June-July 1933

The death of mechanical television, where a spinning wheel with holes transmitted a signal to a set at home that had the same spinning wheel with holes, was hastened a bit in the summer of 1933. That’s when R.C.A. announced Vladimir Zworykin had come up with the iconoscope.

We’ll skip the long debate over Zworykin’s role in this, enhanced over the years by R.C.A’s publicity machine. You can read a story about it below as we bounce through television developments in June and July of 1933.

Stories were published which give us some insight into when broadcasts were made from W6XAO Los Angeles, W6XAH Bakersfield and W9XK in Iowa City. In fact, another newspaper feature article was written about the University of Iowa station which sums up the difficulties of mechanical television. As for the Don Lee station, an explanation is given about why we can’t tell you what it broadcast. It didn’t want to clue-in DXers.

News over the two months included word that the station that became W9XAT in Minneapolis was finally licensed, U.A. Sanabria continued with closed-circuit demonstrations in different parts of the U.S., and amateur radio station W91QG had moved to Cincinnati and hoped to resume test telecasts.

The Jenkins and DeForest television operations, which had been pretty promising not many years earlier, were sold. Jenkins Television still had licenses for W2XCR and W2XAP in New York, DeForest held one for W2XCD, with both companies able to broadcast portably in the higher frequencies. They were not on the air and never returned. R.C.A. picked up the assets and didn’t need any old-fashioned mechanical stations. (Jenkins Laboratories, a separate firm, was still licensed to air programmes from W3XK and portable W3XC, based in Wheaton, Maryland. They vanished as well).

John Hogan of Radio Pictures, Inc. was elected to a position with a television owners group, but he was pretty much out of the TV game. His W2XR on the lower and higher frequencies would soon be experimenting with F.M. radio.

Friday, June 2, 1933
New Schedule For Television
So popular were the Don Lee television broadcasts during the recent radio show in Los Angeles that both transmitters of system have been placed on a new and augmented schedule, at insistent request of experimenters. Both W6XS (1000 watts, 2150 kilocycles or 140 meters), and W6XAO (150 watts, 44,500 kilocycles or 6 3-4 meters) are now operated from 7 to 8 p. m., nightly; and on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 9 to 11, transmitting images of 80 lines at 15 frames a second.
W6XAO occupies all of its three licensed bands on the morning schedules, using, in addition to its 44,500 kilocycle frequency on Mondays, 66,750 kilocycles or 4 1-2 meters and 49,400 kilocycles or 6 meters on Wednesday and Fridays, respectively.
Lookers from as far away as Santa Paula, 55 miles air-line, have properly identified scenes as broadcast through the Don Lee television stations by means of motion picture film. In order to make such identification absolute, Don Lee enginers [sic] do not make identity of the films public, except through actual transmission over W6XS and W6XAO, thus making "proof of recption" [sic] only possible through actual scanning of the images. (Vallejo Evening News)

Thursday, June 8, 1933
Keith Collins will sing over the K. C. P. L. television program over KMBC [W9XAL] June 19 at 1:15 p. m. (Higginsville Jeffersonian)

Monday, June 12, 1933
SYNCHRONIZED TELEVISION PROGRAM ON AIR TONIGHT
FEATURING a new synchronized television program over the Pioneer Mercantile Company's big broadcasting station here, the "Hullabaloo Hour" will go on the air tonight between 8 and 9 o'clock, featuring both home and professional talent, according to announcement by Jack Allyn, program director of the hour.
Voice and television are synchronized by the station, the pictures coming in at 2050 kilocycles over Station W6XAH and the sound coming in at 1550 kilocycles over Station W6XE.
Frank Schamblin, president of the Pioneer company, is in active management of the station, with Ralph Lemon, eminent radio engineer, as his staff chief.
On the "Hullabaloo Hour," in addition to Mr. Allyn, will appear Jack Rees and his Hullabalooers; Harry Dillon, Chet Phillips, Edna Overton, Dick Lowe, Ralph Neate, Max Bayless, Dorothy Harpeter and Minerva Tracy, all well-known Bakersfield entertainers, and Harry and Trixie Masters, who are appearing in the revue at the Fox theater. (Bakersfield Californian))

