WEBVTT - The TV Story Part 1 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.240 Give in touch of technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:14.560 stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:19.400 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, senior writer for how stuff 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:22.000 Works dot com, and today I want to tackle a 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:26.000 pretty big topic in tech television. And I'm not talking 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:30.360 about the stuff that goes on TV, but rather TVs themselves. 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:32.680 So where did they come from, how do they work, 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.000 and how have they evolved? And this is going to 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:38.680 be on multi part episode, y'all in fact, and just 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:42.720 brace yourselves because spoiler alert, I am not even going 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:45.880 to get to talk about electronic televisions in part one. 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:50.360 That's how massive a topic this is. Now, these episodes 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:52.960 are probably gonna be fairly similar to one I recorded 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:56.240 with Chris Palette. You might remember him as my original 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.560 co host way back in the old days. Chris and 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.560 I sat down one day to record an episode about 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.800 who invented the radio? And here's the problem. There's not 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.360 really an easy answer to that question. You might shout 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.440 out it was Nikola, Tesla, or it was Marconi, but 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.080 it gets way more complicated than that. And Pallette and I, 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:23.360 after we sat down and recorded a full episode, we 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.280 found ourselves stuck we figured that the episode was a 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:29.960 complete mess. It was a mire as we tried to 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:34.520 explain it. We actually recorded the episode two times because 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:36.600 right after the first attempt, we just kind of sat 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.199 there staring at each other and uh, after a few moments, 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:45.040 I said, you know, we can't release that, right and Palette, 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:50.000 to his credit, said yeah, that was awful. So we 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.040 ended up deciding that the story was just way too 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.240 complicated and it jumped around in different parts of the 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:59.280 world and in different parts of the timeline so much 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.120 that we felt we made it more confusing rather than 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:07.080 explained it. So we went outside of the little alcove 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:08.920 we were in because it wasn't it wasn't in this 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:10.960 building that was in a totally different part of Atlanta 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.280 at the time. And uh. We went to our producer, 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.959 who I believe was Tyler for that particular episode, and 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.200 we told him we had to record it again and 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:25.119 is his heart shrunk three sizes that day, but he 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:29.079 agreed to do it. So we went back, sat down 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.080 and recorded the episode a second time, and that was 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.120 the version that actually published on tech Stuff, And if 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.080 you want to listen to it, you need to do 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.160 a search in the Tech stuff list list on the 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.880 archive and look for who invented the radio. It published 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.920 on April two thousand eleven, and I honestly do not 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.440 know how it holds up after all those years. I 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:55.679 haven't listened to it since we published it. Really. As 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:57.960 for the original episode that we sat down and recorded, 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.160 the one that we thought was terrible, as far as 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.600 I know, that's gone forever. I think Tyler actually erased it, 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:07.399 unless he's holding onto it in case he ever needs 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.119 to blackmail me, in which case you could probably ask 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:12.119 Tyler and he might share it. But I think it's 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:16.800 gone anyway. The reason I'm telling that story in the 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.760 first place is because it turns out that inventions in 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:25.079 general are more complicated than they first seem. And I'm 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.000 not talking about how they work. I mean the story 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:29.520 of how they came to be tends to be more 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:33.320 complicated than a simple so and so invented the such 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.920 and such. Now, as humans, we like simplicity in our stories. 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.240 We love to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:45.560 So it's really easy to say something like Thomas Edison 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:49.040 in a Lot the light Bulb, but it's also not 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.840 really true, or at least it's not entirely true. The 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.600 truth is more complicated. It's messy, and it involves a 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.240 lot of different people researching and engineering different stuff, and 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.560 then later inventors building on that work, learning from the 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:12.040 people who came before, refining things, redefining things. So you 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:16.040 can't really just start with so and so invented the TV. 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.520 It's again, much more complicated than that. And even the 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.240 version I'm going to talk about today, the one that 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:27.120 I've had to split up into multiple episodes, even this 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.680 is a simplification of the story. If I were to 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:36.480 detail every single person who had a hand in shaping 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:40.400 the way television works, I could do a full podcast 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.400 series on that. I'm not joking. It could be ten 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.960 or fifteen episodes long. But I'm obviously not going to 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:49.479 do that to my listeners. I want to have a 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.080 good variety of topics. So this one is probably gonna 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:56.680 be I'm guessing a three parter. I'm trying not to 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:58.560 make it go all the way to four parts. But 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:02.080 