What if Mechanical Television Developed and Prospered

For good or ill Television has had a major impact on society. Unknown to many television had a brief flowering in the form of mechanical systems in the 1920 and 1930's which died when Cathode ray tube electronic television developed. The common explanation was that mechanical television was too crude and unwatchable to survive. But like the obsolete idea that the dinosaurs died out because they were too stupid too keep mammals from eating their eggs this explanation doesn't fit the facts. This post asks what if some bright inventor combined many of the ideas that were available at the time to make a mechanical television system that could survive and grow, perhaps slowing the development of the electronic tube television systems that dominated the next 50 years?

This premise is based on the science and engineering that was known at the time and has no supernatural or extraterrestrial elements.


The well dressed man paid the taxi driver and looked around the Boston neighborhood. It was modest but well kept with nicely trimmed lawns. He pulled out the card from his pocket to verify where he was going. Yep this was the place. He felt some relief. Often the people trying to interest him in new inventions lived in shabby hovels, their workshops squalid messes.

Now with the market crash things were getting even worse. He’d given up seeking new ideas for his television business from such people. So many would be inventors were desperate to make money on any little idea no matter how silly or impractical.

The only thing that brought him here was the tiny electric valve device that had been included in the letter he’d received from this man. Hollis has spent hours experimenting with the valve with growing excitement and amazement. No bigger than a quarter, it functioned like a vacuum tube but required only a fraction of the power to operate. No need for a cathode heater, no warm up time. Just connect it to an electric current source, apply a bias voltage to the ‘gate’ as it was called and current flow could be precisely controlled. Incredible!

Granted power output was low for the small disc but Hollis suspected that this was just a demonstrator. And if not it could still replace many of the tubes in the front end of a radio amplification circuit, assuming it was inexpensive to make and reliable. The engineer looked at the attached card.

On top the logo read Tectronics the dramatic sweep of diminishing letters forming an arrow shape under the extended T. Under that logo was a name: Robert Palance – Inventor, along with the address. And at the bottom was a motto:

“The Future Is Now.”

He flipped the card over and read, “Mr. Baird, I believe you may be interested in some ideas I have for the improvement of television. Please come see me. Bob.”

The home was well maintained and larger than most of the others around it, many with for sale signs, sadly common today. Hollis noted a sizeable garage/workshop in the back yard and a delivery truck in the driveway. There were two sets of power lines going to the residence. Presumably whatever was being done there required quite a lot of electricity.

He walked up to the front and rang the doorbell. A maid answered. “Yes?”

“Hello Miss. My name is Hollis Baird, chief engineer of the Shortwave and Television Corporation. Mr. Palance…”

The maid smiled, “Of course Mr. Baird! Robert has been expecting you. He requested I direct you to meet him in the back workshop. Just ring the doorbell and he’ll let you in. I’ll announce your arrival through our internal telephone system.”

She pointed to the walkway to the left. “Internal telephone system?” Baird thought.

Hollis followed it past the delivery truck and to the front of the workshop. To the right of the wide garage door was a button with a large sign that said Press for Entry.

The chief engineer did so and was startled by the sound of motorized gears as the garage door slowly opened. A man in a white lab coat with a broad smile on his face strode out to meet him hand outstretched.

“Mr. Baird. What a delightful pleasure to meet you! I’m Robert Palance though you can call me Bob if it pleases you. I’m so glad you finally made it to my little lab. Do please come in.” The inventor waved the engineer into the workshop.

Hollis took a step in and allowed his eyes to adjust to the relative dimness. He’d been in enough of these places to be cautious of tripping over some carelessly thrown bit of junk on the floor. But in this case the room was well lit with overhead lamps and all equipment was nicely put away leaving the spaces between the two rows of tables clear. There were two workers in white coats in the back installing electrical components in a box. He noticed more familiar rectangular wooden boxes on the tables with their unmistakable square viewing chutes and shadow box collars with optional 6 inch lenses for expanding the one inch square image that the units were capable of displaying. Next to each were the wooden boxes of the associated shortwave receivers.

“I see you have a fondness for our Model 36 televisors, two of them!”

And he pointed to the third console standing next to the table on its spindly legs, “And a Model 135C as well.”

The model 135C was simply the 36 model placed in a nice upright cabinet along with the short wave receiver electronics in one convenient package.

