In 1926, TV Was Mechanical
Also interesting is the electromechanical "tone wheel generator" used in the Hammond Organs:
https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/155607-a-look-inside-a-...
91 metal wheels with lobes spinning past something like electric guitar pickups to produce sine waves. Their goal was to produce pure sine waves and then combine them via "drawbars" to produce an adjustable sound. 12 different gear ratios and different number of lobes (powers of two) to produce all the frequencies.
The rotating "Leslie" speaker was also cool, as is the electromechanical "vibrato scanner" on later models.
Reminds me of this fully mechanical ancient Greek movie from 2000+ years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3uaJimMlI
So much was done with mechanical systems back in the day, because they were better understood and comparatively cheaper than corresponding electrics. I wonder if the engineers who designed teletypes or artillery range computers could learn to program, and if they did, would they have any unique insights?
There's a long history there. See the Early Television Museum.[1]
It's sad that no Scophony set survives. High resolution and 24 inch screens in 1938.
There is a great model kit made in England for the "Televisor". Got it years ago and it was minutes of fun. Apparently still for sale. The input is audio, got it to run from my iphone at the time (as opposed to using the supplied CD which in itself is Retro technology). I had some plans to build code a video-to-audio converter to run this (or screengrab to audio for that matter).
This reminds me of the equally interesting framing of modern computer failure rates in similar terms to mechanical parts.
This is also a very fun exploration of how many things start mechanical and move to more solid state as they age. I'm curious what major mechanical items are left to move over to solid state? My guess is most things that have changed were instruments in larger things. Gyroscope devices are a fun example.
Very cool. Makes me think of this wonderful scene from Sports Night where William Macy talks about Philo Farnsworth and Cliff Gardner inventing TV.
There were even recordings of it, though they couldn't be played back at the time:
Someday they will say the same thing about music. :)
interestingly close publish date to Asianometry's video on Sony's Breakthrough Color TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOh3jEJGynA
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Several years ago I came across the first issue of "Television" magazine from 1928 and reading it blew my mind in a couple ways. First, the overall tone is remarkably similar to a 1970s homebrew computer club newsletter, including defining what "television" even is (and isn't). For example, We learn on page 10 that "television is not tele-photography."
It's clear from this magazine that early television was the domain of home tinkerers and hackers. On page 26 is a detailed tutorial on how to construct your own selenium condenser cell from scratch, including which London chemist had appropriately high-quality selenium, where to buy copper sheets, mica insulator (.008 thick) and brass bars. Well worth a read: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=37097
That analog television not only was prototyped nearly a hundred years ago but then began being deployed at vast consumer scale ~75 years ago is still just so amazing. It's worth understanding a bit about how it works just to appreciate what a wildly ambitious hack it was. From real-time image acquisition to transmission to display, many of the fundamental technologies didn't even exist and had to be invented then perfected for it to work.