1 00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:07,240 Speaker 1: Give in touch of technology with tech Stuff from how 2 00:00:07,280 --> 00:00:14,560 Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 3 00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:19,400 Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, senior writer for how stuff 4 00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:22,000 Speaker 1: Works dot com, and today I want to tackle a 5 00:00:22,040 --> 00:00:26,000 Speaker 1: pretty big topic in tech television. And I'm not talking 6 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:30,360 Speaker 1: about the stuff that goes on TV, but rather TVs themselves. 7 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:32,680 Speaker 1: So where did they come from, how do they work, 8 00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:35,000 Speaker 1: and how have they evolved? And this is going to 9 00:00:35,080 --> 00:00:38,680 Speaker 1: be on multi part episode, y'all in fact, and just 10 00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:42,720 Speaker 1: brace yourselves because spoiler alert, I am not even going 11 00:00:42,800 --> 00:00:45,880 Speaker 1: to get to talk about electronic televisions in part one. 12 00:00:46,320 --> 00:00:50,360 Speaker 1: That's how massive a topic this is. Now, these episodes 13 00:00:50,400 --> 00:00:52,960 Speaker 1: are probably gonna be fairly similar to one I recorded 14 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:56,240 Speaker 1: with Chris Palette. You might remember him as my original 15 00:00:56,280 --> 00:00:59,560 Speaker 1: co host way back in the old days. Chris and 16 00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:02,560 Speaker 1: I sat down one day to record an episode about 17 00:01:02,600 --> 00:01:06,800 Speaker 1: who invented the radio? And here's the problem. There's not 18 00:01:06,920 --> 00:01:11,360 Speaker 1: really an easy answer to that question. You might shout 19 00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:15,440 Speaker 1: out it was Nikola, Tesla, or it was Marconi, but 20 00:01:15,520 --> 00:01:19,080 Speaker 1: it gets way more complicated than that. And Pallette and I, 21 00:01:19,240 --> 00:01:23,360 Speaker 1: after we sat down and recorded a full episode, we 22 00:01:23,480 --> 00:01:27,280 Speaker 1: found ourselves stuck we figured that the episode was a 23 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:29,960 Speaker 1: complete mess. It was a mire as we tried to 24 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:34,520 Speaker 1: explain it. We actually recorded the episode two times because 25 00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:36,600 Speaker 1: right after the first attempt, we just kind of sat 26 00:01:36,640 --> 00:01:40,199 Speaker 1: there staring at each other and uh, after a few moments, 27 00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:45,040 Speaker 1: I said, you know, we can't release that, right and Palette, 28 00:01:45,080 --> 00:01:50,000 Speaker 1: to his credit, said yeah, that was awful. So we 29 00:01:50,120 --> 00:01:53,040 Speaker 1: ended up deciding that the story was just way too 30 00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:56,240 Speaker 1: complicated and it jumped around in different parts of the 31 00:01:56,280 --> 00:01:59,280 Speaker 1: world and in different parts of the timeline so much 32 00:01:59,320 --> 00:02:02,120 Speaker 1: that we felt we made it more confusing rather than 33 00:02:02,160 --> 00:02:07,080 Speaker 1: explained it. So we went outside of the little alcove 34 00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:08,920 Speaker 1: we were in because it wasn't it wasn't in this 35 00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:10,960 Speaker 1: building that was in a totally different part of Atlanta 36 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:14,280 Speaker 1: at the time. And uh. We went to our producer, 37 00:02:14,320 --> 00:02:17,959 Speaker 1: who I believe was Tyler for that particular episode, and 38 00:02:18,040 --> 00:02:21,200 Speaker 1: we told him we had to record it again and 39 00:02:21,400 --> 00:02:25,119 Speaker 1: is his heart shrunk three sizes that day, but he 40 00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:29,079 Speaker 1: agreed to do it. So we went back, sat down 41 00:02:29,480 --> 00:02:32,080 Speaker 1: and recorded the episode a second time, and that was 42 00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:36,120 Speaker 1: the version that actually published on tech Stuff, And if 43 00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:38,080 Speaker 1: you want to listen to it, you need to do 44 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:41,160 Speaker 1: a search in the Tech stuff list list on the 45 00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:44,880 Speaker 1: archive and look for who invented the radio. It published 46 00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:48,920 Speaker 1: on April two thousand eleven, and I honestly do not 47 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:51,440 Speaker 1: know how it holds up after all those years. I 48 00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:55,679 Speaker 1: haven't listened to it since we published it. Really. As 49 00:02:55,680 --> 00:02:57,960 Speaker 1: for the original episode that we sat down and recorded, 50 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:01,160 Speaker 1: the one that we thought was terrible, as far as 51 00:03:01,200 --> 00:03:04,600 Speaker 1: I know, that's gone forever. I think Tyler actually erased it, 52 00:03:05,320 --> 00:03:07,399 Speaker 1: unless he's holding onto it in case he ever needs 53 00:03:07,440 --> 00:03:10,119 Speaker 1: to blackmail me, in which case you could probably ask 54 00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:12,119 Speaker 1: Tyler and he might share it. But I think it's 55 00:03:12,120 --> 00:03:16,800 Speaker 1: gone anyway. The reason I'm telling that story in the 56 00:03:16,840 --> 00:03:19,760 Speaker 1: first place is because it turns out that inventions in 57 00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:25,079 Speaker 1: general are more complicated than they first seem. And I'm 58 00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:27,000 Speaker 1: not talking about how they work. I mean the story 59 00:03:27,040 --> 00:03:29,520 Speaker 1: of how they came to be tends to be more 60 00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:33,320 Speaker 1: complicated than a simple so and so invented the such 61 00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:37,920 Speaker 1: and such. Now, as humans, we like simplicity in our stories. 62 00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:42,240 Speaker 1: We love to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. 63 00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:45,560 Speaker 1: So it's really easy to say something like Thomas Edison 64 00:03:45,720 --> 00:03:49,040 Speaker 1: in a Lot the light Bulb, but it's also not 65 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:52,840 Speaker 1: really true, or at least it's not entirely true. The 66 00:03:52,920 --> 00:03:56,600 Speaker 1: truth is more complicated. It's messy, and it involves a 67 00:03:56,640 --> 00:04:00,240 Speaker 1: lot of different people researching and engineering different stuff, and 68 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:04,560 Speaker 1: then later inventors building on that work, learning from the 69 00:04:04,600 --> 00:04:12,040 Speaker 1: people who came before, refining things, redefining things. So you 70 00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:16,040 Speaker 1: can't really just start with so and so invented the TV. 71 00:04:17,080 --> 00:04:20,520 Speaker 1: It's again, much more complicated than that. And even the 72 00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:23,240 Speaker 1: version I'm going to talk about today, the one that 73 00:04:23,279 --> 00:04:27,120 Speaker 1: I've had to split up into multiple episodes, even this 74 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:31,680 Speaker 1: is a simplification of the story. If I were to 75 00:04:32,160 --> 00:04:36,480 Speaker 1: detail every single person who had a hand in shaping 76 00:04:36,520 --> 00:04:40,400 Speaker 1: the way television works, I could do a full podcast 77 00:04:40,440 --> 00:04:43,400 Speaker 1: series on that. I'm not joking. It could be ten 78 00:04:43,520 --> 00:04:46,960 Speaker 1: or fifteen episodes long. But I'm obviously not going to 79 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:49,479 Speaker 1: do that to my listeners. I want to have a 80 00:04:49,480 --> 00:04:52,080 Speaker 1: good variety of topics. So this one is probably gonna 81 00:04:52,120 --> 00:04:56,680 Speaker 1: be I'm guessing a three parter. I'm trying not to 82 00:04:56,760 --> 00:04:58,560 Speaker 1: make it go all the way to four parts. But 83 00:04:58,760 --> 00:05:02,080 Speaker 1: spoiler alert, uh, I only have the research done for 84 00:05:02,120 --> 00:05:05,840 Speaker 1: parts one and two, and Part two ends with color television, 85 00:05:06,160 --> 00:05:08,440 Speaker 1: so we got a lot of ground to cover, all right, 86 00:05:09,279 --> 00:05:12,159 Speaker 1: So for your history buffs out there. I will get 87 00:05:12,160 --> 00:05:15,840 Speaker 1: around to talking about Filo T. Farnsworth, and I'll talk 88 00:05:15,880 --> 00:05:19,919 Speaker 1: about Vladimir's working, and I'll talk about David Sarnoff and 89 00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:22,840 Speaker 1: how he tried to get a monopoly on television manufacturing, 90 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:26,200 Speaker 1: licensing and even broadcast. But I'll also talk about other 91 00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:29,880 Speaker 1: people like Paul nip Cow, I'll talk about Charles Francis Jenkins, 92 00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:32,400 Speaker 1: and John Logi Baird. But I think it's safe to 93 00:05:32,440 --> 00:05:35,159 Speaker 1: say the development of television was the product of the 94 00:05:35,200 --> 00:05:38,479 Speaker 1: work of a lot of different people. I would argue 95 00:05:38,520 --> 00:05:40,880 Speaker 1: one is perhaps more instrumental than all the others for 96 00:05:40,960 --> 00:05:44,960 Speaker 1: the modern concept of TV. But I'll allow you guys 97 00:05:45,040 --> 00:05:49,960 Speaker 1: to draw your own conclusions on that. Also, please keep 98 00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:52,320 Speaker 1: in mind that a lot of the work I'm talking about, 99 00:05:52,360 --> 00:05:56,320 Speaker 1: both in exploratory science and in engineering, was taking place 100 00:05:56,400 --> 00:06:00,320 Speaker 1: during a really hectic era in history. The ninet and 101 00:06:00,520 --> 00:06:06,920 Speaker 1: early twentieth centuries were marked with enormous changes and monumental conflicts. 102 00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:10,400 Speaker 1: You had the Industrial Revolution, which was transforming the way 103 00:06:10,440 --> 00:06:12,839 Speaker 1: we do work. You may remember I did some episodes 104 00:06:12,880 --> 00:06:16,960 Speaker 1: about the Industrial Revolution. You had massive migrations of people 105 00:06:17,120 --> 00:06:20,799 Speaker 1: from rural areas into urban centers and really, the birth 106 00:06:20,839 --> 00:06:25,320 Speaker 1: of the modern city came in the Uh. Really, the 107 00:06:25,320 --> 00:06:28,200 Speaker 1: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I would argue, is when 108 00:06:28,200 --> 00:06:31,719 Speaker 1: they were truly born. I mean, obviously you had large 109 00:06:31,720 --> 00:06:34,440 Speaker 1: centers of population like London and Paris and New York, 110 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:38,640 Speaker 1: but even those really weren't modern cities until I would 111 00:06:38,680 --> 00:06:43,120 Speaker 1: argue the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the United States, 112 00:06:43,480 --> 00:06:45,800 Speaker 1: during the some of the work that would lead to 113 00:06:45,800 --> 00:06:48,680 Speaker 1: the invention of television, you had a civil War. It 114 00:06:48,800 --> 00:06:51,520 Speaker 1: was a massive event here in the US, and I 115 00:06:51,520 --> 00:06:54,000 Speaker 1: would argue it didn't so much tear the country apart. 116 00:06:54,040 --> 00:06:56,240 Speaker 1: Everyone says the Civil War toward the country apart. I 117 00:06:56,279 --> 00:06:59,440 Speaker 1: would argue the country was already torn apart before the 118 00:06:59,480 --> 00:07:03,720 Speaker 1: Civil War started. The Civil War was kind of the 119 00:07:03,760 --> 00:07:08,240 Speaker 1: result of that tearing of the country apart, which ultimately 120 00:07:08,480 --> 00:07:16,040 Speaker 1: boils down to the untenable position of the South maintaining slavery. 121 00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:19,520 Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, that's really what the Civil War was about. 122 00:07:19,560 --> 00:07:21,520 Speaker 1: Don't let anyone tell you that it was the state's 123 00:07:21,640 --> 00:07:26,000 Speaker 1: rights issue. Ultimately, that's just a layer of protection. It 124 00:07:26,080 --> 00:07:28,280 Speaker 1: was really about slavery when you get down to it. 125 00:07:29,160 --> 00:07:31,440 Speaker 1: As someone who grew up in the South, and is 126 00:07:31,480 --> 00:07:36,520 Speaker 1: a Southerner. I feel very confident saying that at the 127 00:07:36,560 --> 00:07:40,320 Speaker 1: tail end of this era, I'm talking about that eighteenth 128 00:07:40,360 --> 00:07:45,120 Speaker 1: and early nineteenth or nineteenth rather in early twentieth centuries. Uh, 129 00:07:45,320 --> 00:07:48,760 Speaker 1: you also had the First World War, a global conflict 130 00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:55,240 Speaker 1: that ended up impacting television itself. A lot was going on. Now, 131 00:07:55,240 --> 00:07:58,640 Speaker 1: it might surprise you to hear that the very first television's, 132 00:07:58,760 --> 00:08:03,160 Speaker 1: the ones that you could purchase before black and white 133 00:08:03,200 --> 00:08:09,040 Speaker 1: TVs became a thing, were mechanical TVs, which means they 134 00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:12,040 Speaker 1: actually had moving parts inside of them designed to create 135 00:08:12,120 --> 00:08:16,560 Speaker 1: moving images. Not It wasn't an electron gun firing electrons 136 00:08:16,640 --> 00:08:19,360 Speaker 1: a screen. It was actual mechanical elements, and I'm going 137 00:08:19,400 --> 00:08:22,640 Speaker 1: to explain how those worked and what they did in 138 00:08:22,720 --> 00:08:27,280 Speaker 1: this episode. Those mechanical sets preceded the electronic ones, though 139 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:29,720 Speaker 1: not by a whole lot. It was actually a pretty 140 00:08:29,800 --> 00:08:33,920 Speaker 1: rapid development from mechanical sets to electronics sets. There was 141 00:08:33,960 --> 00:08:37,720 Speaker 1: even a camera with mechanical elements that went to the Moon. 142 00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:41,319 Speaker 1: That's how we recorded color footage of the moon landing 143 00:08:41,800 --> 00:08:45,000 Speaker 1: on the Moon's surface. Really not so much the moon landing, 144 00:08:45,160 --> 00:08:49,800 Speaker 1: but rather astronauts exploring the Moon once they got there because, 145 00:08:49,840 --> 00:08:51,560 Speaker 1: as it turns out, no one was on the moon 146 00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:56,079 Speaker 1: ahead of us to film the whole process of landing. 