Thursday, June 15, 1933
Keith Collins will sing over KMBC television program next Monday [19] at 1:15 p. m. on the First Timers program. Dorothy Clauder will accompany him. (Higginsville Jeffersonian)

Monday, June 19, 1933
STUART ROSS TO PLAY ON PROGRAM
Television Station Is Being “Seen and Heard” Over Entire Continent
Continuing the series of television programs which have attracted attention as far east as New York and New Jersey, and west to the Hawaiian islands, the Pioneer Mercantile Company will feature Hullabaloo hour in its broadcast between 8 and 9 o'clock tomorrow evening [21]. Stuart Ross, internationally noted pianist, who has played in Vienna, Berlin, Paris and before the king and queen of England, will be one of the featured artists.
Fan mall received by the Bakersfield television company indicates that people are "looking in" on the local programs from within a radius of 3000 miles, while a particularly large following has been built up locally.
Three Programs
The Station is on the air three nights weekly, Monday with its dance hour, when Jack Bees and his Hullabalooers will comply with all requests; Wednesday with the regular Hullabaloo hour, and Friday, with "Varieties." Auditions for the purpose of discovering local talent are held every Thursday afternoon at 3 o'clock at the broadcasting studios, Twenty-first and Sonora streets.
Through the courtesy of Bob Frenzel, manager of the Fox theater, the famed "Fire Eaters" of Ted Fio-Rito’s orchestra assisted in the program last night [19].
Two Wave Lengths
Voice and television are synchronized by the station, the pictures coming in at 2050 kilocycles over station W6XAH, and the sound coming in at 1550 kilocycles over station W6XE. Frank Schamblin, president of the Pioneer company, and Ralph Lemert, radio technician, are in charge of the broadcasting.
Programs are arranged by Jack Allyn, with the assistance of Harry Dillon. (Bakersfield Californian, June 20))

PLAYS OVER TELEVISION
Having the distinction of being the first bag-piper to play over television, Ian McEwing, chief piper to Clan McInness, Los Angeles, presented a group of Scottish airs last evening [22] at the local station. With Duncan McLeod of the McLeod Construction Company who is in the city on business, Mr. McEwing has been registered at Hotel El Tejon. He is much in demand as a piper for highland events, and has been hugely enjoyed in informal concerts at the hotel and in the homes of local friends.
Stuart Ross, modified jazz soloist, recently returned from Europe, also appeared on the program. (Bakersfield Californian, June 23)

Expect 25,000 at Benefit Picnic of Highway Patrol
Television Station Will Send Hullabaloo Hour Entertainers to Help Make Event Success
WITH the fires in the great 40-foot barbecue pits ready to be lighted, concession stands erected, wooden horses on the merry-go-round all ready to be harnessed and Paradise Grove a scene of cool cleanliness, Kern county officers of the California Highway Patrol announced today all in readiness for their annual jamboree Sunday.
Twenty-five thousand central and southern California residents are expected to attend the big old-fashioned picnic, given to raise funds for the families of officers killed in action.
Outstanding among developments today was the announcement that Jack Allyn and his Hullabaloo hour “gang” from the Pioneer Mercantile Company’s big television station, W6XAH, will join the all-day program on which are featured screen, stage and radio stars of national prominence.
Full Hour on Program
Allyn, pianist, director and announcer on the Hullabaloo hour, which each Wednesday evening is seen and heard over the entire continent, and his entertaining companions will have at least an hour on the program, Captain Roy Galyen of the Highway Patrol announced.
Harry Dillon, Allyn’s assistant and gag-man; Jack Rees and his Hullabaloo orchestra, acclaimed the finest in southern San Joaquin valley; Minerva Tracy, Chester Phillips and Florence Bayless and many others of the Hullabalooers will participate. (Bakersfield Californian, June 23)

Friday, June 23, 1933
Local Girls Appear on Television Broadcast—
A trio of local singers, known as the Melody Girls, including Anita Vossler, Billy Sandidge and Hannah Gerdes, with Marie Gerdes as pianist, and Frances Louise Sandidge, well known here as a talented dancer, appeared on a program at the new television station, W-6 XAH, in the Pioneer Mercantile Building, Bakersfield, last Friday evening [23]. The television program was broadcast direct to New York City and was one of a series of try-out which is being held there. They will again appear on a program at the same station next Saturday night and are working on a program of songs and dances preparatory to the broadcast. (Bakersfield Californian, June 26)

