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Show Television Sprouts Commercial Wings, Backed by 10 Years' Experimentation Receivers Placed on Sale As Infant Industry Tests Apparatus By JOSEPH W. LaBINE History will remember April of 1939 as the month America became television-conscious. The research of more than 10 years, the expenditure of more than $10,000,000 will be climaxed when radio manufacturers manu-facturers place commercial television receivers on the market for the first time. At least this announcement was made last October by David Sarnoff of the Radio Corporation of America, speaking for the American Radio Manufacturers' association. associ-ation. Simultaneously, when the New York World's fair opens April 30, commercial telecasting will begin in the Manhattan metropolitan metro-politan area. Before the year is out additional transmitters will be operating commercially com-mercially at Schenectady and (possibly) (pos-sibly) Los Angeles. But this most fascinating of modern mod-ern sciences will still be wearing short trousers, ensnared in more .technical, economic and artistic difficulties dif-ficulties than the complicated motion mo-tion picture industry ever imagined. Strange to say, the least of these problems is that of technique. Ten years ago visionary television engineers en-gineers dreamed of the great fu ture in this business, once equipment equip-ment could be perfected. The weird situation today is that television tele-vision is mechanically quite perfect but programming and financing have been neglected. Horizon is Maximum Distance. The receivers going on sale next month will project an 8 by 10-inch image into your living room, provided pro-vided you live within horizon-range of the Empire State building or a 1,500 foot mountain near Schenectady. Schenec-tady. Also provided you can pay from $100 to $1,000 for a receiver. The former has sight only, the latter lat-ter both sound and sight. Behind that image in your living room is a devastating complexity of electrons, light beams, photography photogra-phy and ultra-short waves. Standing Stand-ing before a camera in the Empire State building, your favorite politician politi-cian will harangue his no-longer-unseen audience with gestures as well as vocal inflections, all of which are picked up by a camera-sound combination. Whereas a regularly photographed image is transferred to the plate chemically, television does it electrically on a plate made up- of several thousand tiny silver dots which react electricaUy to light. The trick is that these silver dots are arranged regularly in lines i ria iiMHiinniiiii tit f "1 The National Broadcasting company's television announce er, ' Betty Goodwin, steps be-fore be-fore a television camera in the Radio City studios, New York, j I Betty Goodwin's image is j televised, shot through the air by electric impulses, and comes out this way. so ultra-short waves. Highly independent, inde-pendent, they proceed in a straight line out over the horizon and zip off into space, never returning. Consequently Con-sequently all television audiences are confined to eye-shot of the transmitting trans-mitting station. The one exception is that broadcasts broad-casts may be "piped" from one city to another with coaxial cable, but a mile of this wire costs a small fortune and it is therefore impractical. imprac-tical. 'Ghosts' Cause Interference. Even on ultra-short wave and within the horizon radius, television does not always have clear sailing. "Ghosts" pop up occasionally in the form of reflecting surfaces which send an extra delayed image into the receiver. Empire State building broadcasts often encounter a ghost in the Palisades, a vertical wall of rock on the Jersey side of the Hudson Hud-son river. Large surfaces like gas tanks also provide ghosts. Sometimes freak waves may be reflected from the ionosphere, producing pro-ducing ghosts of broadcasts being made miles away on the same wavelength. During the past winter win-ter Dr. DeWitt R. Goddard, working on television at Riverhead, L. I., 1 M 'if Hwf.f- iMbMJ ! I cr 1 r Atop the peak of the world's tallest building, New York's Empire State building, can be seen the new apparatus erected for television broadcasts. Since television waves are not reflected re-flected back to earth, they are effective only to the horizon visible from the top of the broadcasting apparatus. across the plate. There are 441 lines onthe full plate and by the time each is filled with its light and dark dots you have a finished picture not entirely different from the halftone pictures used to illustrate illus-trate this story. Examine the pictures pic-tures closely and you'll see the dots. From Dots to Impulses. Somehow, these television dots are transferred to electric impulses, amplified and shot through the air to receivers, whence the picture is recreated bit by bit All this takes place in about one-thirtieth of a second. Since each complete image im-age contains 200,000 dots, you get 6,000,000 a second,, which is a lot of dots. There's good reason for television's televi-sion's narrow broadcasting range. To transmit both pictures and sound requires a "channel" six times the distance from top to bottom of your radio dial, which means that television tele-vision must turn to the unexplored field of ultra-short waves. Here is encounered still another problem. Regular "long" radio waves shoot into the air, bounce off the ionosphere iono-sphere and come back to earth. Not received fairly clear images televised tele-vised from London and bounced off the ionosphere. Artistically television compares with motion pictures. Only it has more ramifications. The first performance per-formance must be letter-perfect because be-cause it is the last performance. There are no retakes to correct poorly acted scenes, nor any time to debate the proper instant to "fade-in" "fade-in" a second or third camera. Technicians, Tech-nicians, actors and audience are constantly alert, which indicates the change television may make in your home life. New Field for Programming. Once established, television holds tremendous program possibilities. Writing for the Christian Science Monitor, Volney D. Hurd visualizes evening foreign affairs discussions with the commentator pointing out spots of interest on the map of Europe. A few minutes later news events of the day may be recreated recreat-ed by motion pictures taken at the actual scene a few hours earlier. The next morning a cooking school will show someone actually preparing prepar-ing food. Visual education broad- First Broadcasts Planned This Year From New York City casts will become an important factor fac-tor in training both children and adults. If $10,000,000 has already been spent to bring television into its present infancy, many more millions mil-lions must be spent to give it the polish of our modern radio programs. pro-grams. The distance handicap and the expense of "piping" may be technical problems, but they're business busi-ness problems, too. Add to this the fact that a half-hour television production pro-duction will cost $60,000 (over one station) while a full-hour sound radio ra-dio show costs only $30,000 over the complete national hookup. These- things frighten would-be sponsors. Many firms now using sound radio would gladly invest $60,-000 $60,-000 in a half-hour television show provided they got something In return. re-turn. But in New York, where American television has reached its highest development, the number of receivers by nexf December will be far less than 10,000. It's simply not worthwhile to spend $6 on each of these possible 10,000 prospects! Population Counts. Meanwhile, however, televlsion-ists televlsion-ists realize the New York metropolitan metro-politan area will by virtue of its population be the first site of self-liquidating self-liquidating operations. That's why experimentation and sale of commercial com-mercial receivers is being confined largely to this vicinity. Much can be learned from England's Eng-land's experience. Youthful John L. Baird began experimenting with British television back in 1925 and today there are 10,000 receivers in the 30 to 50-mile radius surrounding Alexandria palace, London. This, incidentally, includes more than 25 per cent of the total population of England and Wales, making British Brit-ish television more feasible commercially. com-mercially. Two systems are used, the Emitron camera which like the American method uses electrical signals, and the Scophony system which uses a mechanical process and "scans" by strips instead of dots. The latter camera permits televised pictures to be reproduced on a large screen, encouraging the development of television theaters. Don't expect television too quickly; quick-ly; in fact, be thankful its pioneers are holding back their achievement until they've something more permanent per-manent to offer, otherwise your investment in-vestment might be a total loss. In the opinion of the federal communication communi-cation commission, television is not ready for standardization or commercial com-mercial use by the general public. But by the time 1939 is out this viewpoint may change. Western Newspaper Union. |
