Evening Star Newspaper, January 11, 1931, Page 81

Television Is Coming Uncle Sam’s Experts From the Of fice of Education Studying the Possibilities of Television as a Medium of Instruc- tion, as the Day Draws Nearer When Action Pic- tures Will Comble- ment Sound Over OurRadios. BY CLARA LOUISE LESLIE. SMALL electric motor, a neon lamp and a round piece of black cardboard are all that is needed to receive television pictures in your own home. The essentials of & of the possibilities of television to the education. “Now,” said Dr. Jenkins, improvised set in front of them— kind amateurs are building—"you see square holes and you don’t see science of radiovision and to build up a satisfactory technique. We believe these fans will be the radio engineers of the future. The American radio amateur has shown his re- markable gcleverness in the development of ‘worthless frequencies below the 200-meter band,’ and is now generally and officially ac- knowledged. We expect as great a surprise in radiovision when the amateur takes up this new work. This Is the beginning of another chapter in the annihilation of space. With the simple motion picture broadcasts which we are sending out for the benefit of the am- ateurs we hope to contribute to the rapid de- velopment of this new art. Their reports on our signal strength, fading, echo images and quality of picture reception will be a great help.” “7ou see,” continued Dr. Jenkins, “it’s just a8 easy to send pictures by radio as it is to send sound. Sound just got started first. Of course radio isn't sound, it is mereiy the car- rier. Lightwaves can be sent by radio quite as easily as sound. In fact, anything which can be sent by a copper wire can be sent by a radic channel. Today we transmu. power to run factories, current to light houses, heat, cold and almost every form of energy known to man, over wires. In the near future this will be done by radio. The. long copper wire will lose its popularity. Power, for instance, can then be delivered where wires cannot reach. We are now in pictures where we were in sound back in the days of earphones. But just as the loudspeaker was not far behind the ear- phone, so large, clear reproductions of living images sent through the air are not far behind the imperfect scenes of present television. Those who have radios are going to see what they hear!” “It seems to me” said Dr. Jenkins in de- fense of his art, that pictures always tell the same siory whereas reading seldom, if ever, does We learn by building up pictures in the mind, no matter what process we may use to get them there. When ‘word pictures’ are used we build forms and scenes up in our mind on the basis of something we already know. Real pictures do most of their own interpreting. " COMMISSXONER. COOPER thought a moment. “Television,” he agpeed, “as it relates to education,. tends . t0 remove the necessity of much intéermediary symbolism. The THE SUNDAY STAR, - WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY M, 1931, 11 — Get Ready! One ofgthe new types of television and loud speaker combination radios not yet on the market. Left to right: William Johs Cooper, U. S. commissioner of education; Lewis R. Alderman, chief of the division of adult education; Walter Colcord John, Pd. D., representing the division of higher education; C. Francis Jenkins, scientist, inventor. glyphics on rocks thousands of years ago, are still read today. Pictures are a universal medium. The future will have a record. History may be written differently.” Preparatory to showing his visilors a cer- tain type of broadcasting machine in action Dr. Jenkins instructed one of the men of his laboratory staff to remove some lop-sided look- ing clothespins from an overhead wire. Some- thing about an inventor’s laboratory reminds one of the contents of a small boy’s pocket. ‘There is everything in it and nothing, as far as the average person can understand, has any relationship to anything else. “Now,” said the inventor, pressing & button which set a lot of discs revolving, “to put a picture on a radio carrier wave we simply slice it up (figuratively speaking) into slices one-hundredth of an inch in width, in the beést pictures, by sweeping the picture across the light-sensitive cell by means of these rotating prismatic rings. With each downward sweep the picture is moved one- photographic plate is used instead of a piece of white paper, and a pencil of light instead of the pencil of lead, the light pencil changing the exposure in various parts of the successive