147 00:08:56,760 --> 00:09:00,760 Speaker 1: That would have been awkward if that had happened. Anyway, 148 00:09:02,240 --> 00:09:06,360 Speaker 1: before we talk about TV itself, we have to spend 149 00:09:06,400 --> 00:09:09,360 Speaker 1: a little time with our brains, and for some of 150 00:09:09,440 --> 00:09:12,439 Speaker 1: us this might be a little uncomfortable. I know that 151 00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:14,880 Speaker 1: my brain and I aren't always on the best of terms, 152 00:09:14,880 --> 00:09:17,400 Speaker 1: and sometimes it won't even return my phone calls. But 153 00:09:17,559 --> 00:09:21,240 Speaker 1: you could argue that our brains are ultimately what make 154 00:09:21,320 --> 00:09:26,040 Speaker 1: television and film and animation work, not just because we 155 00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:31,200 Speaker 1: invented those things, but because of the way our brains 156 00:09:31,679 --> 00:09:34,719 Speaker 1: work and how it allows us to interpret this information 157 00:09:34,800 --> 00:09:38,480 Speaker 1: being more than what it actually is. And there are 158 00:09:38,480 --> 00:09:41,120 Speaker 1: two elements, really, I would argue that are at play here, 159 00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:43,800 Speaker 1: and ultimately, when we get to color television, I would 160 00:09:43,840 --> 00:09:47,280 Speaker 1: argue there are three elements at work. But with your 161 00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:51,679 Speaker 1: basic television picture, one of those elements is that our 162 00:09:51,720 --> 00:09:54,440 Speaker 1: brains can assemble bits of information into something that is 163 00:09:54,480 --> 00:09:59,080 Speaker 1: greater than itself. So with a digital photograph or a 164 00:09:59,160 --> 00:10:03,920 Speaker 1: television screen, you probably know that it is made up 165 00:10:04,080 --> 00:10:08,000 Speaker 1: of a series of dots, very tiny dots called pixels, 166 00:10:08,240 --> 00:10:13,720 Speaker 1: whether it's a digital photograph or a TV image. And uh, 167 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:16,440 Speaker 1: I want you to just imagine that, right take the 168 00:10:16,520 --> 00:10:20,000 Speaker 1: digital photograph. I'm not saying you should go out and 169 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:22,200 Speaker 1: take a selfie right now, although if you want to, 170 00:10:22,480 --> 00:10:25,199 Speaker 1: that's fine, go ahead tweet it to me, that's cool. 171 00:10:25,920 --> 00:10:27,840 Speaker 1: What I mean is that these digital photos that are 172 00:10:27,880 --> 00:10:31,000 Speaker 1: made up of pixels, those are individual points of light 173 00:10:31,320 --> 00:10:34,040 Speaker 1: or if you prefer, points of color, although ultimately color 174 00:10:34,080 --> 00:10:37,640 Speaker 1: is just a representation of light. So it's kind of semantics. 175 00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:43,559 Speaker 1: The size, shape, and number of pixels determines and images resolution. 176 00:10:44,440 --> 00:10:46,200 Speaker 1: And if I show you a picture made out of 177 00:10:46,440 --> 00:10:50,840 Speaker 1: four solid color blocks of wood, so I've got four 178 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:53,880 Speaker 1: blocks and each of them is a certain color, uh, 179 00:10:53,920 --> 00:10:58,080 Speaker 1: and I have been given the task assemble these blocks 180 00:10:58,120 --> 00:11:01,480 Speaker 1: so that people know it's a rep since an image 181 00:11:01,520 --> 00:11:05,160 Speaker 1: of the Eiffel Tower. That's gonna be really hard to do. 182 00:11:05,240 --> 00:11:09,320 Speaker 1: These four solid color blocks, even if they are gray 183 00:11:09,440 --> 00:11:12,880 Speaker 1: and say blue, it's hard to arrange them in a 184 00:11:12,920 --> 00:11:15,520 Speaker 1: way that is going to look like the thing I'm 185 00:11:15,520 --> 00:11:19,480 Speaker 1: trying to represent. Now, if I had sixteen blocks, I 186 00:11:19,559 --> 00:11:22,720 Speaker 1: might be able to do a rough estimation of a tower. 187 00:11:23,320 --> 00:11:24,840 Speaker 1: You might be able to figure out that I'm trying 188 00:11:24,880 --> 00:11:27,600 Speaker 1: to build some sort of structure, or an image of 189 00:11:27,600 --> 00:11:31,040 Speaker 1: a structure. If I had sixty four blocks, you might 190 00:11:31,080 --> 00:11:33,319 Speaker 1: be able to figure out roughly what it is I'm 191 00:11:33,320 --> 00:11:36,280 Speaker 1: trying to build. Right, you might say, well, it doesn't 192 00:11:36,320 --> 00:11:39,400 Speaker 1: really look like the Eiffel Tower, but I can recognize 193 00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:43,000 Speaker 1: that's what you're trying to make. If I had millions 194 00:11:43,040 --> 00:11:45,840 Speaker 1: of tiny blocks that I could put together, and each 195 00:11:45,880 --> 00:11:48,640 Speaker 1: tiny block itself is a solid color that I can 196 00:11:48,840 --> 00:11:53,520 Speaker 1: arrange those in an array so it looks like a picture, 197 00:11:53,880 --> 00:11:57,080 Speaker 1: then you'd say, oh, well that's the Eiffel Tower. Well, 198 00:11:57,120 --> 00:12:00,000 Speaker 1: that's because our brains are able to take those individuals 199 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:04,480 Speaker 1: a little points and assemble them into a picture that 200 00:12:04,679 --> 00:12:08,319 Speaker 1: is a whole. I guess philosophically we could start getting 201 00:12:08,360 --> 00:12:10,560 Speaker 1: into how we're all just a bunch of atoms that 202 00:12:10,559 --> 00:12:14,880 Speaker 1: are kind of close together in the macro's scale, though 203 00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:17,200 Speaker 1: if you were to get down to the sub atomic layer, 204 00:12:17,600 --> 00:12:21,480 Speaker 1: you would say, oh, you're mostly empty space. But that's 205 00:12:21,480 --> 00:12:23,840 Speaker 1: going a little too far. The point is our brains 206 00:12:23,840 --> 00:12:27,640 Speaker 1: can see a full image based upon this representation of 207 00:12:27,640 --> 00:12:32,000 Speaker 1: tiny little pixels, and modern televisions do that. They the 208 00:12:32,080 --> 00:12:33,920 Speaker 1: images they show us are made up of millions of 209 00:12:33,920 --> 00:12:36,240 Speaker 1: those little points of light, and our brains interpret that 210 00:12:36,400 --> 00:12:39,040 Speaker 1: as the cohesive image. It's kind of like, uh, that 211 00:12:39,120 --> 00:12:42,560 Speaker 1: famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La 212 00:12:42,640 --> 00:12:46,840 Speaker 1: Grande Jat by George Serrat. You know what I'm talking about. 213 00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:50,160 Speaker 1: It's the one of all the people on the banks 214 00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:52,199 Speaker 1: of a river at a park, and they're all and 215 00:12:52,640 --> 00:12:56,600 Speaker 1: very fancy, kind of Edwardian era dress, and it's all 216 00:12:56,640 --> 00:13:02,360 Speaker 1: made up of tiny little points of paint. It's actually 217 00:13:02,480 --> 00:13:05,720 Speaker 1: a technique that's called point all is um, and originally 218 00:13:05,760 --> 00:13:08,640 Speaker 1: Pointillisum was used as sort of a derogatory term. Other 219 00:13:08,679 --> 00:13:11,880 Speaker 1: painters were saying, oh, that's not that's Pointillism, just using 220 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:14,600 Speaker 1: the little the point of the paint brush to make 221 00:13:14,679 --> 00:13:18,239 Speaker 1: little dots to make up an image. But Serat elevated 222 00:13:18,280 --> 00:13:21,840 Speaker 1: this to a true art form, and from a distance 223 00:13:22,240 --> 00:13:25,120 Speaker 1: it is easily recognizable as a picture of what it's 224 00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:27,360 Speaker 1: supposed to be. If you're far enough back, you say, yes, 225 00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:29,560 Speaker 1: it's a painting of a bunch of people by the 226 00:13:29,559 --> 00:13:32,000 Speaker 1: side of a river. And as you get closer and closer, 227 00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:34,920 Speaker 1: you start seeing those individual dots, and if you get 228 00:13:34,920 --> 00:13:37,160 Speaker 1: close enough, the dots are all you see. You no 229 00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:40,480 Speaker 1: longer see a picture of people standing at a river. 230 00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:44,000 Speaker 1: You see these little dots. Same things true with televisions. 231 00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:45,559 Speaker 1: If you could get close enough, if you had a 232 00:13:45,559 --> 00:13:49,239 Speaker 1: powerful enough magnifying glass, you can see the individual pixels 233 00:13:49,280 --> 00:13:55,000 Speaker 1: that make up the screen. Now there's a related brainy capability, 234 00:13:55,360 --> 00:13:59,120 Speaker 1: which is our tendency to recognize animation as actual movement. 235 00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:02,400 Speaker 1: So it's easiest to talk about this for me, at 236 00:14:02,480 --> 00:14:06,560 Speaker 1: least in terms of film, and I'm talking about physical film, 237 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:11,959 Speaker 1: the art form of cinema using film. So in film, 238 00:14:11,960 --> 00:14:14,160 Speaker 1: we watch a sequence of still images played back at 239 00:14:14,200 --> 00:14:16,840 Speaker 1: a certain speed, and typically we're talking about twenty four 240 00:14:16,880 --> 00:14:20,000 Speaker 1: frames per second, which means you're looking at twenty four 241 00:14:20,480 --> 00:14:24,800 Speaker 1: separate photographs every second that goes by, and the photographs 242 00:14:24,800 --> 00:14:28,240 Speaker 1: are capturing movement. So each one is a still image, 243 00:14:28,280 --> 00:14:32,000 Speaker 1: but each image in succession is catching a slightly different 244 00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:35,720 Speaker 1: moment of time where things are moving across the frame 245 00:14:35,840 --> 00:14:37,920 Speaker 1: of the photo, and you have to use a really 246 00:14:37,920 --> 00:14:41,440 Speaker 1: fast shutter to remove as much blur as possible, especially 247 00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:43,920 Speaker 1: for things that are moving very very quickly across the frame. 248 00:14:45,160 --> 00:14:47,920 Speaker 1: So when you played these frames at this speed, it 249 00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:51,360 Speaker 1: looks like we're watching objects in motion rather than just 250 00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:54,520 Speaker 1: a sequence of pictures. And if our brains didn't work 251 00:14:54,600 --> 00:14:58,400 Speaker 1: this way, movies and television wouldn't work. We wouldn't see 252 00:14:58,440 --> 00:15:03,080 Speaker 1: them as moving thing things. We would just witness a 253 00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:09,320 Speaker 1: sequence of individual photographs or or actually we'd actually see 254 00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:13,680 Speaker 1: the pixels appearing on a television screen. We lack the 255 00:15:13,720 --> 00:15:17,240 Speaker 1: ability to see the transitions as anything but instantaneous. We 256 00:15:17,360 --> 00:15:23,160 Speaker 1: cannot see that it's really a sequence of individual events. 257 00:15:23,160 --> 00:15:26,240 Speaker 1: So to us, television looks like it's stuff showing stuff 258 00:15:26,280 --> 00:15:29,239 Speaker 1: that's actually moving. And there are a lot of inventions 259 00:15:29,240 --> 00:15:33,240 Speaker 1: that predate television that took advantage of this particular phenomenon. So, 260 00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:37,080 Speaker 1: for example, there was a device made by Philip James 261 00:15:37,080 --> 00:15:42,560 Speaker 1: de Lufferberg, whose name I have mispronounced. He was a 262 00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:46,920 Speaker 1: painter of some renown, and his contribution was a curiosity 263 00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:55,440 Speaker 1: called the ido Fusicon. Ido Fusicon, I'm going with that pronunciation. 264 00:15:56,680 --> 00:15:59,400 Speaker 1: So the ido fusicon was actually an invention that came 265 00:15:59,440 --> 00:16:02,280 Speaker 1: out in the seventeen eighties, So this is a very 266 00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:05,600 Speaker 1: old invention, and it used mirrors and pulleys to create 267 00:16:05,600 --> 00:16:09,080 Speaker 1: the illusion of moving images in a little theater like setting, 268 00:16:09,720 --> 00:16:12,240 Speaker 1: and by this time we understood the sequence of still 269 00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:15,280 Speaker 1: images that capture a moving object, when viewed sequentially at 270 00:16:15,280 --> 00:16:18,040 Speaker 1: proper speed, creates that illusion in our brains of an 271 00:16:18,040 --> 00:16:20,800 Speaker 1: actual object in motion. But there were a lot of 272 00:16:20,800 --> 00:16:24,920 Speaker 1: others who created entertainments and curiosities that utilize this same principle. 273 00:16:25,120 --> 00:16:28,960 Speaker 1: There was a Belgian physicist, Joseph Plateau. Yeah, he created 274 00:16:28,960 --> 00:16:33,200 Speaker 1: the Phena kit scope or phena kissed a scope. I 275 00:16:33,200 --> 00:16:35,640 Speaker 1: guess it's kissed a scope because there's an s after 276 00:16:35,680 --> 00:16:40,280 Speaker 1: the eye after the k Phena kissed a scope. There 277 00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:44,440 Speaker 1: was William George Horner's dead alium. There was William E. 278 00:16:44,680 --> 00:16:48,800 Speaker 1: Lincoln's zoa trope. These were all rotating devices that used 279 00:16:48,880 --> 00:16:52,160 Speaker 1: various means to present an image. You might have seen one, 280 00:16:52,200 --> 00:16:55,800 Speaker 1: it's like a platter. Often the zoo trope is the 281 00:16:55,840 --> 00:16:58,520 Speaker 1: most popular one. You can find them still today. Where 282 00:16:59,160 --> 00:17:02,920 Speaker 1: I'd say, a kind of a cylinder that has slits 283 00:17:03,760 --> 00:17:06,800 Speaker 1: in it, and you're supposed to lean down and look 284 00:17:06,840 --> 00:17:09,800 Speaker 1: through the slits. So you're looking through the cylinder at 285 00:17:09,840 --> 00:17:13,480 Speaker 1: the opposite inner edge of the cylinder, and you spin 286 00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:17,240 Speaker 1: it and there is a sequence of drawings or photographs 287 00:17:17,640 --> 00:17:20,600 Speaker 1: that are on the inside edge of the cylinder. The 288 00:17:20,640 --> 00:17:23,600 Speaker 1: slats end up creating a shutter like effect, and you 289 00:17:23,640 --> 00:17:26,840 Speaker 1: start looking at these different images and sequence and then 290 00:17:26,880 --> 00:17:30,320 Speaker 1: you get the feeling that you're looking at a moving image. 