Television

This paper gives an outline of a new television system developed in the laboratories of RCA Victor Company, in Camden, N. J.The system is truly electrical and employs only electronic devices, without a single mechanically moving part.The translation of the visual image is accomplished by means of a vacuum tube called the iconoscope. This tube is a virtual electric eye and consists of a photo-sensitive mosaic corresponding to the retina of the human eye, and a moving electron beam representing the nerve of the eye. The image is projected optically on the mosaic and transformed within the tube into a train of electrical impulses, representing the illumination of individual points of the image.The reproduction of the image is accomplished by means of another vacuum tube, the kinescope, which transforms the electrical impulses back into the variation of light intensity through the bombardment of a fluorescent screen by the moving electron beam.The movement of the electron beams in both tubes, which is responsible for both transformations, is linear and divides the picture into a series of parallel lines. The movements are synchronized so that the instantaneous position of the beams with respect to a point in the picture is always identical. The synchronization is transmitted together with the picture signals, and operation of the receiver is completely automatic.The sensitivity of the iconoscope, at the present time, is approximately equal to that of a photographic film operating at the speed of a motion picture camera, permitting the transmission of outdoor scenes. The resolution is high, much higher than necessary for television images of the highest quality.The paper describes the theory of the system, its characteristics, mode of operation, and includes photographs of images obtained on the fluorescent screen of the receiver.     

The blackening of photographic plates by positive ions of the alkali metals

A short review is included of previous work on the blackening of photographic plates by positive rays and rays of an analogous nature.The blackening of Eastman x-ray plates, by positive ions, has been measured as a function of the energy of the ions of Li, Na, K, Rb, and Cs. The energy of the ions required to produce a photographic density of D = 0.3 with a one minute exposure at a current density of 1.32 × 10^?8 amperes per cm.² ranged from 1420 electron-volts in the case of cæsium to 860 electron-volts in the case of Li⁷. Approximately 10⁵ ions are required at these energies to render developable one silver-halide grain. For a threshold density, D = 0.04, under the same conditions the energy ranged from approximately 920 to 460 electron-volts for Cs and Li⁷ respectively.Sensitivity comparisons were made between x-ray plates and process and schumannized process plates. Potassium ions with an energy as low as 137 electron-volts were recorded on Schumann plates, and it is possible that positive ions of one-third this energy can be recorded.