Evening star., 1952-12-16
Glow on TeIevision's S Face
is Older Than You Think
By Harry Macarthur

with light were known by the time
Guglielmo Marconi invented" ra.
dio in 1895 by devising the frs
practical system.
1t was, in fact, just a century
ago, in 1852. that a Briton named
Sir George Stokes did his bit fol
televiSion, though he may Tot
have known it at the time. Ir
1882, Sir George discovered the
true nature Of fluorescence. This
Ia dictionary will tell you. is "emis-
sion Of radiation absorbed from
some other source" The face o1
the picture tube in your televisior
set is fluorescent. AS it is struck
with varying force by rapidly
moving stream of electrons, il
glows to create the lights and
darks Of the TV picture.
Two more early steps in tele-
Visions development came in 1878
One was the proposal by Maxwell
that light is a form of electro
magnetic wave. The other was a
discovery made in Ireland by
a transatlantic cable operator
named May. He found that the
electrical resistance of selenium
varied with the amount of light
TO which it was exposed.
1t was, in other words, photo
electric. 1t ultimately was found
to be too sluggish for television
and better suited to electric-eye
doors at the Super-market. The
would-be inventors of television
kept trying with it for years
though.
An early one of these, accord
ing to Richard w. Hubbell's a 200
Years Of Television," was a Bos-
tonian named G. r. Carey. He de-
vlsed the first television system
Mr.. Hubbell could discover in his
research. He did it when The Star
was a STRIPPING of %, in 1875.
What Carey tried to do was
make an electric copy of the
human eye. The picture he tried
to send was focused through a
lens on a "retina" made up of
selenium cells. Each of these was
connected to light in a corre-
spending position in a bank of
lights. It was ingenious but much
too cumbersome.
It also was a failure, as Mr..
Hubbell points out. because the
electric currents from the selen-
ium cells were much too weak
Lee de Forest. being only 2 years
old at the time, had not yet in
vented his radio tube to amplify
such things.
1t was Germany's DR.. Paul Nip
kow who saw what was wrong
with Carey's gadget and set televi.
sion on the road it was to follow
until 1888. In 1884 he patented
the metal disc, perforated with a
series of tiny holes, which pro-
duced television's first method OF
scanning, breaking a picture intn
tiny bits.
Before the century turned Karl
Braun invented the cathode tube
and discovered that the path of
electrons could be controlled by
In 1897 the forerunner
Of today's TV picture tube was in
his laboratory.
Progress was slow, but it was
progress. In 1905 Albert Einstein
his theory of photo
electric effect and pointed directly
toward the modern television
camera. In 1906 De Forest finally
his three-element radio
tube. improving Ambrose Fleming S
two-element value" of 1904. In
1907 Boris Rosing. a Russian
patented a television sys-
tenn with a cathode tube receiver
essentially like yours. BLASTED
pictures probably gave him
fits.)
It was a pupil of Rosing's work.
ing in this country's Vladimir
KoSma Zworykin, who finally freed
television from the Nipkow disc
and other mechanical scanning
methods. In 1888 RCA brought out
the first electronic television
camera. the ''iconoscope" to which
zworykin had devoted 10 years
Of work.
This is only a sketchy account
at best and there were others who
had q hand in television's de-
velopment. But that Stokes-to-
Braun-to-Zworykin combination
produced the TV play of The Stars
first century.