adjacent parallel lines by reason of the varia- tion of the incoming signals. The scheme is just a long camers with milles instead of inches between lens and plate, with this ex- ception, that a lens in Washington, for in- stance, can put a negative on one, ten or one hundred photographic plates in as many dif- ferent cities at the same time and at a distance limited only by the power of the broadcasting station, radio instead of light carrying the image fromn lens to plate.” In one corner of the laboratory was a booth for trying out one’s face before the transmitter just as voice broadcasting studios are equipped to test voices. “Of course light and sound are interchangeable,” explained Dr. Jénkins. “We Commissioner of Education Coaper examining the amateur’s type of television receiving set. hundredth of an inch to the right until the whole picture has crossed the cell, the cell converting the light strengths of the different parts of each slice into corresponding electricel values. The process very much resembles a bacon slicer in the market, each slice showing fat and lean. Similarly these imaginary slices of our picture show light and dark parts, and these lights and shadows moving across the sensitive cell produce corresponding strength of electric current, modulating the ‘radio carrier wave of the broadcasting set accordingly. The principle is the same whether the current modulation is taken directly from a flat photo- graph or moyie fim, from a Ssolid object or from &n out-ddor scene at which the trans- mitter is pois ted.” carrier of $he movies. One master film will suffice to distribute motion: pictures from Holly- wood and motion picture audiences will be - of teaching. Al International broadcasting, both visual and audible, will, of course, be developed on a large scale. It may work for greater harmony or the reverse, depending upon how it is handied. It can and should be made a positive factor for good will. There is a significant lesson to be derived from the Latin word hostis. In the singular it meant the stranger, one with whom we are not acquainted. But the plural form, hostes, meant the public ‘enemy,” the destroy- ing host or army. him who has no time or money for foreign travel a chance to get acquainted with the ‘stranger.’ " Lewis R. Alderman, chief of the division of adult education, is watching with keen interest the efforts to mobilize the genius of the Ameris can radio amateur. “In addition to a hard- working professional group,” he says, “we find delving into this adventurous new phase of ° radio science thousands of experimenters, in- vestigators and natural-born mechanics, fired with all the inexhaustible curiosity and am- bition of youth, pooling their experiences, ideas and discoveries to the common end that spacé may be shrunken to the point of neglibility. - “Vision by radio,” says Mr. Alderman, “is going to add something akin to another dimension to life. Then we all will have traveled; we Television should enable thought of that responsibility is ' staggering. * all will have been to the North Pole, on it - ° over it, under it; we all will have shared very enwflomflyinluchthlnp-sthe&nbbo-_ b mingo hurricane. Life will become real! The Bible prophecy will practically be fulfilled, ‘Nothing shall be hidden that shall not be revealed.” It will become ‘increasingly hard for the criminal to escape. With justice pur- suing him on the track of the lightning he may learn, sooner or later, the falseness of some of his former notions as to what made for his happiness. It will be the arch-criminal, ' the more mental type of criminal, who will sur- vive. All our values will have shrunken and ' former 'concepts will have changed. We are at an interesting stage in the ¢ over maftter." Radio’ vision coupled with audible broadcasting is going to ‘step up" life to manp times its present tempo. g f “Large corporations are now working quietly, with this new science. To the layman television of ‘mind "’ alphabet, for instance; is & mechanical thing and requires stéreotyped forms of usage. ~The- pictures earry us back to the primitive system of ot . The mumfi‘éfi ther 'fn’ Wero- “If one puts a nickel under a piece of paper . © will probably come suddenly. Universities of ' and draws straight lines acr ’ { i the ir! will’be‘ Geveloped-oit s’ ifiegile, L nell o T byt MRG0 oadiDis b Bl AL N Bl Mt aL i 11+ st 0L Mind' wif*bet Vo Nauwg ! %&%fifflfi il ¢ 10 3 % At o ¢ o e fesvs avoivadisnd Hng 18y waiv '1-? OF ko it 0 !’i;-; E"fi '"“r,;' e i @dtt Y obhih ate M