the life of Philo T Farnsworth - Early Television Foundation

204 THE STORY OF TELEVISION
the cameras was picking up and alternately pipe each into the
main channel for actual transmission to the receiver. The man
at the monitor was the "mixer" and exercised virtual control
over the program going out on the air. Technique was developed
for smooth fading from the closeup to the long shots and the
reverse. Eddy worked out a very clever miniature revolving
globe with the appropriate announcement of "The Farnsworth
System Presents." He had quite a genius for showmanship and
originality. It was unfortunate that we were not in position to
take full advantage of it.
A great deal of attention was given to lighting
effects to cut
down the light requirements. By the proper use of back lighting
and other devices to accentuate the contrasts in features, we
were able to increase the effective sensitivity of the dissector
tube manyfold to the point where the actual light requirements
for transmission of studio programs was something less than
that necessary for the taking of colored motion pictures.
Here, I believe, for the first time serious attention was given
to make-up
for television. Later all of the laboratories gave a
great deal of publicity
to this important
problem and many
fantastic news stories of make-up requirements were published
in newspapers and magazines. The Max Factor Company,
prominent Hollywood make-up artists, became interested and
on several occasions had a representative at our Philadelphia
laboratories to assist in our experiments.
Because the cesium surface on both the dissector and the
iconoscope tube is
peculiarly sensitive to the infrared portion
of the spectrum, red televises white, quite in contrast to what
happens in photography, where red photographs black. A mixture
of blue in the make-up provided the proper effects where
shading was necessary to deepen the facial contrast.
One amusing incident occurred to illustrate the fact that red