291 00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:34,000 Speaker 1: Typically it's something like a horse trotting. That's a famous one. 292 00:17:35,200 --> 00:17:37,640 Speaker 1: In fact, that last one, the zoetrope. It was so 293 00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:41,920 Speaker 1: popular that a little company called Milton Bradley got involved 294 00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:44,840 Speaker 1: and started making the first commercial version of it, and 295 00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:47,640 Speaker 1: in a way you could argue that that was the 296 00:17:47,640 --> 00:17:52,640 Speaker 1: the commercial predecessor to television. Although you're not transmitting anything there. 297 00:17:52,680 --> 00:17:55,960 Speaker 1: It's obviously you've got everything you need right in front 298 00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:59,400 Speaker 1: of you. So that covers the psychological aspect of why 299 00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:01,880 Speaker 1: tell of Vision works. It works because our brains allow 300 00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:04,640 Speaker 1: us to construct this concept of movement and animation even 301 00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:06,879 Speaker 1: when all we're really doing is looking at a light show. 302 00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:10,000 Speaker 1: But then again, our entire sense of vision is based 303 00:18:10,040 --> 00:18:12,000 Speaker 1: off of light. And if I go down that pathway, 304 00:18:12,040 --> 00:18:14,640 Speaker 1: this series is gonna last twenty episodes instead of three. 305 00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:17,159 Speaker 1: So let's get on to talking about some of the 306 00:18:17,200 --> 00:18:22,600 Speaker 1: science of physics and electricity and electro magnetism, and and 307 00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:27,160 Speaker 1: also about sending information over wires and some basic scientific 308 00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:30,840 Speaker 1: discoveries that really made television possible. I can spend an 309 00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:33,520 Speaker 1: entire episode on each of these, to be perfectly honest, 310 00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:35,480 Speaker 1: but I'm gonna do my best to cover the basics. 311 00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:38,240 Speaker 1: So again, I'm not going to talk about every single 312 00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:43,080 Speaker 1: inventor and scientist who made discoveries that contributed to the 313 00:18:43,119 --> 00:18:45,399 Speaker 1: invention of television. But I'm gonna hit some of like 314 00:18:46,080 --> 00:18:49,840 Speaker 1: the greatest hits. You know this were a mixed tape 315 00:18:49,960 --> 00:18:52,000 Speaker 1: of a bunch of artists that you like. These are 316 00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:55,640 Speaker 1: the ones that you think really represent the music you love. 317 00:18:56,119 --> 00:18:57,920 Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing I'm doing right here. 318 00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:06,000 Speaker 1: So let's begin with an important guy, Alessandro Volta. Alessandro 319 00:19:06,119 --> 00:19:10,119 Speaker 1: Volto as the guy who um invented batteries, came up 320 00:19:10,119 --> 00:19:12,919 Speaker 1: with this idea. I mean, apart from the ones you 321 00:19:12,920 --> 00:19:16,280 Speaker 1: could argue that came from ancient times that people probably 322 00:19:16,320 --> 00:19:19,199 Speaker 1: didn't even know they really were batteries, Volta is the 323 00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:23,160 Speaker 1: one who scientifically went through the process of creating batteries 324 00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:25,560 Speaker 1: for the first time. Now, batteries are what made it 325 00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:30,560 Speaker 1: possible to create a source of continuous electric current. Before batteries, 326 00:19:30,600 --> 00:19:32,840 Speaker 1: if you were creating current, you were doing so in 327 00:19:32,840 --> 00:19:37,720 Speaker 1: a sporadic and uncontrollable way, it was hard to create 328 00:19:37,920 --> 00:19:43,320 Speaker 1: a steady current. So Volta's invention of batteries where it 329 00:19:43,520 --> 00:19:45,359 Speaker 1: was one of those things that made it easier for 330 00:19:45,480 --> 00:19:49,520 Speaker 1: future inventors to have kind of a baseline to work from. 331 00:19:50,280 --> 00:19:53,280 Speaker 1: His good buddy Luigi Galvani also did a lot of 332 00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:57,240 Speaker 1: work in this area, although Galvani's understanding of electricity was 333 00:19:57,320 --> 00:20:01,040 Speaker 1: somewhat misguided. He thought when he was a applying electrodes 334 00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:04,159 Speaker 1: to a frog's leg that the frog itself had some 335 00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:09,080 Speaker 1: sort of intrinsic electricity uh, which is kind of true, 336 00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:13,040 Speaker 1: but not in the way that Galvani thought, whereas Volta 337 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:17,919 Speaker 1: immediately recognized that the frog's muscles were conducting electricity, but 338 00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:21,400 Speaker 1: not generating it, not on the scale that the electrodes were. 339 00:20:23,080 --> 00:20:28,840 Speaker 1: So Volta's invention really did provide a good source for 340 00:20:29,080 --> 00:20:31,280 Speaker 1: future inventors. There were a lot of other people who 341 00:20:31,400 --> 00:20:34,080 Speaker 1: played a role in this too, uh, as well as 342 00:20:34,119 --> 00:20:37,920 Speaker 1: just in a role of discoveries related to television. For example, 343 00:20:38,200 --> 00:20:43,480 Speaker 1: chemist William Hyde Wallaceton wasn't satisfied with being a smarty 344 00:20:43,520 --> 00:20:46,960 Speaker 1: pants and purifying platinum, as well as discovering various elements 345 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:51,160 Speaker 1: like rhodium and palladium. He also invented an object called 346 00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:55,560 Speaker 1: the camera Lucida in eighteen o six. So this was 347 00:20:55,600 --> 00:20:58,760 Speaker 1: an optical instrument that used a prism to reflect an 348 00:20:58,760 --> 00:21:02,199 Speaker 1: image into the eye so it looked like the image 349 00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:06,080 Speaker 1: was being projected on a sheet of paper. So you 350 00:21:06,119 --> 00:21:08,480 Speaker 1: would have a table upon which you put a sheet 351 00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:11,240 Speaker 1: of paper, and then you would put a little stand 352 00:21:11,520 --> 00:21:13,879 Speaker 1: down on top of the paper where you have this 353 00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:18,200 Speaker 1: prism like object on there. You would direct the prism 354 00:21:18,280 --> 00:21:21,359 Speaker 1: so that a certain face of it is pointed toward 355 00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:24,159 Speaker 1: an object you want to sketch on this piece of paper. 356 00:21:24,359 --> 00:21:27,280 Speaker 1: Then you would have to position yourself over the prism 357 00:21:27,359 --> 00:21:31,200 Speaker 1: so that you're the pupil of your eyes essentially half 358 00:21:31,240 --> 00:21:34,520 Speaker 1: covered by the edge of this prism, and when you 359 00:21:34,560 --> 00:21:38,040 Speaker 1: look down, you would have an image reflected into your eye, 360 00:21:38,040 --> 00:21:40,959 Speaker 1: and it would look to you as if, in fact, 361 00:21:41,400 --> 00:21:46,520 Speaker 1: there was a projection of that object you were interested 362 00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:48,879 Speaker 1: in on a sheet of paper. It was meant to 363 00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:54,960 Speaker 1: help make sketches easier for artists and others, architects, that 364 00:21:55,040 --> 00:21:59,880 Speaker 1: sort of thing, But ultimately this also advanced our understanding 365 00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:03,840 Speaker 1: of optics, which became necessary for the future of cameras. 366 00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:10,280 Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna talk a lot more about electricity, electromagnetism, 367 00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:12,720 Speaker 1: more science, and then we're gonna make our way over 368 00:22:12,760 --> 00:22:15,160 Speaker 1: to the mechanical televisions. But before I get into all 369 00:22:15,200 --> 00:22:19,000 Speaker 1: of that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 370 00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:29,840 Speaker 1: All Right, we're back. Now it's time to talk about 371 00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:33,960 Speaker 1: Humphrey Davy, a Cornish inventor. He was the one who 372 00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,680 Speaker 1: created the first arc light and it was actually called 373 00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:39,800 Speaker 1: the Davy lamp, and it was a predecessor to the 374 00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:42,840 Speaker 1: modern incandescent bulb. And this is part of the reason 375 00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:46,160 Speaker 1: why some historians get a little briskly. If you were 376 00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:51,800 Speaker 1: to say Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, people would say, well, actually, 377 00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:54,680 Speaker 1: and then they'd start building up the precedent that led 378 00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:58,280 Speaker 1: up to Thomas Edison's light bulb. Edison was able to 379 00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:01,560 Speaker 1: advance and perfect ideas had been around for decades, but 380 00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:05,200 Speaker 1: no one had been able to really advance the art 381 00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:08,440 Speaker 1: form to a point where it was practical. So, for example, 382 00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:13,159 Speaker 1: the Davy lamp was not really practical for widespread implementation. 383 00:23:13,560 --> 00:23:17,240 Speaker 1: It would take further refinement to create a lightbulb that 384 00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:19,800 Speaker 1: was going to last long enough and be efficient enough 385 00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:24,239 Speaker 1: and bright enough to actually replace the gas lighting that 386 00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:26,040 Speaker 1: was used in most of the world at that point. 387 00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:30,280 Speaker 1: So uh, Edison did make some very important contributions. I 388 00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:32,760 Speaker 1: don't want to take anything away from him, but he 389 00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:37,040 Speaker 1: didn't just invent the light bulb anyway. Artificial lights became 390 00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:42,479 Speaker 1: a necessary element for television's uh. So that's why I'm 391 00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:47,840 Speaker 1: actually mentioning Davy because his work was what allowed future 392 00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:51,640 Speaker 1: televisions to actually work, so they were not just important 393 00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:57,200 Speaker 1: for capturing images, but also displaying them. Now I'll mostly 394 00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:03,200 Speaker 1: be talking about visuals here, capturing and displaying visuals, because 395 00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:06,320 Speaker 1: you already have radio that was coming about around this 396 00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:09,399 Speaker 1: same time. Uh, and a lot of the elements of 397 00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:12,520 Speaker 1: radio found their way into television. And since I've already 398 00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,000 Speaker 1: covered radio, I don't want to go into it a lot. However, 399 00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:17,840 Speaker 1: I do need to mention that sound was a key 400 00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:21,840 Speaker 1: component in television sets after your first wave of TV 401 00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,920 Speaker 1: sets came out. The very first television sets didn't have 402 00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,159 Speaker 1: any audio at all. I'll talk more about that a 403 00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:31,800 Speaker 1: little bit later, but there's some important people to chat 404 00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:34,880 Speaker 1: about as far as audio goes. One was Charles Wheatstone, 405 00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:38,679 Speaker 1: he was an English inventor and he created a device 406 00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:42,959 Speaker 1: that was meant to help people hear sounds that were unamplified. 