spoiler alert, uh, I only have the research done for 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.840 parts one and two, and Part two ends with color television, 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:08.440 so we got a lot of ground to cover, all right, 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.159 So for your history buffs out there. I will get 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:15.840 around to talking about Filo T. Farnsworth, and I'll talk 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.919 about Vladimir's working, and I'll talk about David Sarnoff and 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.840 how he tried to get a monopoly on television manufacturing, 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.200 licensing and even broadcast. But I'll also talk about other 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.880 people like Paul nip Cow, I'll talk about Charles Francis Jenkins, 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:32.400 and John Logi Baird. But I think it's safe to 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:35.159 say the development of television was the product of the 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.479 work of a lot of different people. I would argue 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.880 one is perhaps more instrumental than all the others for 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.960 the modern concept of TV. But I'll allow you guys 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:49.960 to draw your own conclusions on that. Also, please keep 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:52.320 in mind that a lot of the work I'm talking about, 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:56.320 both in exploratory science and in engineering, was taking place 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:00.320 during a really hectic era in history. The ninet and 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:06.920 early twentieth centuries were marked with enormous changes and monumental conflicts. 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:10.400 You had the Industrial Revolution, which was transforming the way 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:12.839 we do work. You may remember I did some episodes 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.960 about the Industrial Revolution. You had massive migrations of people 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.799 from rural areas into urban centers and really, the birth 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:25.320 of the modern city came in the Uh. Really, the 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:28.200 the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I would argue, is when 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.719 they were truly born. I mean, obviously you had large 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.440 centers of population like London and Paris and New York, 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.640 but even those really weren't modern cities until I would 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:43.120 argue the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the United States, 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:45.800 during the some of the work that would lead to 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:48.680 the invention of television, you had a civil War. It 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:51.520 was a massive event here in the US, and I 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.000 would argue it didn't so much tear the country apart. 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.240 Everyone says the Civil War toward the country apart. I 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.440 would argue the country was already torn apart before the 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.720 Civil War started. The Civil War was kind of the 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:08.240 result of that tearing of the country apart, which ultimately 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:16.040 boils down to the untenable position of the South maintaining slavery. 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.520 And uh, yeah, that's really what the Civil War was about. 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:21.520 Don't let anyone tell you that it was the state's 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:26.000 rights issue. Ultimately, that's just a layer of protection. It 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.280 was really about slavery when you get down to it. 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:31.440 As someone who grew up in the South, and is 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:36.520 a Southerner. I feel very confident saying that at the 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:40.320 tail end of this era, I'm talking about that eighteenth 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:45.120 and early nineteenth or nineteenth rather in early twentieth centuries. Uh, 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.760 you also had the First World War, a global conflict 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:55.240 that ended up impacting television itself. A lot was going on. Now, 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.640 it might surprise you to hear that the very first television's, 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:03.160 the ones that you could purchase before black and white 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:09.040 TVs became a thing, were mechanical TVs, which means they 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:12.040 actually had moving parts inside of them designed to create 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:16.560 moving images. Not It wasn't an electron gun firing electrons 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.360 a screen. It was actual mechanical elements, and I'm going 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:22.640 to explain how those worked and what they did in 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:27.280 this episode. Those mechanical sets preceded the electronic ones, though 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:29.720 not by a whole lot. It was actually a pretty 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.920 rapid development from mechanical sets to electronics sets. There was 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:37.720 even a camera with mechanical elements that went to the Moon. 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.319 That's how we recorded color footage of the moon landing 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:45.000 on the Moon's surface. Really not so much the moon landing, 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:49.800 but rather astronauts exploring the Moon once they got there because, 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:51.560 as it turns out, no one was on the moon 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:56.079 ahead of us to film the whole process of landing. 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.760 That would have been awkward if that had happened. Anyway, 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:06.360 before we talk about TV itself, we have to spend 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:09.360 a little time with our brains, and for some of 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.439 us this might be a little uncomfortable. I know that 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:14.880 my brain and I aren't always on the best of terms, 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.400 and sometimes it won't even return my phone calls. But 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:21.240 you could argue that our brains are ultimately what make 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:26.040 television and film and animation work, not just because we 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:31.200 invented those things, but because of the way our brains 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.719 work and how it allows us to interpret this information 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:38.480 being more than what it actually is. And there are 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.120 two elements, really, I would argue that are at play here, 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.800 and ultimately, when we get to color television, I would 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.280 argue there are three elements at work. But with your 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:51.679 basic television picture, one of those elements is that our 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:54.440 brains can assemble bits of information into something that is 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:59.080 greater than itself. So with a digital photograph or a 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:03.920 television screen, you probably know that it is made up 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.000 of a series of dots, very tiny dots called pixels, 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:13.720 whether it's a digital photograph or a TV image. And uh, 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.440 I want you to just imagine that, right take the 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:20.000 digital photograph. I'm not saying you should go out and 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.200 take a selfie right now, although if you want to, 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.199 that's fine, go ahead tweet it to me, that's cool. 