Iconoscope

The nearest-yet imitation of human vision appeared at Chicago last week when Dr. Vladimir Kosma Zworykin of RCA Victor Co., one of the nation's foremost practical physicists, presented his iconoscope to the Institute of Radio Engineers. The iconoscope or "image observer" is for television use when John Citizen can afford that diversion.

Externally Dr. Zworykin's iconoscope resembles a big electric light bulb with a long neck. The bulb part is 8 in. in diameter, the whole 16 in. long. Inside are, in order from bulb to butt, 1) an ordinary motion picture camera lens which focuses on 2) a 5x4 in. sheet of thin mica. The mica is coated with microscopic particles of a secret light-sensitive material (3,000,000 particles. Dr. Zworykin computes). In the bulb's neck is 3) a small, efficient, oscillating cathode tube which sends a slim beam of electrons weaving over the light-sensitive particles on the mica.

The mosaic on the mica is in effect a photo-electric cell flattened out and each particle is a tiny photocell in itself. When lights and shadows of any scene fall upon those particles, the light waves set up a positive electro-magnetic tension in the particles. The oscillating cathode beam of electrons discharge that positive tension. Thus each particle is alternately charged by light waves and discharged by the electron beam 24 times a second, which is a comfortable frequency of illumination for the human eye.

This process in the particles on the mica screen in turn modulates a high frequency current which passes over the mica mosaic. That current can be connected to a radio system.

The receiver of this radio system Dr. Zworykin calls a kinescope. It looks like the iconoscope. In the tube's neck is an oscillating cathode tube which weaves a pulsating beam of electrons over a fluorescent screen. Under the electron impacts the screen glows and thus shows the original iconoscoped scene.

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