Monday, June 26, 1933
ELECTRIC CAMERA WILL PROVE AID TO TELEVISION
CHICAGO, June 26.—(AP)—An electric camera, believed by its inventor to solve one of the major problems of television, was announced today after ten years of research work, before the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
It is believed to place the televising of outdoor scenes in the realm of practicability.
The new device, called an "icnoscope" by its designer. Dr. Vladimar Zworykin [sic] of the R. C. A. laboratories at Camden, N. J., was described in a paper he delivered before the annual convention of the Institute of Radio Engineers as having it "sensitiveness approximately equal to that of a photographic film operating at the speed of a motion picture camera with the same optical or lens system."
Dr. Zworykin declared it opens new prospects for high grade television transmission and at the same time "offers wide possibilities in its application in many fields as a substitute for the human eye, or far the observation of phenomena at present completely hidden from the eye, as in the case of the ultra-violet microscope.”
Dr. Zworykin has been active in developing the use of the cathode ray tube or "kinescope" for television reception, and now has applied the same principles to the transmitting end. Placing a cathode ray tube at the transmitter as well as the receiver makes the entire process electrical and obviates the necessity of scanning discs, motors or other mechanical devices. Research along similar lines has been conducted in Philadelphia by Philo T. Farnsworth.
In outlining results obtained with the "iconoscope," Dr. Zworykin said that "some of the actually constructed tubes are good up to 500 lines with a good margin for future improvement." Detail in a television picture is governed by the number of lines in the complete picture, some of the earlier experiments containing only twenty-four lines.
The tube, he said, could be used "not only for transmission of pictures in visual light but also for pictures invisible to the eye in which the illumination is either by ultra-violet or infra-red light."
Declaring that "the real goal of television" lies in the transmission of outdoor pictures, heretofore handicapped by the need for more light than was obtainable with mechanical systems and by failure to get a sufficient number of the picture elements which give details, Dr. Zworykin said that "the inherent resolution of the device is higher than required for 70,000 picture-element transmission."
The tube, which has an over-all length of eighteen inches and a bulb eight inches in diameter, looks somewhat like an overgrown electric light with an exceptionally long neck. In this neck is an electron "gun" that fires a beam of electrons against a mosaic plate four inches square in a scanning motion at high speed. The mosaic plate is photo-sensitive and really consists of many tiny photo-electric cells.
The picture is focused on the plate by a lens system and then transformed into electrical energy by the sweeping motion of the electron gun. The tube can be mounted in a comparatively small box and set upon a tripod for picture taking, thus giving easy portability.

TELEVISION PERMIT IS GRANTED HERE
The first television broadcasting license in the northwest today was issued to Dr. George Young, owner of radio station WDGY, by the federal radio commission, authorizing him to broadcast television on a 500-watt station for an unlimited period of time. This is not a commercial license and it will be separate from WDGY, but it will be possible to operate the two stations together so that a listener will be able to receive sound on his radio set through WDGY which will synchronize with pictures being received on a separate television receiver. (Minneapolis Star)

