and-White TV
Black-and-white TV sets are converted to full color by an adapter that costs about $150 plus installation. The adapter includes an electronic circuit to reduce the
black-and-white picture to 12-inch size. A rotating filter, electronically synchronized, stands in front of the set to add full color to the picture.
- Read the rest of this entry »
It looks like the market was already crying out for YouTube back in 1950. I’m not sure how fans actually “collected” these slips, wardrobe malfunctions and “boners” since there was no good way to record, let alone distribute them.
TV’s Fabulous Fluffs
By West Peterson
TO see or not to see—that was the question. It was one of television’s most embarrassing moments.
Engineers of CBS-TV were on hand with their equipment at the monster reunion show of the Air Force Association in Madison Square Garden, New York City, in October, 1948.
For an hour everything went smoothly. There was a succession of screen stars on the stage. The camera took them in closeup for the TV fans. Then along came Gypsy Rose Lee, the eminent strip teaser.
Would she be a good girl and leave her clothes on? Or would she yield to the clamor of the vets and do something to shock television’s self-appointed censors?
Read the rest of this entry »
Why use those annoying glasses when you could stare through slits cut in a pipe?
THREE-DIMENSIONAL TELEVISION SYSTEM
By Paul A. O’Neal
YOUR FIRST LOOK at 3-D TV will be just as startling and realistic as when you first viewed the new 3-D movies at your local motion-picture theater.
Three-dimensional vision is actually easy to accomplish on television. Whereas in cinematography there are many problems in producing 3-D in large auditoriums, TV can be utilized in a small room and need provide for only a few viewers at any one time. There is no need for using two films and keeping them matched, and no wide-angle screen or throw-away Polaroid glasses are required.
Read the rest of this entry »
In a comment on Flat Screen TV in 1958 MilanMerhar says:
“Sinclair Radionics introduced its “Microvision TV1A pocket TV†in 1977 using the same side-scanning technology as described for the Aiken tube.
The major technical problem such designs have is severe geometric distortion, the compensation for which greatly complicated the analog scanning circuitry of the day. In fact, Sinclair claimed it had taken them over ten years to perfect that aspect of their design. “
I don’t know if this model uses that tube design, but it’s pretty interesting none the less. Sure does look a lot smaller from the front, doesn’t it?
Micro TV Breakthrough
Remember the $400 Sinclair Micro TV? Here’s the story on the greatest TV value ever.
That Sinclair TV shown above is small-the smallest TV in the world.
And when it was first introduced last year, it made history. So did its high price-$395.
Our company never sold the unit for two reasons: 1) It was being promoted as a pocket TV and we felt it would not fit in most pockets and 2) We felt $395 was too high a price for the unit regardless of its quality, size and features.
Read the rest of this entry »
Operating a TV station using electro-mechanical equipment looks really hard. That camera looking thingy at the bottom of the page is not in fact a camera, but an arc lamp. In front of the lamp is a spinning disc with holes punched in it which scans the light across the subject. The “camera” is actually composed of those six light-bulb looking things in front of the subject. They are just ordinary photo-electric cells.
And to view it at home? Here’s what you need:
“you will require a 60-hole scanning disc, revolving at 1200 revolutions a minute, giving 20 frames a second. Further, you will need two short-wave receivers, if you desire to pick up both image and voice frequencies. The images are transmitted on 107 meters, and the sound is sent out from W2XE’s shortwave transmitter on 49 meters.”
Latest Television Broadcast Station
CHICAGO, Toronto, Boston and Washington have recently reported the regular reception of both “sight” and “sound” signals from the new Columbia television station W2XAB, and its accompanying sound transmitter W2XE. The Columbia “telecasting” station was opened on July 21 last, when the Hon. James J. Walker, mayor of New York City, lifted the curtain from the photo-electric cells; which formally marked the opening of the station. The television transmitting apparatus and antenna systems are adjacent to the studio, which is located on the 23rd floor of the Columbia Building at 485 Madison
Read the rest of this entry »