407 00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:45,959 Speaker 1: And it was actually just a pair of rods that 408 00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:49,400 Speaker 1: could vibrate in the presence of sound, and you would 409 00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:51,879 Speaker 1: put one end up close to your ear so that 410 00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:57,480 Speaker 1: you could hear better. Uh, And he called this a microphone. Now, 411 00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:00,440 Speaker 1: it wasn't a microphone in the sense of the kind 412 00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:04,120 Speaker 1: that we use today, but that's what he called it. 413 00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:06,960 Speaker 1: It was actually David Edward Hughes who was a British 414 00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:13,520 Speaker 1: American inventor who developed the earliest of modern microphones in 415 00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:17,240 Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, and he ended up using the same 416 00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:20,960 Speaker 1: term that Wheatstone used. He knew of Wheatstone's work and 417 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:24,680 Speaker 1: he felt that the technology he was working on had 418 00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:28,679 Speaker 1: a microphone effect, and since then the name is stuck. 419 00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:33,119 Speaker 1: So the original name for microphone actually comes from a 420 00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:36,560 Speaker 1: pair of vibrating rods that you would use to amplify 421 00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:40,359 Speaker 1: sounds so you can hear it better. Not something you 422 00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:43,720 Speaker 1: sing into it karaoke when you've had a few too many, 423 00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:46,080 Speaker 1: or in my case, I don't need any at all, 424 00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,320 Speaker 1: I'll still sing into it. I won't do that to 425 00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:53,679 Speaker 1: you guys right now, though, then we have Hans Christian Airstead. 426 00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:59,840 Speaker 1: Airstead discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism. I would 427 00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,320 Speaker 1: argue that it's our understanding of electromagnetism that has transformed 428 00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:07,040 Speaker 1: our world more than any other discovery in the last 429 00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:11,080 Speaker 1: couple of hundred years. Most of our world that we 430 00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:16,280 Speaker 1: depend on today has something to do with electro magnetism 431 00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:20,200 Speaker 1: in some way or another. Our power grids, for example, transformers, 432 00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:24,120 Speaker 1: these all have to do with electromagnetism. Are electronics are 433 00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:29,280 Speaker 1: dependent upon electromagnetism. So Uh, it was really Ersta's discoveries 434 00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:34,120 Speaker 1: that allowed people to find practical applications for that knowledge. 435 00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,600 Speaker 1: Michael Faraday also very important. He experimented a great deal 436 00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:43,040 Speaker 1: with electromagnetism. He discovered that a fluctuating magnetic field could 437 00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,320 Speaker 1: induce electricity to flow through a coil of wire. Again, 438 00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:51,320 Speaker 1: this goes back to transformers. Uh, the actual power grid component, 439 00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,879 Speaker 1: not the toy from the nineteen eighties. Uh. This is 440 00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:58,480 Speaker 1: the relationship I've talked a lot about on tech stuff. 441 00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:00,600 Speaker 1: If you pass a current through a sil of wire, 442 00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,000 Speaker 1: it will create a magnetic field. Now, if you pass 443 00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,679 Speaker 1: an alternating current through a coil of wire, meaning the 444 00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:11,200 Speaker 1: direction of flow of that current changes over and over again. 445 00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:15,639 Speaker 1: It's cycles. Then you create a fluctuating magnetic field. The 446 00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:19,160 Speaker 1: magnetic field will change as the direction of current changes. 447 00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:24,000 Speaker 1: If you then bring a fluctuating magnetic field within the 448 00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:27,359 Speaker 1: range of another coil of wire, one that is not 449 00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:30,280 Speaker 1: hooked up to any kind of power source, it will 450 00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:35,160 Speaker 1: induce electrons to flow through that unconnected coil of wire. 451 00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:40,480 Speaker 1: It induces electricity. So, just as electricity can induce a 452 00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:43,680 Speaker 1: magnetic field, a magnetic field can induce the flow of electricity. 453 00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:47,720 Speaker 1: It has to be that fluctuating magnetic field, however, otherwise 454 00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:50,520 Speaker 1: you just get a little As the magnetic field moves 455 00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:53,600 Speaker 1: into the range of a coil of copper wire, you 456 00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:55,879 Speaker 1: will get a little bit of a flow of electricity. 457 00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:59,679 Speaker 1: But if the magnetic field is steady, that flow will 458 00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,480 Speaker 1: stop up. It has to be a fluctuating magnetic field 459 00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:07,440 Speaker 1: for it to continuously induce electricity to flow. This, again 460 00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:12,120 Speaker 1: was a key component to electronics. Uh fair Day also 461 00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:14,919 Speaker 1: experiment with passing current through a glass tube filled with 462 00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:18,000 Speaker 1: what he called rarefied air, which is essentially meaning that 463 00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:21,600 Speaker 1: he would attempt to pump out air from a tube 464 00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:25,639 Speaker 1: and then pass current through it. His abilities were somewhat 465 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,040 Speaker 1: limited just by the technology of his time. He wasn't 466 00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:31,199 Speaker 1: able to create a true vacuum within the tube. He 467 00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:33,119 Speaker 1: was just able to pump out a good deal of 468 00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:35,880 Speaker 1: the air, so it had a much lower atmospheric pressure 469 00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:40,080 Speaker 1: inside the tube than outside. And he saw that the cathode, 470 00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,200 Speaker 1: which is the negative electrode. In a pair, you have 471 00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:46,560 Speaker 1: a cathode and an anode. The cathodes the negative electrode, 472 00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:48,960 Speaker 1: the anodes the positive electrode. So you know, you want 473 00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:50,920 Speaker 1: to hang out with the anode because the cathode is 474 00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:55,760 Speaker 1: kind of a drag. Anyway, he noticed that the cathode 475 00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:58,120 Speaker 1: would produce an arc of light. It would start at 476 00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:01,120 Speaker 1: the cathode and would arc all the way to the anode. 477 00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:06,560 Speaker 1: Uh later on, a German physicist named Heinrich Geisler was 478 00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:08,760 Speaker 1: able to create a vacuum tube with an air pump 479 00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:12,440 Speaker 1: that was more powerful than what what Faraday had at 480 00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:16,840 Speaker 1: his disposal. So the Geistler's tube was more was closer 481 00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,000 Speaker 1: to a vacuum. It still wasn't a perfect vacuum, but 482 00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,920 Speaker 1: closer to a vacuum than Faraday's And when Geisler began 483 00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:27,280 Speaker 1: to experiment with cathodes and anodes inside a vacuum tube, 484 00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,320 Speaker 1: he saw that rather than getting an arc the way 485 00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:33,080 Speaker 1: it did with Faraday, it would make the whole tube 486 00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,840 Speaker 1: kind of glow. In many ways. This was a predecessor 487 00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:41,560 Speaker 1: to neon lights that you can find on Broadway. Might 488 00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,440 Speaker 1: as well stick with this discovery while I'm on it. 489 00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:48,160 Speaker 1: In the eighteen seventies there was a British scientist named 490 00:29:48,320 --> 00:29:52,320 Speaker 1: William Crooks who created Crooks tubes. You had Faraday tubes, 491 00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:55,680 Speaker 1: you than a Geistler tubes, you had Crooks tubes. And uh, 492 00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:59,360 Speaker 1: he kind of built on this experimental work that Faraday 493 00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:02,920 Speaker 1: and Geisler started. He created even better vacuum tubes. They 494 00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:07,960 Speaker 1: had even less atmosphere inside of them because the pumps 495 00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:10,360 Speaker 1: had gotten better and better, so you could create a 496 00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:14,560 Speaker 1: better vacuum and create a better seal as well. And 497 00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:18,400 Speaker 1: he also experimented with cathodes and anodes, and he noticed 498 00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:22,360 Speaker 1: that there was a dark space very close to the cathode. 499 00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:24,680 Speaker 1: In fact, they called it the cathode dark space, or 500 00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:27,560 Speaker 1: sometimes the Faraday dark space, or sometimes even the Crooks 501 00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:31,680 Speaker 1: dark space. But this arc would start but just between 502 00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:33,480 Speaker 1: the arc and the cathode, the would be this little 503 00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,480 Speaker 1: dark segment. And he noticed that as he was able 504 00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:38,800 Speaker 1: to create a better vacuum, as he was able to 505 00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:43,880 Speaker 1: pump out more air, each successive tube would have a 506 00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:48,000 Speaker 1: longer dark space. So the dark space would be wider 507 00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:51,320 Speaker 1: from the cathode to the anode until you got to 508 00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,240 Speaker 1: a point where you essentially had a real vacuum inside 509 00:30:54,280 --> 00:30:58,320 Speaker 1: the tube, and the tube itself was completely dark except 510 00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:03,360 Speaker 1: for the very end or the anode was. So here's 511 00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:06,400 Speaker 1: what was happening that people didn't really know at the time. 512 00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:10,760 Speaker 1: The cathode is shooting out electrons. That's the negative end, right, 513 00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,000 Speaker 1: and the electrons are attracted to the anode because that's 514 00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:18,560 Speaker 1: the positive end. Remember, opposite charges attract, So electrons have 515 00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,840 Speaker 1: a negative charge. You have this positively charged anode. The 516 00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:25,920 Speaker 1: electron quote unquote wants to get across that tube as 517 00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,760 Speaker 1: fast as possible to get to that positive charge. Now, 518 00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:34,040 Speaker 1: in Faraday's tubes, there were still, comparatively speaking, quite a 519 00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,200 Speaker 1: bit of air inside the tubes, so the electrons would 520 00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,360 Speaker 1: collide with air molecules on their way to getting to 521 00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:44,880 Speaker 1: the anode. As they collided with molecules, they would excite 522 00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:48,760 Speaker 1: atoms in those molecules. The atoms would end up having 523 00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:51,920 Speaker 1: their electrons pushed to a higher energy state, and then 524 00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:57,200 Speaker 1: almost immediately those electrons would return to their initial energy state. 525 00:31:57,280 --> 00:32:00,080 Speaker 1: But they had to give up energy in order to 526 00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,200 Speaker 1: do that. Right, It's kind of like you suddenly are 527 00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:06,280 Speaker 1: filled with the power of popeye after eating spinach, but 528 00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,680 Speaker 1: then immediately that strength goes away from you. But the 529 00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:13,000 Speaker 1: strength has to go somewhere. You can't just destroy energy. 