Thursday, June 29, 1933
Pictures Materialized Out of Thin Air; Television Receiver Built by Local Man Successful
By JAMES K. PEIRSOL
Television—now there's a word to conjure with; that is, it sounds like conjuring to the average citizen. But for Virgil Neher, proprietor of the La Verne Radio shop, the word has been stripped of all its mystery.
"Television, so far as the actual principles involved are concerned, is really very simple," he will tell you. "Of course one has to know a bit of trigonometry, and calculus, and the basic factors involved in electrical engineering; but come, see for yourself how simple a television receiving set really is."
And he leads you into a darkened little room where you see a lot of tubes, and wires, and a flickering light, and a huge revolving metal disc, and he points to a little square of light near the top of the disc and says, "Look," and there before your startled gaze television has become a reality.
Pictures Out of the Air
In the first throes of your astonishment at seeing moving figures actually picked up out of thin air, you'll not hear a word Virgil Neher is saying, but later . . . oh a long time later . . . it dawns on you that he's trying to tell you how, and why, and what it's all about.
"That disc you see," says Virgil, "has 80 holes 15 one-thousandths of an inch in diameter set in a spiral at one inch intervals around its outer edge. Here, at the top behind the disc, is a little square of light which is turning on and off at the rate of from 25,000 to 70,000 cycles a second. The light shines thru the little holes in the disc, and as each hole passes across your field of vision it leaves a thin streak of light. Being set in a spiral, the streaks come so fast that they leave the impression of a solid background of light. Of course that's just an optical illusion, but television depends upon optical illusions.
"Then the lights and shadows caused by the flickering light behind the disc form the picture. That's all there is to television receiving. Simple, isn't It?"
See Her Eyebrows Move!
All of which will mean little or nothing at all so far as you're concerned; but in order to appear to have at least average intelligence, you'll agree, and move up closer in order to see the lady, whose features are being broadcast, move her eyebrows. And after a while it will dawn on you that Mr. Neher is going further into the intricacies of television and is telling you how the broadcasting is accomplished.
"It's just the reverse of receiving," he informs you. "There's a light and a revolving disc with spiral holes in it just as you see here, and the light shines thru the holes onto the object being broadcast. Then the reflected light from this object is picked up by means of photo electric cells which turn light into energy. This energy, or perhaps I should say, series of pulsating energy waves, is broadcast in the usual way, is picked up here in the receiver, turned back into pulsating light waves in this tube I showed you behind the disc, and that makes the picture."
Few Sets in Southland
Well, that will probably be just so much Greek to you, but when you learn that at the present time there are only about 15 receiving sets in all of Southern California, you'll not worry so much about your ignorance. At present, Mr. Neher states, radio station KHJ has four men devoting their entire time to television research. Programs are broadcast over their experimental station [W6XAO] every evening except Sunday from 7 to 9, and from 9 to 11 Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. This station is now centering its activities on the broadcasting of moving picture film, but it is much easier, Mr. Neher will tell you, to broadcast living subjects.
Mr. Neher built his own television set, and has had it in operation for about three months. In the building of this set, it is interesting to learn that he has developed what he calls a "phonic wheel," a device which holds the speed of the receiving disc in exact syncronization [sic] with the disc on the broadcasting end even tho the two may not be tied in on the same power system; and that is one of the big problems in connection with television.
Still Several Years Away
"So far as the syncronization of sound with pictures is concerned, that has already been accomplished," Neher states. "The thing we are most interested in now is to develop a light of sufficient intensity to make it possible to increase the size and clearness of the pictures."
Like everyone else, you will undoubtedly ask the question, "How long will it be before television sets are manufactured for general public use, and how much will they cost?"
And Virgil Neher will smile and answer, "Two, three, maybe five years. They're making a few in the East now. The cost of such a set will probably be around $200. That's about all the general public will pay."
But if you are interested in television, it will not be necessary for you to wait five years, or until you get $200, before you can watch a television broadcast, for Virgil Neher is really quite a pleasant chap, and can be prevailed upon to operate his set most any time. (Pomona Progress-Bulletin)

Friday, June 30, 1933
VISITORS TO FAIR SEE TELEVISION OUTFIT IN COMPLETE OPERATION
CHICAGO, June 30.—(UP)—Television has made its advent to A Century of Progress—the Chicago 1933 World's Fair—with the opening of the Hudson-Essex Television theater in the Electric building.
A complete transmitting outfit has been installed along with a receiving apparatus and screen, permitting a complete demonstration, which is open to the public. Shows are given every half hour starting at 10:00 o'clock in the morning. Admission is free.
Billy Repaid, known to radio fans as the Terraplane Reporter, is master of ceremonies and is in personal attendance at the show, which opens with a sound picture illustrating the progress in various industries during the past quarter century.

