Television
History - The First 75 Years
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Television
History - The First 75 Years |
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1936 French Television
My thanks to Mr. Alain Tamburini, who provided photographs of his 1936 Model 95 Emyvisor. Only ten of these sets were manufactured, and remarkably, two have survived until today. Both were discovered at the same place in 1986 -- at an old Paris, France wholesaler (Rue des Pyrenees Paris XX). One was complete (this one), and the other was the chassis only, minus the CRT assembly. The owner of the second unit is in process of making a 'new' cabinet based on the details of this set. His restoration will be completed soon. In 1935, the transmitter for these television sets was specially constructed in the "Poste Parisien" building on "Champs-Elysees" street. This was the location of radio broadcasting at that time. The 50-watt transmitter was built by the "Compagnie des Compteurs" (CdC) in their factory at Montrouge under the direction of Mr. Barthelemy, the famous French television inventor (much like Farnsworth of the USA). The installation of the transmitter in the building was directed by Mr. Chevalier, an engineer at CdC. Back then, a mechanical scanning camera was used at the transmitter, scanning the image with a perforated disc turning at 50 revolutions per minute. The scanning disk was not in a vacuum, as used by many other system designs. Additionally, the television transmitting antenna was on a pylon on the roof of the building, 42 meters (140 feet) high, weighing 18 tons! The installation of this antenna created the need for considerable reinforcement of the roof, walls and supporting hardware! This Model 95 television receiver displayed a 180-line picture, at 25 frames per second, on a 4 inch cathode-ray (picture) tube. A magnifying lens was used to increase the size of the picture to about 8 inches. This was a "vision-only" unit, which means there was no sound, a separate radio had to be used to receive the sound. Owners were advised to tune-in the sound first, then turn on the vision unit. Mr. Barthelemy made these sets under the trademark "Emyradio". Alain says the "chassis" is in three separate units, and the picture tube is suspended by four springs inside a "gunmetal" tube. Additional photographs will be posted in the future. A second version of this set was manufactured, which had video + sound, and was called Model 965. I am not aware of any surviving examples.
Also during this same time period, another competitor (Mr. Marc Chauvierre), produced this 60 line experimental set used by universities and for research. It had only 8 tubes, which holds the world's record for the least amount of tubes (valves) used in a prewar television receiver! Experimental broadcasts ran for nearly two-years, at one-hour per day, on average. (Info courtesy of Alain Tamburini).
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