530 00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:16,200 Speaker 1: So with these atoms, they would give up energy in 531 00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,680 Speaker 1: the form of light and also heat, but we're mainly 532 00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,160 Speaker 1: concerned with light, and so that was the arc that 533 00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:25,040 Speaker 1: Faraday was seeing. He was seeing an arc because these 534 00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:29,959 Speaker 1: electrons were very quickly colliding with uh atoms inside the tube, 535 00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:34,600 Speaker 1: and that was creating this arc of light. Now Geisler, 536 00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:38,160 Speaker 1: he was able to pump out more air, so the 537 00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:41,240 Speaker 1: electrons were going a little further and not colliding quite 538 00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:43,640 Speaker 1: as frequently. You got more of a mellow glow with 539 00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:47,880 Speaker 1: Geisler because it wasn't there wasn't quite as many atoms 540 00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:50,400 Speaker 1: to collide with. By the time you get to Crooks, 541 00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:53,640 Speaker 1: almost all the air is pumped out, so there's very 542 00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:56,360 Speaker 1: little for electrons to collide with. Most of the time 543 00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:58,640 Speaker 1: they were going straight toward the anode, and some of 544 00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,040 Speaker 1: them were going past the annode and colliding with the 545 00:33:01,160 --> 00:33:04,360 Speaker 1: very end of the tube, and those were the atoms 546 00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,320 Speaker 1: at the end of the tube itself that were fluorescing. 547 00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,680 Speaker 1: So with Crooks tubes, you would see that the very 548 00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:14,200 Speaker 1: very end was glowing, but the rest of it was dark, 549 00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:17,560 Speaker 1: and that's because there were no atoms for the electrons 550 00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,080 Speaker 1: to collide with, so you couldn't create that light in 551 00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:26,360 Speaker 1: the first place. Uh. It was it was this that 552 00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:31,880 Speaker 1: really ends up being the the secret sauce to electronic 553 00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:35,320 Speaker 1: televisions further down the road. So we'll talk more about 554 00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:41,680 Speaker 1: this in the next episode. So you then have to 555 00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:43,880 Speaker 1: talk about a couple of other people before I move 556 00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:48,120 Speaker 1: on from these vacuum tubes, because they were the ones 557 00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:53,600 Speaker 1: who kind of put the pieces together. You have Johan Hitorf, 558 00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:56,040 Speaker 1: who was a German physicist. He figured out in eighteen 559 00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:58,760 Speaker 1: sixty nine that something had to be traveling from the 560 00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:01,560 Speaker 1: cathode in a straight line in order to do this, 561 00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,640 Speaker 1: and so he was the one who described what must 562 00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,479 Speaker 1: be happening in these tubes. The others had observed it 563 00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:10,080 Speaker 1: and they thought it was interesting. Hittorf was the one 564 00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:12,080 Speaker 1: who was kind of putting words to it. And then 565 00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:15,000 Speaker 1: there was a guy named Eugen Goldstein who would give 566 00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:20,520 Speaker 1: this something that Hittorf had proposed an actual name. And 567 00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:24,560 Speaker 1: Goldstein called it cathode raise because it was coming from 568 00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,400 Speaker 1: the cathode at the end of this tube and shooting 569 00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:31,759 Speaker 1: out in a straight line out the end of the 570 00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:34,480 Speaker 1: tube on the opposite side, on the anode side, and 571 00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:36,479 Speaker 1: we kept on going in a straight line. So he said, 572 00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,200 Speaker 1: we're gonna call these cathode rays. They are raised that 573 00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:42,800 Speaker 1: move out from the cathode. And it would be German 574 00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:47,000 Speaker 1: inventor Carl Ferdinand Brown, who are brawn, I guess I 575 00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,440 Speaker 1: should say who would end up building the first actual 576 00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:54,680 Speaker 1: cathode ray tube with that purpose in mind, And that 577 00:34:54,719 --> 00:34:58,680 Speaker 1: would not happen until eight seven. So when we talk 578 00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:03,000 Speaker 1: about cathode ray to televisions, this is what we're talking about. 579 00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:06,000 Speaker 1: These cathode ray tubes, These these vacuum tubes that would 580 00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:09,799 Speaker 1: shoot out electrons. The rays that we're talking about are 581 00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:15,200 Speaker 1: really electron streams. You know. Ray sounds cool, but it's 582 00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:17,680 Speaker 1: funny that we kept the name, even after we increased 583 00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:21,239 Speaker 1: our understanding of what was actually happening. But yeah, we're 584 00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:23,719 Speaker 1: really just talking about streams of electrons moving at of 585 00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:27,000 Speaker 1: extreme velocities in a vacuum. It's pretty nifty and we'll 586 00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:30,000 Speaker 1: we'll talk more about them in our next episode. So 587 00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,040 Speaker 1: let's get back to talking about electricity and electro magnetism. 588 00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:36,480 Speaker 1: The early work with electricity got some other smarty, pant 589 00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:41,319 Speaker 1: tight people thinking about practical applications because a lot of 590 00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:44,719 Speaker 1: this was experimental work, but you couldn't really do much 591 00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,040 Speaker 1: with it in the early days. And one of those 592 00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:50,080 Speaker 1: early applications was for long distance communications. And that's when 593 00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:53,759 Speaker 1: you've got people like Samuel Morse, Sir William Cook, Sir 594 00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:58,319 Speaker 1: Charles Wheatstone, Leonard Gayl, and Alfred Vale working on a 595 00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:02,360 Speaker 1: means of using electricity to send information to distant locations. 596 00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:05,240 Speaker 1: And in the last couple of decades of the nineteenth century, 597 00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:09,719 Speaker 1: inventors began to suspect that they could transmit telegraphs, which 598 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:12,680 Speaker 1: is what that other group of gentlemen came up with. 599 00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:16,040 Speaker 1: They came up with the way of sending telegraphs across wires. 600 00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:18,560 Speaker 1: There are some people towards the end of the nineteenth 601 00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:20,839 Speaker 1: century who said, I bet we can do this wirelessly. 602 00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:25,759 Speaker 1: James Clerk Maxwell proposed a theory of electromagnetism in the 603 00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:30,320 Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, and gave a more thorough explanation about electromagnetic 604 00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:34,879 Speaker 1: waves in the eighteen seventies, including the hypothesis that light 605 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:38,520 Speaker 1: itself was a type of electromagnetic wave, which we now 606 00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:41,239 Speaker 1: know is true, although light can behave both as a 607 00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:45,520 Speaker 1: wave and a particle. But that's that's a level of 608 00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:48,560 Speaker 1: quantum physics we don't need to get into right now. Meanwhile, 609 00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:51,400 Speaker 1: inventors were coming up with new ways to send information 610 00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:54,120 Speaker 1: through electrical lines. You had Alexander Bain who was a 611 00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:57,680 Speaker 1: Scottish inventor, and he devised a method to transmit images 612 00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:01,680 Speaker 1: over telegraph lines. The blows my mind that he could 613 00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:05,800 Speaker 1: actually send an image using telegraph lines using his invention 614 00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,680 Speaker 1: called the pan telegraph, which is kind of like the 615 00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:12,200 Speaker 1: great grand daddy of today's fax machine, or I guess 616 00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:17,320 Speaker 1: yesterday's fax machine. Hardly anyone still uses fax machines. Anyway, 617 00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:18,760 Speaker 1: I got to talk about this thing because it blows 618 00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:20,400 Speaker 1: my mind that someone figured out how to do this 619 00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:25,000 Speaker 1: all the way back in eighteen forty three. So this 620 00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:29,000 Speaker 1: pan telegraph was a cylinder made out of a non 621 00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:34,040 Speaker 1: conductive material, meaning it will not conduct electricity. And then 622 00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:36,120 Speaker 1: what you would do is you would put metal pins 623 00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:40,840 Speaker 1: which could conduct electricity into the cylinder and think of 624 00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:43,840 Speaker 1: it kind of like an old light bright, although I 625 00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:45,480 Speaker 1: don't know how many of you know what a light 626 00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:48,239 Speaker 1: bright is. It's a toy from the nineteen eighties and 627 00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:52,640 Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. Anyway, battleship. Think of battleship where you 628 00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:54,560 Speaker 1: put the little pegs in. It's kind of like that. 629 00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:58,359 Speaker 1: You're putting these pins inside this uh, this cylinder really 630 00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:01,440 Speaker 1: sticking out from the cylinder, and you arrange them to 631 00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,759 Speaker 1: make a shape or a word or whatever, and you 632 00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:08,200 Speaker 1: rotate the cylinder along with an electric probe, or you 633 00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:11,600 Speaker 1: have the electricbe probe probing the cylinder and picking up 634 00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:14,960 Speaker 1: the presence of those pins, and that would end up 635 00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:17,920 Speaker 1: allowing an electric current to pass through a telegraph. You 636 00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:21,400 Speaker 1: would have a receiver that would apply a current to 637 00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:25,839 Speaker 1: an electrochemically sensitive paper and reproduce the image. So when 638 00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:29,520 Speaker 1: an electric current touches the paper, the paper would change color. 