Monday, July 10, 1933
Another attempt to bring television to the fore will be held tonight [10] when at 9:30 U. A. Sanabria, the Chicago lad who makes the picture transmissions, will give a talk explaining his work to WOR listeners. Then, at the same time, radio editors, engineers and others will view Mr. Sanabria's reproductions in one of the department store little theatres.
It is interesting to note that CBS gave up television because of the lack of proper development thus far in transmission. NBC has kept very quiet as to its activities in this line. WMCA, which made quite a splurge a year or so ago with the Baird apparatus, has likewise dropped out of the television picture.
Set manufacturers have quieted down as far as television reception sets go and Mr. Sanabria is the only one in the limelight at the moment. It will be interesting to see just how much progress he has made with transmission of pictures. (David Bratton, Jr., Brooklyn Times-Union)

Thursday, July 14, 1933
BUYS TELEVISION CO. FOR $200,000
Aaron Finger representing the receivers of the DeForest Radio Corporation did not have much competition this morning when he purchased the assets of the Jenkins Television Corporation at the "upset" price of $200,000 set by the court.
The sale of the Jenkins Corporation assets was held under the direction of John Biggs, Jr., receiver for the Jenkins concern, on the steps of the Federal building, Ninth and Shipley streets, by order of Judge Nieids of the U. S. District Court.
Mr. Finger represented Leslie S. Gordon, of Passaic. N. J., and Ralph E. Lum, of Newark, N. J., receivers of the DeForest radio concern. Joseph W. Hamilton was auctioneer, and although he urged several bystanders to bid the upset price of $200,000 rather discouraged promiscous [sic] bidding.
The bid will be reported to Judge Nields in the District Court here on next Tuesday at 10 o'clock, advanced time, at which time any objections to the acceptance of the bid will be considered.
Judge Nields ordered the sale on June 16, last. The assets sold consist of all property of the Jenkins Television concern, including rights in several important patents, property machinery and equipment for radio stations, shares of capital stock in Jenkins Television and Jenkins Laboratories corporations, shares of stock in the Canadian Television Corporation, Ltd., patents and interest in patents. The property was sold in one lot.
It is said that R. C. A. or one of the big radio concerns may take over the DeForest assets later. (Wilmingdon News-Journal)

Mrs. Naomi Hamilton, Soprano, Sings Over KMBC, WLBF and KWKC
Mrs Naomi J. Hamilton, 1316 East Sixteenth street, soprano soloist, has broadcast programs during the past several weeks over radio stations KMBC, Midland Broadcast central station, WLBF of the Kansas side, and KWKC. While singing over KMBC, her program was presented via television [W9XAL]. Mrs Hamilton has been invited to sing over station WOQ and over WDAF on the Nighthawk Frolic hour. Her accompanist is Mrs. Carrie Powell, 2205 Forest avenue.
Both Mrs. Hamilton, a native of Marshall, Mo., and Mrs. Powell of Wichita, are talented musicians and are fast becoming favorites of radio fans. (Kansas City Call)

Friday, July 15, 1933
Odgen Girl Appears in Television Events
Miss Joye Torgeson, 765 Twenty-eighth street, is appearing in television on the Pacific coast as “The Girl From Utah,” being assigned at present to stations W6XE and W6XAH, 1500 kilocycles.
Miss Torgeson is accompanied in her readings and musical selections by LeRoy Foster, who has had wide musical experience in California. Her next appearance will be over station W6XE Friday night [15] at nine-fifteen p. m. mountain standard time. (Odgen Standard-Examiner, July 11)

Thursday, July 20, 1933
By means of a double scanner, the new television equipment of W9XAP-WMAQ, Chicago, is able to switch from a group scene to closeups of several actors in a split second. (Monmouth Democrat

Monday, July 24, 1933
FORM GROUP TO FIGHT BATTLES OF TELEVISION
National Association Organised by Experimenters and Engineers of Industry.
BY ROBERT MACK
Washington, D. C., July 24.—Envisioning the day when television achieves its goal as an entertainment medium, a group of television experimenters and engineers have formed the National Television association to fight the battles of that infant industry.
With no advance notice, the association was created in Chicago by 60 representatives of equipment manufacturers and engineers during the annual meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers. The first effort doubtless will be to have the experimental ban on television lifted and thus permit the commercial development of visual radio as an industry.
Ever since television made its first feeble stride a half dozen years ago, the federal radio commission has maintained a rigid ban on its commercial exploitation. The some 30 companies authorized to carry on experimentation in the high and ultra-high frequency hands do so under the strict injunction that they cannot broadcast commercial programs such as are maintained in the regular broadcasting bands.
Several times in the last three years efforts have been made to have the experimental ban lifted. Each time the commission has held that television is still in its swaddling clothes, although notable progress is being made, and that it is not yet ready to venture before the public as a medium of practical entertainment.
The new television association is headed by Martin J. Wade, Jr. of Chicago, an official of the Western Television company, one of the visual pioneers. John V. L. Hogan, prominent radio engineer of New York, and head of Radio Pictures. Inc., is vice president, and Arthur Stringer of Chicago, secretary and treasurer. (Rock Island Argus