Bob smiled, “Yes I’m a fan of your elegant design. You put a lot of thinking in your televisor and it shows. Convenience, cost, and reliability, I congratulate you.”

“But why three?”

“Well as soon as I saw your televisor I realized your company was the one I wanted to work with. Many of the televisors on the market are little more than jumbles of parts around variations on the Nipkow disc. Your belt system, while not original, allows installation of a horizontal scanning process in a nicely enclosed box which is perfect for my purposes. That, along with your phonic synchronization and short wave receiver, has provided an ideal platform for my refinements.”

“Which are?” Hollis asked intrigued.

Bob moved over to the closest televisor and put his hand on the smaller box on top of the televisor. Hollis had noticed it but figured it just held tools.

“This is one of them,” The inventor then pulled out something wrapped in cloth from his coat pocket. It was a thin black disk with a hole in the center. It looked like a small phonograph record but a segment had been cut out. He held the disk up to the light. The cut out section had a reflective surface. The light from the open door flashed off the mirror edge as he turned it back and forth.

“Using a small record press I make these from a shellac and carbon formula. I then chrome plate the cut out section with a special process. I usually do a set of 48 pressed together to insure uniformity of the reflective surfaces.”

Bob then opened a door on the side of the box. Inside was a stack of the disks arranged in a helical pattern, each mirror edge slightly offset from the one above and below it.

“I put a set of these on a spindle and glue them together in a precise screw arrangement to form a complete 360 degree twist. The device is connected to the shaft of your belt spider through a hole drilled in the top of your televisor. ”

“So each reflective edge represents one scan line reflected from a modulated light source as the assembly turns.” Hollis added with growing understanding. He pointed to the left of the door.

“And this must be where the modulated light source is kept. A neon lamp?”

Bob held his hand up, “Yes, but it’s not neon. One of the problems with modern televisors is that modulation and light are combined. The result is that light intensity and quality must be compromised. The dim reddish neon glow is just not conducive to good televisor viewing. My light is simply a simple incandescent lamp though a high pressure mercury vapor lamp is something I’m experimenting on. High intensity and a long life. “

He opened a smaller door in the wood frame exposing the modulating apparatus. “The modulation is performed by two thin steel blades set opposite each other to block the light source. Behind them are electromagnets that cause the blades to vibrate in response to your unit’s modulating signal allowing light to pass between them in proportion to the intensity of the signal. The rest is just appropriate lenses to produce a vertical line of modulated light to reflect off my mirror helix. Simple.”

Hollis held up a finger, “But is the response time of a mechanical system adequate?”

Bob smiled wanly, “I admit it took some time to get this system working properly. With the 15 to 20 frame per second, 48 to 60 line televisor broadcast systems that are common today it seems to work fine. For faster frame speeds or higher line resolution, well I’m investigating the use of piezoelectric crystals with mirrored surfaces. Or just varying their refractive indices. Rochelle salt and quartz are most promising materials. We’ll see.”

Bob closed the modulator door and turned on the unit, “Here let me give you a demonstration. I was working with it a few minutes before you arrived so warm up time won’t take too long. I’ve replaced some of the vacuum tubes in your amplifier circuit with my electric valve wafers which should reduce warm up even further. Did you try the one I sent you? What do you think?”

“It’s the reason I’m here. Your own invention?”

“Yes though I derived some inspiration from the work of a gentleman named Lilienfeld. Met him in Germany while at university and have kept up correspondence since. But while he studied copper compounds my interest was in photoconductive materials such as cadmium sulfide and selenium. That’s how my fascination with television developed.”

Hollis nodded, “If you can manufacture those valve wafers in quantity the Shortwave and Television Corporation will be happy to arrange for their distribution and sale through our commercial…”

The hum of the televisor had stabilized and a warm white glow was emanating from the mirror helix. Roughly five inches across the spinning rectangle of light was certainly easier on the eye than the dull red glow of the one inch plate of the Kino bulb in a standard Hollis Baird televisor. No need to find that right viewing angle through a thick lens. Nor any need to darken the room.

Bob adjusted the frame lever and did some final tuning with unfamiliar knobs that had been added to the televisor. An image stabilized. Suddenly a flash of awareness came to Hollis.

“Wait a minute! This isn’t a televisor transmission from our radio station.”

