Television

In London last week British Broadcasting Corp. and Baird Television Ltd. rushed preparations to open an experimental television station this month in Alexandra Palace atop a hill in North London. About July 1, when manufacturers have had a chance to test their sets, the station is expected to start three-hour daily programs. British enthusiasts, who call themselves "televiewers," have been promised sets at $85 to $350.

In the U. S. last week no one announced wide-scale television for next week, next month or next year. In Manhattan, however, lean young Philo Taylor Farnsworth, one of the two top U. S. televisors, announced to the Institute of Radio Engineers a new cold-cathode amplifier which he believed would be immensely useful to radio in general, to television in particular. Mr. Farnsworth, who despite his flair for electronics has learned to talk like a tycoon, calls his new tube the multipactor. Ordinary thermionic tubes generate electrons by boiling them from a hot filament. The multipactor takes advantage of the fact that certain metals hold electrons in suspension on their surfaces in such a way that impacts from outside electrons release them. When the current in the multipactor is turned on, random electrons are driven against the cold sides of the tube, loosing more electrons which bounce back & forth between the walls setting free still other electrons. All this happens so quickly that the current is amplified a million times in less than one-millionth of a second.

Problems. Millions of U. S. citizens who would like to enjoy television have grown weary of hearing that it is an accomplished fact in the laboratory, of wondering when, if ever, it will emerge. Six years ago television seemed just around the corner. Jenkins Television Co. was actually selling receiving sets for $119. Now Dr. C. Francis Jenkins is dead, and his company is defunct. The Jenkins sets were made for programs televised by mechanical scanners -- rapidly revolving disks with holes or mirrors to juggle the scanning beam. The Farnsworth and RCA-Victor electronic scanners made junk of disk sets. Now, before jumping into television, the radio industry would like to be sure that another technical advance would not similarly scuttle the public's investment and its own.

There are other reasons for commercial hesitation. Where would full-time programs come from, after Hollywood's cinemas and Broadway's plays were exhausted? Would the public pay $200,000,000 for sets? Would advertisers, chary of a limited audience, underwrite programs?

One vexatious problem, which last week showed promise of being solved, is that of distance. Good television requires ultrashort wave lengths, one to nine metres, which have a range of only 25 to 50 miles. Thus restricted, a network of stations blanketing the country would cost $80,000,000 to $150,000,000.

Pipe. Promise of solving the distance problem lies in the "coaxial cable" developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Consisting essentially of a pair of copper tubes with a bare wire running through the centre of each, this cable can transmit 240 telephone messages or 20 to 40 telegrams simultaneously and was primarily designed for such purposes. But it can also handle a radio frequency band 1,000,000 cycles wide--enough to carry the fluctuating light & shadow of television. The possibility therefore arose of "piping" television from city to city underground. A. T. & T. applied to the Federal Communications Commission for permission to install an experimental coaxial pipe between Manhattan and Philadelphia. Western Union, Postal Telegraph and certain cinemagnates objected, raised a monopoly scare. The Commission ruled that A. T. & T. might install the cable only under heavy restrictions. At these the company balked (TIME, Oct. 14).

A. T. & T. spokesmen made it clear that the company was not going into the entertainment business or even into television per se. They wanted the line simply as a transmitting agency which they would lease to responsible televisors with no more attempt to discriminate or dictate than if it were a telephone service. They were willing to file complete reports of costs and work done but not of unprotected technical secrets. Heeding these representations, the Commission last fortnight issued a new and milder ruling which the company was happy to accept. Last week it was announced that production would be started on the cable at once, that installation would be completed in six months.

Apparatus. The two rival electronic scanners which have left other rivals behind are the Farnsworth dissector tube and the iconoscope developed by RCA-Victor's famed Vladimir Kosma Zworykin. Both are good enough to transmit 6-by-8- in. images with the clarity of oldtime cinemas. The pictures are, in effect, divided into hundreds of horizontal lines and scanned line by line; 24 to 30 complete pictures are transmitted in a second.

In the Zworykin sender the image to be televised falls on a small sheet of mica covered with millions of microscopic dots of photosensitive cesium. Each tiny dot receives an electric charge according to the amount of light that falls on it. A beam of electrons shot from a cathode tube and controlled by rapidly oscillating magnetic fields weaves back & forth across the sheet of mica 6,000 times per second. The beam discharges the electropositive tension in the dots, and the changing pattern of this discharge modulates a current passing through the sheet. The modulated current, fed into a radio transmitter, furnishes the control in the receiving set for another electron beam which recreates the image on a fluorescent screen.

In the Farnsworth sender the image falls on a photosensitive cathode surface without dots. Electrons knocked out of the cathode by the light image in random directions are brought to a focus by a stationary magnetic field. This "electronic image" corresponds to the light image. By means of oscillating magnetic fields, the entire electronic image is moved back & forth 7,200 times a second in front of an aperture. The number of electrons escaping through the aperture constitutes a varying electric current, which, amplified and transmitted, controls the "oscillight" in the receiving set where the images are conversely reproduced.

Farnsworth Abroad. Year and a half ago Britain's Parliament, deigning to give ear to the television buzz, appointed a committee to find out what Baird Tele vision Ltd. had to offer. Baird was still puttering with mechanical scanners. Fearing the snorts of the committee, Baird sent a frantic SOS to Philo Farnsworth. That tireless young man sped to England and signed a patent lease agreement, with the result that spectators in London's lofty Crystal Palace viewed a fashion show, a horse show, a boxing match, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, all televised from ten miles away. Television passed a gruesome mile stone in Crystal Palace when a technician made some adjustments, fumbled, was electrocuted -- television's first victim.

Then Germany, which was sending blobby pictures with the mechanical scan ner, heard of Farnsworth. To his Philadelphia laboratories went suave, crisp Dr. Paul Goerz, head of Fernseh Radioaktien-gesellschaft of Berlin, and a tall, super cilious radio engineer named Rudolph Moeller. After secret conferences and demonstrations, the Germans leased the Farnsworth system for Fernseh, backed by the Nazi Government. The price was not revealed, but as part payment Farnsworth got U. S. rights to Bosch and Zeiss patents controlled by Fernseh. These include a yellow receiving screen which is supposed to be superior to RCA-Victor's green screen. Fernseh got exclusive Farnsworth rights in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Switzerland, where it has subsidiaries.

Philo Taylor Farnsworth, 30, failed ten years ago as a radio repairman. To George Everson, well-to-do San Francisco bachelor, he submitted his scheme for electronic television, no blueprints. When radio engineers assured Mr. Everson that the Farnsworth idea seemed feasible, he put up money for experiments, got addi tional backing from officials of San Fran cisco's Crocker First National Bank. Hard-working young Farnsworth twice threw equipment worth $25,000 out the window, started over again. Finally successful demonstrations were made at Phila delphia's Franklin Institute. Philco Radio &; Television Corp. bought U. S. rights (not exclusive) to manufacture Farns worth equipment, has lately started an experimental laboratory of its own.

1937? Few months ago gloomy talk was heard that U. S. television was five years away. Now the picture seems not quite so remote. Most televisors admit that 1936 will be another experimental year but be lieve it will also be a year of crystallization. It remains for Farnsworth and RCA-Victor to agree on certain specifications, so that a program broadcast by either method will be received by any set, and to obtain FCC's approval of these agree ments. Both companies have taken out dozens of patents, about which they must reach another agreement unless they care to iron out infringement difficulties in the courts. At present their relations are friendly. Dr. Zworykin keeps on working, says little. Mr. Farnsworth believes that early in 1937 U. S. television will definitely emerge as a commercial proposition.

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