Tuesday, July 25, 1933
New Station to Broadcast Television Pictures Here
A commercial television broadcasting station for Greater Cincinnati that will make visible the radio performers along with their programs, was projected Tuesday.
Broadcasting of the television pictures will be started within a few weeks from an amateur station in Newport in conjunction with station WFBE, pending completion of the larger station.
Edward H. Reed is owner of the amateur license on which the temporary broadcasting will be done and also is president of the Central Radio and Television co., Newport. The company was organized recently to build the station and distribute a commercial television receiving set.
Cost of Set Moderate
The television set, said to be of moderate cost, can be placed on top of or near the ordinary set so that listeners can see on a four-inch screen the performer they are hearing, according to Mr. Reed.
William Clark, manager of WFBE, said a public demonstration of the newest feature of radio would be held soon in the lobby of the Sinton-St. Nicholas.
The radio artists who will appear on television programs will broadcast from the television station so that their pictures can be sent out on the television wavelength in addition to the usual broadcast wave. Both signals can be picked up with perfect synchronization in the home, Mr. Reed said.
Television for Year
Altho Mr. Reed has been transmitting pictures by television on his amateur station, W9IQG, for about a year, only a few persons have been able to take advantage of the service, he said. He has received reports of reception as far as Dayton, Ohio.
The new transmitter will have a radius of about 500 miles. Application is to be made soon for the experimental license for the new station.
Location of the television station is to be decided soon after field strength tests have been made in the Cincinnati area. Other officers of the company in addition to Mr. Reed are George N. Stewart, Newport, vice president; William E. Kreutzer, Newport, secretary-treasurer, and Thomas M. Logan, Park Hills attorney, and Alton E. Purcell, Cincinnati attorney, directors. (Cincinnati Post)

Wednesday, July 26, 1933
Radio station W6XE, Bakersfield, has been featuring Allyn’s Hullabalo [sic] Night on Wednesday [26]. Genevieve Dockery, granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. S. P. Dockery, is one of the players, taking the part of a six year old girl in a skit, “A Midsummer Nut’s Dream.” (Sanger Herald, July 28)

Friday, July 28, 1933
TELEVISION SHOWN
A demonstration of television was made yesterday [28] in the studio on the fourth floor of Lit Brothers Store [in Philadelphia] and will be continued for the benefit of the public all next week.
The exhibition consisted of images of three performers being transmitted from the show window on the Market st. side into the studio as their voices were heard through loud speaker. The device demonstrated is the development of Ulysses Sanabria, president of the Sanabria Television Company of Chicago, W R. Procunier, chief engineer of the company, is in charge of the exhibition. (Philadelphia Inquirer, July 29)