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:27.840 What I mean is that these digital photos that are 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.000 made up of pixels, those are individual points of light 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:34.040 or if you prefer, points of color, although ultimately color 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:37.640 is just a representation of light. So it's kind of semantics. 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:43.559 The size, shape, and number of pixels determines and images resolution. 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:46.200 And if I show you a picture made out of 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:50.840 four solid color blocks of wood, so I've got four 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:53.880 blocks and each of them is a certain color, uh, 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:58.080 and I have been given the task assemble these blocks 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.480 so that people know it's a rep since an image 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:05.160 of the Eiffel Tower. That's gonna be really hard to do. 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:09.320 These four solid color blocks, even if they are gray 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.880 and say blue, it's hard to arrange them in a 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:15.520 way that is going to look like the thing I'm 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.480 trying to represent. Now, if I had sixteen blocks, I 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:22.720 might be able to do a rough estimation of a tower. 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:24.840 You might be able to figure out that I'm trying 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:27.600 to build some sort of structure, or an image of 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:31.040 a structure. If I had sixty four blocks, you might 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.319 be able to figure out roughly what it is I'm 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.280 trying to build. Right, you might say, well, it doesn't 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.400 really look like the Eiffel Tower, but I can recognize 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:43.000 that's what you're trying to make. If I had millions 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.840 of tiny blocks that I could put together, and each 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.640 tiny block itself is a solid color that I can 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:53.520 arrange those in an array so it looks like a picture, 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:57.080 then you'd say, oh, well that's the Eiffel Tower. Well, 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.000 that's because our brains are able to take those individuals 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:04.480 a little points and assemble them into a picture that 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:08.319 is a whole. I guess philosophically we could start getting 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:10.560 into how we're all just a bunch of atoms that 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:14.880 are kind of close together in the macro's scale, though 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.200 if you were to get down to the sub atomic layer, 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.480 you would say, oh, you're mostly empty space. But that's 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:23.840 going a little too far. The point is our brains 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.640 can see a full image based upon this representation of 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:32.000 tiny little pixels, and modern televisions do that. They the 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:33.920 images they show us are made up of millions of 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:36.240 those little points of light, and our brains interpret that 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:39.040 as the cohesive image. It's kind of like, uh, that 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:42.560 famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:46.840 Grande Jat by George Serrat. You know what I'm talking about. 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:50.160 It's the one of all the people on the banks 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.199 of a river at a park, and they're all and 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:56.600 very fancy, kind of Edwardian era dress, and it's all 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:02.360 made up of tiny little points of paint. It's actually 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:05.720 a technique that's called point all is um, and originally 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:08.640 Pointillisum was used as sort of a derogatory term. Other 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.880 painters were saying, oh, that's not that's Pointillism, just using 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.600 the little the point of the paint brush to make 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:18.239 little dots to make up an image. But Serat elevated 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:21.840 this to a true art form, and from a distance 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:25.120 it is easily recognizable as a picture of what it's 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.360 supposed to be. If you're far enough back, you say, yes, 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:29.560 it's a painting of a bunch of people by the 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.000 side of a river. And as you get closer and closer, 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:34.920 you start seeing those individual dots, and if you get 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.160 close enough, the dots are all you see. You no 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.480 longer see a picture of people standing at a river. 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:44.000 You see these little dots. Same things true with televisions. 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:45.559 If you could get close enough, if you had a 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:49.239 powerful enough magnifying glass, you can see the individual pixels 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:55.000 that make up the screen. Now there's a related brainy capability, 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.120 which is our tendency to recognize animation as actual movement. 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.400 So it's easiest to talk about this for me, at 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.560 least in terms of film, and I'm talking about physical film, 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:11.959 the art form of cinema using film. So in film, 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:14.160 we watch a sequence of still images played back at 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.840 a certain speed, and typically we're talking about twenty four 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.000 frames per second, which means you're looking at twenty four 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:24.800 separate photographs every second that goes by, and the photographs 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:28.240 are capturing movement. So each one is a still image, 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:32.000 but each image in succession is catching a slightly different 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.720 moment of time where things are moving across the frame 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:37.920 of the photo, and you have to use a really 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:41.440 fast shutter to remove as much blur as possible, especially 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.920 for things that are moving very very quickly across the frame. 