The Electronics Revolution Inventing the Future

34 Seeing by Electricity: Development of Television
Germany only around 1600 sets were in use at this time. 49 After their later start, America
had only some 7000–8000 sets in use when the War Production Board halted manufacture
in April 1942.
This wasn’t a very auspicious beginning and it wasn’t clear what future television had.
Few could have foreseen the rapid take-up after the war and the impact it would have by
the 1950s and 1960s. This story is continued in Chap. 6.
NOTES
1. The Russian newspaper Pravda, http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/18-08-2005/
8778-television-0/ though others seem to agree.
2. Dictionary of National Biography, Alexander Bain (1810–1877), clockmaker and inventor.
3. It was filed on May 27, 1843 and granted November 27, 1843, though it hasn’t been possible to
find the number. The American equivalent was US patent 5957 from 1848.
4. Garratt, G. R. M. and Mumford, A. H. (1952) The history of television. Proceedings of the
IEE—Part IIIA: Television, 99: 17, 25–40.
5. German patent number 30105.
6. Hertz, H. (1887) Uber sehr schnelle elektrische Schwingungen. Ann. Physik, 267:7, 421–448.
7. Bonzel, H. P. and Kleint, C. (1995) On the history of photoemission. Progress in Surface
Science, 49:2, 107–153.
8. GB version of his patent no 27,570 of 1907.
9. Scientific American Supplement No. 1850 June 17, 1911.
10. Campbell Swinton, A. A. (1908) Distant electric vision, Letters to the Editor. Nature June 18,
1908.
11. Campbell Swinton, A. A. Presidential address to the Röntgen Society, as reported in The Times,
November 15, 1911.
12. Garratt, G. R. M., Mumford, A. H., and Burns, R. W. (1975) The first demonstration of television.
IEE Electronics and Power, 21:17, 953–956.
13. Garratt and Mumford.
14. Malcolm Bird, John Logie Baird, the innovator, available at: http://www.bairdtelevision.com/
innovation.html
15. Baird, J. L.,Television in 1932, from the BBC Annual Report, 1933.
16. Early Television Foundation and Museum, Mechanical television, Baird Televisor, available at:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/baird_televisor.html
17. Waltz, G. H. (1932) Television scanning and synchronising by the Baird System. Popular
Science, also available at: http://www.earlytelevision.org/tv_scanning_and_synchronizing.
html
18. US patent No. 2141059.
19. US patent No. 1773980.
20. Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, note on Kalman Tihanyi, available at: http://www.
sztnh.gov.hu/English/feltalalok/tihanyi.html
21. GB patent No. 313456.
22. US patent No. 2158259.