the life of Philo T Farnsworth - Early Television Foundation

94 THE STORY OF TELEVISION
crude apparatus was positive proof to Farnsworth and me that
his television system would work. Our enthusiasm grew with
each new improvement
in the image.
The most convincing picture at this time continued to be the
one of the cigarette smoke. The smoker had to stick his nose
close to the transmitter tube, and because the lights were very
bright, care had to be taken to avoid a blistered nose. However,
this small success served to bring home emphatically the
magnitude of the problems ahead. The question of sensitivity
and of amplification became major considerations, and plans
were made to develop the necessary apparatus.
The amplifier developments were the most heartbreaking
ones. I would leave San Francisco with high hopes of Farnsworth's
latest plans for an amplifier that would be satisfactory,
only to return to learn that much had been expended in work,
salaries, and materials with results that were desperately disappointing.
The black box in which the amplifier was housed came to be
a Jonah or, to change the figure, a yawning maw into which
thousands of dollars were thrown without results.
Upon one
occasion when I returned from an out-of-town trip,
I found
the laboratory staff ripping out the contents of the black box
and salvaging such tubes and equipment
as could be used again.
This was all that was left of months of work and $5,000 in
funds. There seemed no end to the building and discarding of
these expensive experimental amplifiers, but finally, after
months of tedious work and the expenditure of thousands of
dollars, one was operating "flat to 300 kc." as the engineers
say.
Previous to the advent of television there was no need for
the broad-band amplification that is the first requisite in picture
broadcasting. Sound broadcasting was successful without