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75th Anniversary of Television
SpiceWare writes "In the summer of '21, Philo T. Farnsworth was struck by an inspiration after plowing a field. He transmitted the first television image six years later on September 7, 1927."
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Despite CRT's downsides, there are significant reasons that an individual might prefer or even be required to use a CRT rather than an LCD display.
1. Accurate Color Matching. Sorry, you just can't do this on an LCD. I understand that Plasma is a little better, but you can't beat CRT for color matching.
2. Multi-resolution Display. LCD's have a 'Native' display resolution for which their displays are best suited. Other display resolutions, if you can get them to work, just don't look right.
3. Brightness. LCD will *never* be as bright, nor have the brightness control of CRT. CRTS are also not prone to angle-washout-syndrome like LCD monitors are. CRTS have the same brightness regardless of which direction you're looking at them from.
In many cases... most probably... an LCD display is preferrable to a CRT. In my line of work, as a graphic artist, I'd sooner lop off a pinky than part with my big, beautiful, heavy, radiation-emitting CRT.
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... at the University of Leeds in the UK demonstrating his video recorder and his stereoscopic television (3D TV to you and me).
Baird's recorder used an alumin(i)um disc rather like an LP running at ~80rpm to record the images. The machine, like his television, was an electro-mechanical affair build from bits including old hat boxes and bicycle parts. His machinery is exhibited at The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television a short way away from Leeds, in Bradford.
Whilst researching the links I found the NMPFT's TV heaven page and top ten list of requested television programs from the archives. The August list is below:
This says something about the visitors although you have to account for it being the school vacation.
In my high school, (don't remember the exact class) the teacher had us read this long long article about how the brilliant David Sarnoff, created from scratch, the first cathode ray tube at the technology wonderland company RCA. I don't remember much detail, but it greatly glorified Sarnoff as "the father of television" and RCA as the company that brought moving pictures to every living room in America.
It sounded fishy to me, but I didn't bother looking further into it. As luck would have it, I ran across an article in an old Scientific American a week later that told the truth: Philo Farnsworth invented the cathode ray tube (as well as the tube that the first cameras used, can't remember the name) and RCA tried to steal the invention and patents from him.
I took a copy of the factual article to the aforementioned teacher who said he'd announce a correction to the class. Funny, though, he never did. I guess teachers don't like to be told they're wrong (even though it wasn't exactly his fault.)
> What kind of inspiration did he get from plowing the field?
Think "scan lines".
The path that a plow follows in a rectangular field resembles the path that is traced out on the face of a video display. In fact if I'm not mistaken the first TV used a back-and-forth scan pattern instead of the current method.
It seems to me the actual invention ot television, the idea of translating an image into a sequential electrical signal by scanning and converting it back at the receiver, dates back to Nipkow in the 19th century. Baird, Farnsworth, and Zworykin's are elaborations on this basic idea, using early 20th century technology.