Mechanical Television With Large Pictures
A few mechanical TV systems could produce images several feet wide and of comparable quality to the cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions that were to follow. CRT technology at that time was limited to small, low-brightness screens. One such system was developed by Ulises Armand Sanabria in Chicago. By 1934, Sanabria demonstrated a projection system which had a 30-foot image.
Perhaps the best mechanical televisions of the 1930s used the Scophony system, which could produce images of more than 400 lines and display them on screens at least 9×12 feet (2.8×3.7 m) in size (at least a few models of this type were actually produced).
The Scophony system used multiple drums rotating at fairly high speed to create the images. One using a 441-line American standard of the day had a small drum rotating at 39,690 rpm (a second slower drum moved at just a few hundred rpm). Today, DLP mechanical TV technology from Texas Instruments far outstrips the capabilities of the Scophony system.
Read more about this topic: Mechanical Television
Famous quotes containing the words mechanical, television, large and/or pictures:
“There is only one evil, to deny life
As Rome denied Etruria
And mechanical America Montezuma still.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy.... In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“I have no other pictures of the world apart from those which express evanescence, and callousness, vanity and anger, emptiness, or hideous useless hate. Everything has merely confirmed what I had seen and understood in my childhood: futile and sordid fits of rage, cries suddenly blanketed by the silence, shadows swallowed up for ever by the night.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)