639 00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:32,480 Speaker 1: The idea being that wherever there was a pen the 640 00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:37,000 Speaker 1: paper's color will change because it's also on a cylinder 641 00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:39,440 Speaker 1: that's rotating at the same speed as the one you're 642 00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:43,479 Speaker 1: using to send the message. But his invention was really 643 00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:46,600 Speaker 1: problematic because he had trouble finding way to synchronize the 644 00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:50,759 Speaker 1: two cylinders. If one cylinder is turning at let's say, 645 00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:54,279 Speaker 1: five revolutions per minute and the other one's turning at 646 00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:57,560 Speaker 1: fifteen revolutions per minute, the image you get is not 647 00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:00,799 Speaker 1: going to represent what you actually scan. You have to 648 00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:03,880 Speaker 1: have them both synchronized properly, so you would end up 649 00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:07,520 Speaker 1: getting these very blurry images. However, his idea was incredible 650 00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:11,520 Speaker 1: for eighteen forty three. Then you had Giovanni Cassell in 651 00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:14,880 Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two created the next generation pan telegraph, and 652 00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:17,800 Speaker 1: this one was about two meters tall, which is about 653 00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:20,799 Speaker 1: six and a half feet tall. It looked a lot 654 00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:25,279 Speaker 1: like a compass um, not the navigational tool, but rather 655 00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:28,200 Speaker 1: a pair of compasses, like a graphic designer or an 656 00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:31,239 Speaker 1: architect might use. And to send a message, you would 657 00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:33,800 Speaker 1: write something on a sheet of paper. It was often 658 00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,719 Speaker 1: tried to use anyway for signature verification for things like 659 00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,320 Speaker 1: bank transactions, So you write something on a sheet using 660 00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:45,600 Speaker 1: um a non conductive ink, and the sheet itself would 661 00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:49,279 Speaker 1: be made out of tin, So using non conductive ink 662 00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:52,120 Speaker 1: to cover up the tin. Then you would have a 663 00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,360 Speaker 1: stylus on this pan telegraph device which would move across 664 00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,600 Speaker 1: the tin sheet and it would send an electric signal 665 00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:03,040 Speaker 1: to a receiver to a telegraph that was then attached 666 00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:06,279 Speaker 1: to a receiver telegraph wire, I should say, so the 667 00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:10,120 Speaker 1: partner device would print the scanned image, laying down inc 668 00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:13,560 Speaker 1: in the places where the gaps in conductivity were. So remember, 669 00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,080 Speaker 1: whenever the probe is going over this non conductive ink, 670 00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:20,839 Speaker 1: it cannot send electric current. So it's at that point 671 00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:23,640 Speaker 1: where the receiver says, this is where ink should go 672 00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:29,040 Speaker 1: because there's an interruption in that current. Uh. They He 673 00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:32,320 Speaker 1: also included regulating clocks and pendulums to keep the devices 674 00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:34,560 Speaker 1: in sync with one another, so he could avoid the 675 00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:38,279 Speaker 1: problems as predecessor had encountered, which is pretty nifty. But 676 00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:40,680 Speaker 1: it wasn't really good at producing anything of high resolution, 677 00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:42,960 Speaker 1: so it wasn't incredibly popular. But still it was eighteen 678 00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:47,560 Speaker 1: sixty two. The US Civil War was happening at that time. Now, 679 00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:50,520 Speaker 1: by the eighteen eighties you had physicists named Heinrich Hurtz, 680 00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:55,280 Speaker 1: who devised experiments to test Maxwell's theories on electro magnetism, 681 00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:57,759 Speaker 1: and he used spark gaps to test the presence of 682 00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:02,000 Speaker 1: electromagnetic waves. So unpowered spark gap would act kind of 683 00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:06,080 Speaker 1: like an antenna and convert electro magnetic waves into electricity, 684 00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:09,720 Speaker 1: which would result in a spark. But Hurts didn't envision 685 00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:13,960 Speaker 1: really a use for this. He he was using the 686 00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:17,759 Speaker 1: approach to test a theory, and he thought, that's that's 687 00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:19,920 Speaker 1: all it's good for. We'll never We'll never have a 688 00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:23,760 Speaker 1: practical application for this, as far as he was concerned, Hurts, 689 00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:28,800 Speaker 1: don't it. So many people took the work that scientists 690 00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:31,759 Speaker 1: had done and they ended up creating or tried to 691 00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:35,200 Speaker 1: create practical applications of that knowledge. You had people like 692 00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:39,120 Speaker 1: Nikola Tesla. You had a yangaish Chandra bos You had 693 00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:45,439 Speaker 1: Roberto Landel Domuera. You had Alexander Stefanovitch I should say 694 00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:47,760 Speaker 1: that was his last name was Popov. You had Julio 695 00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:52,400 Speaker 1: Servera Baviera. You had Marconi. You had a lot of 696 00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,240 Speaker 1: people from all over the world. This was something where 697 00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:59,480 Speaker 1: it wasn't like one area of the globe had the 698 00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:02,640 Speaker 1: constant traded efforts and you could point to that it 699 00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:07,279 Speaker 1: was a worldwide kind of phenomenon. Uh. And eventually this 700 00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:10,279 Speaker 1: led to the invention of radio. And while the transmission 701 00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,600 Speaker 1: of audio information was impressive, even as it was just 702 00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:15,880 Speaker 1: getting off the ground, there were engineers who were dreaming 703 00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,560 Speaker 1: of doing something they thought was even more challenging, which 704 00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:23,200 Speaker 1: was using electricity and electromagnetism to transmit pictures and more 705 00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:26,759 Speaker 1: than that, moving pictures, so not just a scan of 706 00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:30,920 Speaker 1: an image, but actual moving images. So an early component 707 00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:36,760 Speaker 1: to transmitting moving pictures with electricity was selenium. Selenium's an element. 708 00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:40,000 Speaker 1: It's number thirty four on the periodic table. You can 709 00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:44,520 Speaker 1: all get your periodic tables out now. Uh. Selenium is 710 00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:49,200 Speaker 1: really interesting stuff. It's a non metal. It was first 711 00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:55,920 Speaker 1: discovered by John's Jacob Berzelius or yawns Jakob Berzelius, if 712 00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,920 Speaker 1: you prefer the more correct pronunciation. It was a chemist 713 00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:03,439 Speaker 1: in Sweden. And I'm still sure I mispronounced his name. 714 00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,799 Speaker 1: That's gonna continuously happen, by the way, I understand, and 715 00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:09,840 Speaker 1: it's no disrespect, it's merely my ignorance on how to 716 00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:16,320 Speaker 1: pronounce names that aren't Jonathan anyway, h he discovered selenium 717 00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,400 Speaker 1: in eighteen seventeen, and he wasn't even looking for it, 718 00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:21,319 Speaker 1: or rather, he was looking for something, but he didn't 719 00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:23,960 Speaker 1: know it was selenium. He was actually looking to track 720 00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,200 Speaker 1: down an impurity that was being produced in a factory 721 00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,040 Speaker 1: that was making sulfuric acid. So he knew that there 722 00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:31,880 Speaker 1: was a s impurity present, but he wasn't sure what 723 00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:33,960 Speaker 1: it was. And once he found it, he realized he 724 00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:40,279 Speaker 1: was looking at a at that point undiscovered element. Uh. 725 00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:43,560 Speaker 1: What Brazilius did not know, and no one else really 726 00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,719 Speaker 1: knew it for another sixty years, was that selenium has 727 00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:51,239 Speaker 1: a really interesting relationship with light and with electricity. And 728 00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,840 Speaker 1: in the dark, selenium has a pretty high resistance to 729 00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:56,959 Speaker 1: the flow of current through it. So a dark piece 730 00:43:56,960 --> 00:43:59,400 Speaker 1: of selenium doesn't allow current to flow very easily. But 731 00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:03,840 Speaker 1: if you shine light on selenium, its resistance to the 732 00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:09,760 Speaker 1: flow electronic electric current rather decreases, light facilitates electricity flowing 733 00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:13,960 Speaker 1: through the material. Willoughby Smith discovered this feature of selenium, 734 00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,479 Speaker 1: and his discovery led to the application of selenium as 735 00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:21,000 Speaker 1: a light sensing components, So a lot of light sensors 736 00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:25,359 Speaker 1: have selenium in them. Measuring a change in resistance would 737 00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:29,120 Speaker 1: indicate the presence of light. So if you have something 738 00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:32,040 Speaker 1: that's essentially acting as a resistor and you're able to 739 00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:35,080 Speaker 1: measure how well it performs as a resistor and you 740 00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:38,160 Speaker 1: can see when it dips, that would be an indication 741 00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:42,080 Speaker 1: that light was shining on the selenium photo cell. And 742 00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:44,880 Speaker 1: it was later discovered that selenium will transmit an electric 743 00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,239 Speaker 1: current proportional to the intensity of light hitting it. So 744 00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:52,680 Speaker 1: the brighter the light, the stronger the electric current. Dimm 745 00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:56,600 Speaker 1: or light would produce less powerful electric current. Now, together 746 00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,680 Speaker 1: with Joseph May, he was responsible for this discovery of 747 00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:04,280 Speaker 1: photo o conductivity. In eighteen seventy seven, a civil servant 748 00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:07,520 Speaker 1: from Boston named George Carey submitted drawings for a new 749 00:45:07,560 --> 00:45:11,200 Speaker 1: invention called a selenium camera, and it was meant to 750 00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:15,120 Speaker 1: allow people to see by electricity. And that same year 751 00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:18,080 Speaker 1: that was when Eugen gold Sign created the term cathode 752 00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:22,640 Speaker 1: raise and that was to describe that ray effect of 753 00:45:23,120 --> 00:45:26,520 Speaker 1: the vacuum tubes with electric current passing through it. In 754 00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:31,840 Speaker 1: eight one, Sheldon or Shelford, depending upon whom you ask, Bidwell, 755 00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:36,360 Speaker 1: who was an inventor from England, created his scanning photo telegraph, 756 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:40,080 Speaker 1: which used a selenium photo cell inside a rotating cylinder. 