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:47.920 So when you played these frames at this speed, it 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:51.360 looks like we're watching objects in motion rather than just 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:54.520 a sequence of pictures. And if our brains didn't work 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.400 this way, movies and television wouldn't work. We wouldn't see 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:03.080 them as moving thing things. We would just witness a 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:09.320 sequence of individual photographs or or actually we'd actually see 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:13.680 the pixels appearing on a television screen. We lack the 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:17.240 ability to see the transitions as anything but instantaneous. We 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:23.160 cannot see that it's really a sequence of individual events. 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:26.240 So to us, television looks like it's stuff showing stuff 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.239 that's actually moving. And there are a lot of inventions 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.240 that predate television that took advantage of this particular phenomenon. So, 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:37.080 for example, there was a device made by Philip James 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:42.560 de Lufferberg, whose name I have mispronounced. He was a 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.920 painter of some renown, and his contribution was a curiosity 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:55.440 called the ido Fusicon. Ido Fusicon, I'm going with that pronunciation. 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.400 So the ido fusicon was actually an invention that came 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.280 out in the seventeen eighties, So this is a very 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:05.600 old invention, and it used mirrors and pulleys to create 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:09.080 the illusion of moving images in a little theater like setting, 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.240 and by this time we understood the sequence of still 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.280 images that capture a moving object, when viewed sequentially at 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.040 proper speed, creates that illusion in our brains of an 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:20.800 actual object in motion. But there were a lot of 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.920 others who created entertainments and curiosities that utilize this same principle. 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:28.960 There was a Belgian physicist, Joseph Plateau. Yeah, he created 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:33.200 the Phena kit scope or phena kissed a scope. I 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:35.640 guess it's kissed a scope because there's an s after 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:40.280 the eye after the k Phena kissed a scope. There 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:44.440 was William George Horner's dead alium. There was William E. 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:48.800 Lincoln's zoa trope. These were all rotating devices that used 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.160 various means to present an image. You might have seen one, 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.800 it's like a platter. Often the zoo trope is the 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.520 most popular one. You can find them still today. Where 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.920 I'd say, a kind of a cylinder that has slits 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.800 in it, and you're supposed to lean down and look 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.800 through the slits. So you're looking through the cylinder at 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.480 the opposite inner edge of the cylinder, and you spin 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.240 it and there is a sequence of drawings or photographs 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:20.600 that are on the inside edge of the cylinder. The 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.600 slats end up creating a shutter like effect, and you 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:26.840 start looking at these different images and sequence and then 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:30.320 you get the feeling that you're looking at a moving image. 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.000 Typically it's something like a horse trotting. That's a famous one. 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.640 In fact, that last one, the zoetrope. It was so 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.920 popular that a little company called Milton Bradley got involved 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.840 and started making the first commercial version of it, and 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:47.640 in a way you could argue that that was the 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:52.640 the commercial predecessor to television. Although you're not transmitting anything there. 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.960 It's obviously you've got everything you need right in front 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:59.400 of you. So that covers the psychological aspect of why 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:01.880 tell of Vision works. It works because our brains allow 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.640 us to construct this concept of movement and animation even 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:06.879 when all we're really doing is looking at a light show. 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:10.000 But then again, our entire sense of vision is based 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.000 off of light. And if I go down that pathway, 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:14.640 this series is gonna last twenty episodes instead of three. 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.159 So let's get on to talking about some of the 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:22.600 science of physics and electricity and electro magnetism, and and 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:27.160 also about sending information over wires and some basic scientific 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:30.840 discoveries that really made television possible. I can spend an 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:33.520 entire episode on each of these, to be perfectly honest, 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:35.480 but I'm gonna do my best to cover the basics. 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:38.240 So again, I'm not going to talk about every single 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:43.080 inventor and scientist who made discoveries that contributed to the 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:45.399 invention of television. But I'm gonna hit some of like 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:49.840 the greatest hits. You know this were a mixed tape 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:52.000 of a bunch of artists that you like. These are 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:55.640 the ones that you think really represent the music you love. 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:57.920 It's kind of the same thing I'm doing right here. 