Sunday, July 30, 1933
Teaching By Television at Iowa City
By Virginia Maxson
EDUCATION by television when classes commence next September is the aim of the University of Iowa, at Iowa City.
Experiments are now being conducted by university officiate to determine the college courses that best lend themselves to sight-sound teaching.
The results of the experiments to date foretell a change in education methods and are bringing to light interesting problems confronting television engineers.
The experimental course in television conducted by Prof. E. B. Kurtz of the electrical engineering department, has an enrollment of 17. Such phases of television as reception of colors, manipulation of television machines, and the development a technical improvements are studied by the students.
Television programs are presents each Friday night from 7 to 8 o’clock over station W9XK at Iowa City, the only sight-sound station west of the Mississippi river and the only sight sound-educational station in the Unites States.
Educators throughout the country are awaiting the results of the tests and experiments being made at the university.
According to psychologists, 83 per cent of learning is acquired through the eye; 13 per rent through the ear; and four per cent through the other senses.
On this basis the effectiveness of television will be not only that of sight and sound combined, but an efficiency multiplied many times.
Courses requiring charts and graphs are the prodigies of television. Statistics quoted as often as not are heard and then forgotten. But when these statistics are seen to the form of graph or chart, they are more readily grasped, more properly related, and are understood and remembered longer, educators agree.
The teaching of shorthand promises to be readily adapted to television. In such a course, the instructor would stand before a drawing sheet, write the symbols that stand for "very truly yours” or "in replying to your letter," and speak the words as he writes.
House planning, landscaping, commercial art, sewing, basket-wearing and architecture seem to lend themselves well to sight-sound instruction.
“For educational purposes television, within limits, is practical at the present time,” says Prof. Kurtz. "It is impossible as yet to send elaborate programs such as stage dramas over the air into people's living rooms but there is no question at all as to the effectiveness of television as a medium of educational instruction."
■ Sketching, the televisors at Iowa City have found, at present seems best adapted to sight-sound instruction.
The instructor stands before a white drawing sheet, and in broad simple strokes outlines the contours of a landscape, the waves of the sea, or the figure of a young woman.
Miles distant, peering into the square fronted glass frame of his receiving set, an observer, or student, watches the artist's deft strokes. Now the picture is hidden behind the sketcher’s broad back as he bends chase to draw a finer detail. Suddenly he steps aside and the completed drawing appears, a study in light and shadow.
All television pictures appear only as darks and lights against a rosy background. Behind the glass frame of the receiving set in which the picture is seen glows neon gas, which gives the scenes a ruddy hue.
Colors worn by the performer make no difference. Television changes them into variations of gray. Yellow, red, orange, tan, and brown appear as black; blue looks white; purple and green, gray.
Face makeup for the television stage is revolutionary, Iowa students find. A light complexion, powdered or unpowdered, looks pasty, dead. To appear real and live, the skin must be soaked with heavy dark brown background cream. Eyebrows require dark pencilling.
Women's chins seem to fade indefinitely into their necks, men's chins have a strong outline, with defined shadows. To build up the feminine chin in a television picture, gray grease paint must be smeared over the lower face; to modify masculine chin lines, a dark powder is used.
■ Lip makeup is causing Iowa televisors some difficulty. Red lip rouge makes the mouth appear ugly and black. Untinted lips look gray and wrinkled. The most satisfactory lip coloring found thus far is dark blue makeup crayon.
Dark complexioned males appear unshaven the closest clipped heard showing up like a week's growth. Powder partially camouflages this if artfully applied.
Body gestures except from the shoulder up are useless. Only the performers head and neck can be televised successfully. Only two person can occupy tie picture at one time, and they must remain close together to say within the prescribed limits. A single performer televises best.
The procedure at a television broadcasting station is something like this:
The performer steps into a darkened room and walks into focus before a white panel. He looks away from it through a shoulder high opening in the wall, about two feet square, into the lens of the television camera. From it are projected on the white background wavery flashes of light that silhouet him against the panel. During his performance he must stay within the light area.
Its size may be varied by adjusting the lens of the camera, a one-foot square area sending only a close-up view of the artist, a slightly larger exposure including shoulders and arms. As the area of light expands details of the picture are dimmed, finally lost.
■ “Two primary difficulties confront television today," says Prod. Kurtz. “First, what is known as “ghosting,” second, lack of synchronization.”
In “ghosting" the same picture appears more than once in the frame at one time. It is caused by two waves carrying the picture arriving at the receiver a fraction of a second apart. The sending station can minimize this difficulty by erecting a quarter wave antenna.
Synchronization means adjusting the sending machine, which tears the television picture into fragments, and the receiver, which builds it up again, to function at the same speed. If both are run by the same electric power plant, this is possible.
Like movies, television depends upon optical illusion. Actually what is viewed in the receiver frame is not a whole picture, but single fragments of it, one after another, and many separate pictures one after another. It all happens so fast that what appears to be seen is a continuous picture of the television program.
Breaking up the picture is done by “scanning" it with dots of light that shine through a perforated disc revolving in the camera-like sender. These dots, racing across the white background panel, are reflected back on a bank of photo-electric cells which change the light waves into electric current that goes out over the ether. Sound waves of the performer's voice are also transformed thus. (Des Moines Register, July 30)