757 00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:42,960 Speaker 1: So the cylinder had a small hole which would allow 758 00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:45,279 Speaker 1: light to pass through it, and you would put an 759 00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:48,279 Speaker 1: image on a glass slide and use a lot of 760 00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:51,640 Speaker 1: bright light to illuminate the glass slide, and you would 761 00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:55,080 Speaker 1: rotate the cylinder so light would sometimes be able to 762 00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,440 Speaker 1: come through this hole and touch the selenium, and then 763 00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,719 Speaker 1: you would move the cylinders that you can scan the 764 00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:06,160 Speaker 1: entire image, so little bits of light are hitting the 765 00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:11,000 Speaker 1: selenium as the hole comes around, and that was how 766 00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:16,280 Speaker 1: you were able to scan an actual image there Um. 767 00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:21,080 Speaker 1: You would then use electrochemically sensitive paper inside this cylinder, 768 00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,120 Speaker 1: and as the current varied from the selenium due to 769 00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:27,399 Speaker 1: the scanned image, it would cause that electrochemically sensitive ink 770 00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:30,440 Speaker 1: to change color and that would recreate the scanned image. 771 00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:33,440 Speaker 1: So this was one of the earliest uses of selenium 772 00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:36,840 Speaker 1: to transmit optical image via electric current, but it was 773 00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:41,319 Speaker 1: not the last one. All Right, we're ready to take 774 00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:43,960 Speaker 1: another quick break. When we come back, we're going to 775 00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:48,359 Speaker 1: get to the actual point of mechanical televisions, which are 776 00:46:48,400 --> 00:47:01,360 Speaker 1: super cool. But first a quick word from our sponsor. Alright, 777 00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:05,120 Speaker 1: so how do you go from transmitting still images to 778 00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:09,680 Speaker 1: transmitting a moving image. Bidwell thought that it would be possible, 779 00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:13,560 Speaker 1: but only if you had a massive machine that had 780 00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:17,320 Speaker 1: a circuit dedicated to breaking down pictures into individual components 781 00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:22,040 Speaker 1: and capable of replicating that at a very rapid pace. 782 00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:26,120 Speaker 1: And since circuits in those days were enormous, you know, 783 00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:28,960 Speaker 1: this was before the invention of the transistor, this was 784 00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:33,160 Speaker 1: the vacuum tube era, it meant that it would be 785 00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:37,400 Speaker 1: prohibitively large. This would be such a big device that 786 00:47:37,520 --> 00:47:40,239 Speaker 1: it would not make sense to build it. And then 787 00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:42,680 Speaker 1: there were the challenges of making sure that the sending 788 00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:46,600 Speaker 1: station and receiving station are in synchronization with one another, 789 00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,040 Speaker 1: so that you would get an image that makes sense 790 00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:52,279 Speaker 1: and not just a big jumble of visual data that 791 00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:56,280 Speaker 1: doesn't make anything meaningful. Think of something like static almost 792 00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:59,880 Speaker 1: or really scrambled image. That would have been a problem 793 00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:03,919 Speaker 1: if you couldn't get the synchronization just right. And then 794 00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:07,720 Speaker 1: came Paul nip Caw who was a German engineering student, 795 00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:09,000 Speaker 1: and he was the one who came up with the 796 00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:13,840 Speaker 1: clever idea which he patented in four to create a 797 00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:18,799 Speaker 1: synchronized system for the mechanical transmission of moving images. Dip 798 00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:21,359 Speaker 1: Kel solved the synchronization problem by using a pair of 799 00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:25,200 Speaker 1: spinning disks. So think of these big metal disks that 800 00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:28,480 Speaker 1: you would put on an axle like a wheel, and 801 00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:33,440 Speaker 1: along the edge you had pinholes punched through this disk 802 00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:39,440 Speaker 1: in a sort of spiral shape around the outside. You 803 00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:42,960 Speaker 1: would align the two disks perfectly. One would be in 804 00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:45,360 Speaker 1: the sending station, one would be in the receiving station, 805 00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:47,640 Speaker 1: so they'd be aligned so their orientation is the same, 806 00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:50,960 Speaker 1: and you would rotate them at the same speed. This 807 00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:55,480 Speaker 1: was all important for synchronization. The receiving station would essentially 808 00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:59,200 Speaker 1: be what ultimately became a television set, and that's how 809 00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,880 Speaker 1: you would set us up. And the pinholes were essentially 810 00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:05,560 Speaker 1: lenses that would allow light through. So on the the 811 00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:09,920 Speaker 1: camera side, the capturing side, you'd have a really brightly 812 00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:12,960 Speaker 1: lit scene, and it needed to be very bright to 813 00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:17,160 Speaker 1: send enough information to Selenium. Light would be hitting the 814 00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:20,920 Speaker 1: spinning disk. Behind the spinning disc, you would have a 815 00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,560 Speaker 1: Selenium Selenium photo cell. So lights coming through these little 816 00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:28,640 Speaker 1: dots and hitting the Selenium photo cell cell would then 817 00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:31,360 Speaker 1: generate a difference in voltage, which would induce current to 818 00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:35,640 Speaker 1: flow through a wire. That wire would go over to 819 00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:39,200 Speaker 1: a neon lamp. Now, as the disc spun UH, it 820 00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:41,880 Speaker 1: would allow light to hit the selenium kind of like 821 00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:45,920 Speaker 1: a scanner. That was the purpose for that spiraling shape 822 00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:50,319 Speaker 1: of the penholes was to create a distribution so that 823 00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,439 Speaker 1: it's like moving a scanner across an image. In this case, 824 00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:56,840 Speaker 1: you're having the scanner turn and turn and turn for 825 00:49:56,880 --> 00:50:01,000 Speaker 1: a moving image. So on that television that end UH, 826 00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:03,960 Speaker 1: the current from the selenium cell would feed into a 827 00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:07,239 Speaker 1: neon lamp and that would light up with an intensity 828 00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:10,200 Speaker 1: that was proportionate to the strength of the current. So 829 00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:14,000 Speaker 1: a bright light hits the selenium cell, it generates a 830 00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:16,960 Speaker 1: strong current that would generate a bright light in the 831 00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:21,839 Speaker 1: neon lamp. UH. A dim light hitting the selenium cell 832 00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:25,360 Speaker 1: would generate a less powerful current, so the lamp wouldn't 833 00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:29,480 Speaker 1: light up as brightly. Then you would also have a 834 00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:32,040 Speaker 1: spinning disk on the other side of the neon lamp 835 00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:36,480 Speaker 1: on the television side, and through that light would pass 836 00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:39,960 Speaker 1: until it hit the screen for this device, which is 837 00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:41,799 Speaker 1: what you would be looking at, and you'd be looking 838 00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:43,839 Speaker 1: at the front side of the screen, the lights having 839 00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:47,040 Speaker 1: the backside of the screen, and you would be able 840 00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:51,200 Speaker 1: to see a moving image. In theory, each rotation of 841 00:50:51,239 --> 00:50:55,279 Speaker 1: the disk represented a frame of motion. So remember we 842 00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:57,920 Speaker 1: talked with film about twenty four frames a second. You 843 00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,319 Speaker 1: would have to rotate the disk twenty four times in 844 00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:03,400 Speaker 1: a second to replicate the frames that you would find 845 00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:07,840 Speaker 1: in film. Although the mechanical television's the early ones anyway, 846 00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:10,400 Speaker 1: did not rotate at so fast as speed. It was 847 00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,360 Speaker 1: more like about half of that. And it was a 848 00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:18,920 Speaker 1: revolutionary idea, which I guess is a partially intended pun. Anyway, 849 00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,480 Speaker 1: revolutionary or not, there's a lack of evidence that nip 850 00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:24,919 Speaker 1: Cal ever actually built one of these things. If he had, 851 00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:27,800 Speaker 1: he would have seen that there were some real challenges 852 00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:31,799 Speaker 1: to his design. For example, he had no amplifiers in 853 00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:36,040 Speaker 1: his design. He just had a Selenium photo cell and 854 00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:39,520 Speaker 1: a spinning disk on one side, and a neon lamp 855 00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:42,239 Speaker 1: and another spinning disk on another side, but no way 856 00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:45,920 Speaker 1: to amplify the signal from the selenium cell, and the 857 00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:49,120 Speaker 1: signal just wasn't very strong. So chances are if you 858 00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:52,960 Speaker 1: had built a design based off nip Kel's initial approach, 859 00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:55,920 Speaker 1: the image would be so dark and blurry that you 860 00:51:55,920 --> 00:51:58,640 Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be able to make out very much going 861 00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:03,040 Speaker 1: on unless you had an incredibly brightly lit scene on 862 00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:06,120 Speaker 1: the other side, something so bright that would probably be 863 00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:10,239 Speaker 1: painful to look on at the actual filming location, so 864 00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:12,080 Speaker 1: that you could get something that would show up enough 865 00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:16,239 Speaker 1: at the television set. Also, there was no sound, There 866 00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:18,960 Speaker 1: was no way to transmit sound with this methodology. It 867 00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:22,880 Speaker 1: was just for the moving images. Uh. But it was 868 00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:27,359 Speaker 1: a pretty cool notion, and other people took note of it. 869 00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:31,080 Speaker 1: So we're also finally at the point where someone actually 870 00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:35,720 Speaker 1: uses the word television for the first time. This would 871 00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:42,439 Speaker 1: be Constantine dmitro vic Persky, who was a fellow who 872 00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:44,400 Speaker 1: coined the term in a paper he presented at the 873 00:52:44,400 --> 00:52:48,120 Speaker 1: World's Fair in Paris in nineteen hundred and he referenced 874 00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:51,759 Speaker 1: people working on transmitting moving images with electricity, including nip Cal. 875 00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:55,080 Speaker 1: He mentioned nip Cal by name. So even though this 876 00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:58,359 Speaker 1: was a silent TV, I mean silent ish, I bet 877 00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:01,759 Speaker 1: you could probably hear the disks on the inside, it 878 00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:07,080 Speaker 1: was something that was getting worldwide attention. Now, two different 879 00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:09,719 Speaker 1: inventors working in different parts of the world at the 880 00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:13,000 Speaker 1: same time, independently of each other, we're able to create 881 