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:06.000 So let's begin with an important guy, Alessandro Volta. Alessandro 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:10.119 Volto as the guy who um invented batteries, came up 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:12.919 with this idea. I mean, apart from the ones you 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:16.280 could argue that came from ancient times that people probably 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.199 didn't even know they really were batteries, Volta is the 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:23.160 one who scientifically went through the process of creating batteries 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.560 for the first time. Now, batteries are what made it 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:30.560 possible to create a source of continuous electric current. Before batteries, 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:32.840 if you were creating current, you were doing so in 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:37.720 a sporadic and uncontrollable way, it was hard to create 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:43.320 a steady current. So Volta's invention of batteries where it 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:45.359 was one of those things that made it easier for 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:49.520 future inventors to have kind of a baseline to work from. 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.280 His good buddy Luigi Galvani also did a lot of 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:57.240 work in this area, although Galvani's understanding of electricity was 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:01.040 somewhat misguided. He thought when he was a applying electrodes 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.159 to a frog's leg that the frog itself had some 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:09.080 sort of intrinsic electricity uh, which is kind of true, 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:13.040 but not in the way that Galvani thought, whereas Volta 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:17.919 immediately recognized that the frog's muscles were conducting electricity, but 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.400 not generating it, not on the scale that the electrodes were. 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:28.840 So Volta's invention really did provide a good source for 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.280 future inventors. There were a lot of other people who 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:34.080 played a role in this too, uh, as well as 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.920 just in a role of discoveries related to television. For example, 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:43.480 chemist William Hyde Wallaceton wasn't satisfied with being a smarty 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.960 pants and purifying platinum, as well as discovering various elements 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:51.160 like rhodium and palladium. He also invented an object called 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:55.560 the camera Lucida in eighteen o six. So this was 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:58.760 an optical instrument that used a prism to reflect an 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:02.199 image into the eye so it looked like the image 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:06.080 was being projected on a sheet of paper. So you 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:08.480 would have a table upon which you put a sheet 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:11.240 of paper, and then you would put a little stand 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:13.879 down on top of the paper where you have this 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:18.200 prism like object on there. You would direct the prism 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:21.359 so that a certain face of it is pointed toward 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:24.159 an object you want to sketch on this piece of paper. 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:27.280 Then you would have to position yourself over the prism 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.200 so that you're the pupil of your eyes essentially half 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:34.520 covered by the edge of this prism, and when you 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:38.040 look down, you would have an image reflected into your eye, 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:40.959 and it would look to you as if, in fact, 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:46.520 there was a projection of that object you were interested 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:48.879 in on a sheet of paper. It was meant to 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:54.960 help make sketches easier for artists and others, architects, that 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:59.880 sort of thing, But ultimately this also advanced our understanding 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:03.840 of optics, which became necessary for the future of cameras. 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:10.280 All right, we're gonna talk a lot more about electricity, electromagnetism, 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:12.720 more science, and then we're gonna make our way over 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:15.160 to the mechanical televisions. But before I get into all 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:19.000 of that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:29.840 All Right, we're back. Now it's time to talk about 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:33.960 Humphrey Davy, a Cornish inventor. He was the one who 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:36.680 created the first arc light and it was actually called 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:39.800 the Davy lamp, and it was a predecessor to the 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:42.840 modern incandescent bulb. And this is part of the reason 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.160 why some historians get a little briskly. If you were 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:51.800 to say Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, people would say, well, actually, 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:54.680 and then they'd start building up the precedent that led 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.280 up to Thomas Edison's light bulb. Edison was able to 0:22:58.320 --> 0:23:01.560 advance and perfect ideas had been around for decades, but 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:05.200 no one had been able to really advance the art 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:08.440 form to a point where it was practical. So, for example, 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:13.159 the Davy lamp was not really practical for widespread implementation. 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:17.240 It would take further refinement to create a lightbulb that 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:19.800 was going to last long enough and be efficient enough 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:24.239 and bright enough to actually replace the gas lighting that 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:26.040 was used in most of the world at that point. 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:30.280 So uh, Edison did make some very important contributions. I 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:32.760 don't want to take anything away from him, but he 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:37.040 didn't just invent the light bulb anyway. Artificial lights became 0:23:37.040 --> 0:23:42.479 a necessary element for television's uh. So that's why I'm 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:47.840 actually mentioning Davy because his work was what allowed future 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:51.640 televisions to actually work, so they were not just important 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:57.200 for capturing images, but also displaying them. Now I'll mostly 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:03.200 be talking about visuals here, capturing and displaying visuals, because 0:24:03.240 --> 0:24:06.320 you already have radio that was coming about around this 0:24:06.440 --> 0:24:09.399 same time. Uh, and a lot of the elements of 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:12.520 radio found their way into television. And since I've already 0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:15.000 covered radio, I don't want to go into it a lot. However, 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:17.840 I do need to mention that sound was a key 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:21.840 component in television sets after your first wave of TV 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:24.920