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1944 Magazines
Select One: Radio Craft
Radio News Radio
& Television Retailing
LIFE Magazine - Fall 1944
(97K)
(34K)
Image of girl is focused through a lens (right) onto the sensitive plate in
this RCA iconoscope (camera) tube. The electron beam (it's path artistically
shown by glowing gases), scans the surface of the plate.
(96K)
(228K)
Title: "New Devices Make Images Big And Sharp".
States that television's audience "consists of a few thousand pioneers,
chiefly in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, who own prewar
television receiving sets". This is the most conservative estimate of
prewar set owners that I have ever seen printed.
(210K)
This portion of the article mentions how close we came to establishing a 735
line standard (instead of 525 lines today). That would have meant an
advance to the 500MHz-1000MHz part of the spectrum, with a 13 to 20 megacycle
television channel width. That decision would have imposed an immediate
and total obsolescence of all existing equipment -- but -- we would have had a
form of HDTV 60 years sooner!
Our First American TV Star
!!
(182K)
(Courtesy Tim Perez, from Life Magazine)
(96K)
Shows the steady advance of picture quality over the years of TV
development, from 1929 to 1941, when the 525-line standard was set. Almost
from the very beginning, a Felix the cat statue was used as a video test
subject. He could take the intense heat from the lights without
complaining! Here is another picture using Felix:
(66K)
"Felix the Cat", star of NBC's first experimental telecast in
1930. Felix stands next to a bank of photocells used as part of the
mechanical scanning camera setup. The four photocells are the
'photoelectric eyes' which 'see' the subject being televised.
(133K)
Prewar sports reporting, using Philco cameras high on a perch, overlooking
the game.
(163K)
More prewar & wartime screen photos!
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