00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:17,439 Speaker 1: a working device based in part off of Nipkov's nip 882 00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:21,040 Speaker 1: Call's work. One of those was Charles Francis Jenkins, who 883 00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:24,200 Speaker 1: was an American inventor, and the other was John Logi Baird, 884 00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:29,520 Speaker 1: a Scottish inventor. And they each independently created this work. 885 00:53:29,560 --> 00:53:32,319 Speaker 1: So they weren't they weren't talking to each other, they 886 00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:34,440 Speaker 1: weren't copying each other's work. This was that one of 887 00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:40,200 Speaker 1: those examples of two different people arriving at similar conclusions. Uh, 888 00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:43,440 Speaker 1: just because it was the right time for that to happen, 889 00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:50,200 Speaker 1: enough of the groundwork had been laid for this to follow. Now, 890 00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:53,280 Speaker 1: Jenkins had already had some experience bringing motion to screens 891 00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:56,600 Speaker 1: because he invented the motion picture projector, And I'll probably 892 00:53:56,680 --> 00:53:58,239 Speaker 1: end up talking a lot more about him in a 893 00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:00,640 Speaker 1: future episode of tech Stuff if I tell about motion 894 00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:04,080 Speaker 1: picture projectors in particular. As for his work with television, 895 00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:06,719 Speaker 1: he was able to use a Nipkel disc arrangement to 896 00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:09,759 Speaker 1: transmit the image of a silhouette to a receiver in 897 00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:12,719 Speaker 1: a separate room back in nineteen two. So he set 898 00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:16,240 Speaker 1: up a filming location in one room, a reception location 899 00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:18,920 Speaker 1: in another room. But all you could see was the 900 00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:22,799 Speaker 1: silhouette that was clearly moving so it was impressive, but 901 00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:29,960 Speaker 1: not really high fidelity. Two years later, Bared was able 902 00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:33,240 Speaker 1: to transmit moving images using a homemade setup that included, 903 00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:38,000 Speaker 1: among other things, a coffin board, as in a flat 904 00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:42,520 Speaker 1: board that undertakers would use to move bodies around. But wait, 905 00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:45,360 Speaker 1: it gets way more creepy than just a coffin board, 906 00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,759 Speaker 1: way more creepy with Bared because he also, as one 907 00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:51,920 Speaker 1: of his early subjects for this type of television, used 908 00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:56,799 Speaker 1: a Ventriloquist dummy head, which he named stooky Bill. If 909 00:54:56,840 --> 00:55:00,759 Speaker 1: you want to have nightmares, google image search stookey Bill. 910 00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:06,520 Speaker 1: That's s t o o k y Bill. Now, the 911 00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:09,480 Speaker 1: reason he used of Ventriloquist dummy head is because no 912 00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:13,239 Speaker 1: human being wanted to actually sit through the process of 913 00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:15,839 Speaker 1: being filmed by his setup. And the reason is that 914 00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:19,839 Speaker 1: you still needed very bright light for that selenium cell 915 00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,880 Speaker 1: to generate enough electric current to be received on the 916 00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:26,839 Speaker 1: other end. So the scenes were incredibly brightly lit and 917 00:55:26,920 --> 00:55:30,920 Speaker 1: the lightbulbs that were being used were very very hot, 918 00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:34,400 Speaker 1: So it was incredibly uncomfortable being under a brightly lit 919 00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:37,960 Speaker 1: scene while being shot on camera. As someone who has 920 00:55:38,520 --> 00:55:43,080 Speaker 1: done very very many on camera appearances, I can tell 921 00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:46,319 Speaker 1: you this is still a problem, though not nearly as 922 00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:50,879 Speaker 1: hot as it was back in Baird's day, but still uncomfortable. 923 00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:54,640 Speaker 1: So you had Bair doing this work, you had Jenkins 924 00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:57,879 Speaker 1: doing the work in the US, both independently of each other, 925 00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,880 Speaker 1: and they were both getting a lot of attention. Around 926 00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:04,120 Speaker 1: that same time, Baird was showing off his invention UH 927 00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:08,840 Speaker 1: he made the first transatlantic television broadcast and used shortwave 928 00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:12,239 Speaker 1: radio to do it. And meanwhile, Jenkins was working on 929 00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:16,200 Speaker 1: his design in by applied for and received an experimental 930 00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:19,200 Speaker 1: license from the US Federal Radio Commission, which was a 931 00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:22,200 Speaker 1: predecessor to the f c C, and he created a 932 00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:26,120 Speaker 1: company called the Jenkins Television Corporation. He used shortwave radio 933 00:56:26,120 --> 00:56:29,840 Speaker 1: transmissions to send what he called radio movies at forty 934 00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:36,080 Speaker 1: eight lines of resolution forty eight it's not very many, 935 00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:40,759 Speaker 1: and at fifteen frames a second. Baird was also using 936 00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:42,839 Speaker 1: shortwave radio. Like I said, he had done the first 937 00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:47,120 Speaker 1: transatlantic broadcast, and he also added another element to his invention, 938 00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:50,200 Speaker 1: which was a color wheel. The color wheel would spin 939 00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:53,480 Speaker 1: and give images color, and even toyed with the idea 940 00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:55,879 Speaker 1: of three D television. So he's way ahead of his time. 941 00:56:56,480 --> 00:56:58,520 Speaker 1: It would be a long time before we would see 942 00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:02,360 Speaker 1: color television enter the electronic TV world, but in the 943 00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:06,160 Speaker 1: mechanical TV TV world it was there pretty early. So 944 00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:09,520 Speaker 1: Jenkins was transmitting at forty eight lines of resolution. Bears 945 00:57:09,520 --> 00:57:12,920 Speaker 1: transmissions were actually even lower resolution, they were at thirty lines, 946 00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:15,680 Speaker 1: and he even transmitted at a lower frame rate of 947 00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:18,720 Speaker 1: twelve point five frames per second, which is pretty much 948 00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:22,040 Speaker 1: the bare minimum you would want to get an animation 949 00:57:22,120 --> 00:57:26,520 Speaker 1: like effect without it being too jerky and unsettling. He 950 00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:29,160 Speaker 1: worked with the British Broadcasting Company, you know, the BBC, 951 00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:33,480 Speaker 1: with whom he had a rather contentious relationship, but it's 952 00:57:33,480 --> 00:57:36,400 Speaker 1: set a strong precedent for creators further down the road, 953 00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:39,000 Speaker 1: many of whom would find operation with the BBC to 954 00:57:39,040 --> 00:57:41,880 Speaker 1: be almost but not quite completely in opposition of lngland 955 00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:44,840 Speaker 1: get their jobs done. That might be a little bit 956 00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:48,600 Speaker 1: of biased commentary for my part, to be fair, the 957 00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:51,120 Speaker 1: BBC has done some things that I think most people 958 00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:56,600 Speaker 1: consider ridiculous, for example, wiping tapes that were the only 959 00:57:57,320 --> 00:58:01,320 Speaker 1: known existing copies of some of the or programming, so 960 00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:05,920 Speaker 1: we've lost entire seasons of television shows because they wanted 961 00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:08,600 Speaker 1: to reuse the tapes that they had instead of buying 962 00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:12,560 Speaker 1: new ones, but I digress. Jenkins also went on to 963 00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:16,320 Speaker 1: incorporate sound in his transmissions, but he did in a 964 00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:18,520 Speaker 1: really weird way, or at least we would consider it 965 00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:22,840 Speaker 1: weird today. He didn't have enough bandwidth to send both 966 00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:26,920 Speaker 1: sound and video at the same time, so instead you 967 00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:31,640 Speaker 1: would end up getting notifications of when to switch your 968 00:58:31,760 --> 00:58:35,560 Speaker 1: radio on to hear the sound portion of a radio movie, 969 00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:37,800 Speaker 1: and then they would give you a queue win to 970 00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:41,320 Speaker 1: switch over to the visual part of your radio movie, 971 00:58:41,960 --> 00:58:43,960 Speaker 1: and at the end of the visual part you would 972 00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,240 Speaker 1: get a visual cue saying go back to the radio 973 00:58:46,360 --> 00:58:49,080 Speaker 1: part um. So you had to switch back and forth 974 00:58:49,080 --> 00:58:51,560 Speaker 1: between whether you were listening to audio or watching video. 975 00:58:51,720 --> 00:58:56,080 Speaker 1: You couldn't do both simultaneously, which was kind of interesting now. 976 00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:58,480 Speaker 1: Mechanical televisions were on the market for a while and 977 00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:03,000 Speaker 1: thousands of people bought one, but the technology obviously had limitations, 978 00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:06,919 Speaker 1: and the invention of the electronic television made mechanical ones 979 00:59:07,040 --> 00:59:10,480 Speaker 1: obsolete after a short while, although elements of the mechanical 980 00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:14,840 Speaker 1: approach would remain in some forms of electronic transmission for 981 00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:19,240 Speaker 1: a while. For example, uh that moon landing it used 982 00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:25,680 Speaker 1: a color wheel like Baird had done. Pretty incredible inventors 983 00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:28,479 Speaker 1: would use those mechanical color wheels to try and make 984 00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:31,520 Speaker 1: a color television standard. I'll talk more about that in 985 00:59:31,560 --> 00:59:34,520 Speaker 1: the next episode. Ultimately, that did not pan out to 986 00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:37,880 Speaker 1: become the standard, and I'll explain why. It largely has 987 00:59:37,920 --> 00:59:41,600 Speaker 1: to do with one company undercutting all of the competition 988 00:59:41,720 --> 00:59:46,440 Speaker 1: in a really ruthless way. But that's it for this episode. 989 00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:49,240 Speaker 1: So the stage is set for the dramatic rise of 990 00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:53,480 Speaker 1: electronic television and it's a pretty incredible story, complete with 991 00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:57,480 Speaker 1: innovation and drama and quite a bit of backstabbing as 992 00:59:57,520 --> 01:00:00,240 Speaker 1: it turns out. In other words, the invention of TV 993 01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:03,160 Speaker 1: is a lot like a soap opera. Tune in next 994 01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:06,360 Speaker 1: episode to hear more. As for me, it's time to 995 01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:09,000 Speaker 1: sign off for this episode. If you have questions, comments, 996 01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:12,240 Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes, maybe a request for a guest 997 01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:15,120 Speaker 1: to appear on this show, let me know. Write me 998 01:00:15,240 --> 01:00:18,000 Speaker 1: at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or 999 01:00:18,080 --> 01:00:20,880 Speaker 1: drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The show's 1000 01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:24,320 Speaker 1: handle at both is text stuff hs W and I'll 1001 01:00:24,360 --> 01:00:32,600 Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this 1002 01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:35,240 Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works 1003 01:00:35,280 --> 01:00:45,440 Speaker 1: dot com