“No,” Bob agreed. “W1XAV doesn’t broadcast until later this afternoon. This image is coming from the unit itself.”

As if to verify that he passed his hand in front of the original viewing chute. The hand appeared immediately on the spinning mirror helix. There was an ethereal look to it almost as if it was floating in the center of the device.

“My God!” Hollis gasped. He thought about the massive electric arc scanning machine in his company television studio and the wall of photocells and attendant amplifier needed to produce the simplest television signal. And how uncomfortable it was to stand in front of all that machinery. “How are you doing this?”

Bob smiled again. “That’s the next refinement I’ve made.”
 

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Nipkow disks have a major limitation of resolution, which showed up in even the late 30s. Before the BBC pulled the plug, Baird's disc TV had a resolution of 240 lines, while the Marconi CRT had a resolution of 405 lines, and didn't require such contrasting lighting. No, for all that Baird was an intelligent man, he made a bad call on that one. He followed it up with another bad call, recording video of LP records, which were unfortunately unable to be played back until the 80s. Once he did get into CRT though, whoo. Even with wartime work, he demonstrated a 600-line colour TV in 1944, and had plans in place for a 1000-line model, that were unfortunately terminated by his death in 1946.
 
There are as many explanations for the demise of mechanical television as there are for our invasion of Iraq. Given the gradual improvement of the systems there was every reason to believe that it could provide adequate inexpensive television to the public at a fraction of the cost and risk of TV tubes such as electrocution, fire, implosion, and of course x-ray exposure. Ever hear that you should always stay 3 feet from the screen of a tube TV so the air would shield you? Leaded glass and shielding in tubes wasn't mandated until 1968 which introduced a whole new toxic hazard. Hmm...wonder why? Most histories of television characterize mechanical television as some nut with a spinning cardboard disk and a neon light if they mention it at all. Deeper reading hints at a disturbing collusion between regulators and large corporations to make sure only the 'right' type of television was available for purchase and only the 'right' type of content was available to the public. Reading between the lines can be interesting.;) On with the story:


The wooden televisor lens housing had a new hinge on it. Bob unlatched it and swung it aside. Clipped to the one inch square hole in front of the spinning scanning belt was a glass plate clipped to two electrodes. Bob flipped off a power switch and slid the plate out of its mounting. The scanner belt behind the hole continued to turn emanating a bright white glow from the spinning perforations. Obviously the neon Kino bulb had been removed.

Bob held up the glass plate for Hollis to examine. It was black with copper clips at either side. At its center was a dark reddish square that presumably matched the square hole in the televisor.

“I call this an image capacitor. I won’t bore you with the technical details but basically it’s a two sided photoconductive plate. The method of construction and chemical composition I’ve patented of course. I’m not stupid. The plate does contain selenium but I’ve made additions that enhance the photoconductive effect.”

“B…but selenium, even enhanced is terrible for modern television use. It’s insensitive and slow to respond to changes in light intensity. That’s why photocells are used today.”

“Ah, that’s because you make selenium do too much, just like using neon lamps to provide light and to modulate. Let me explain.”

There was a mousetrap hanging on the wall. Bob retrieved it, “When a Nipkow disk spins only a tiny amount of light passes through a hole at each instant resulting in very small potential electrical signal per image element. For a 48 line square image that’s about one in twenty three hundred elements for a complete image scan.”

He lifted the metal bar a small distance and let it go with a barely audible click.

“So to compensate to get a useful signal you either focus massive amount of blinding light on performers or you scan the subject with an intensely powerful beam of light from a carbon arc lamp in a darkened room. I believe that’s what you use in your television studio.”

The inventor pulled the mousetrap bar a little higher and let go. The click was louder.

“Of course. It’s been found to be the best method for producing a suitable broadcast image.”

Until now.’ Hollis mused.

“But what if you could store an electrical signal that is proportional to the accumulated light on each image element while all the other elements are being scanned until it is time for it to be scanned again?” Bob pulled the bar of the trap all the way open and set it.

“Why, that could increase the detector sensitivity several thousand fold.” Hollis replied.

“Right!” Bob took a pencil from his pocket. “And then a scanning beam of light on the other side of the photoconductor triggers the release of that element’s accumulated signal all at once.”

The pencil tip went down and the trap broke it with a loud snap.

“So what I’ve done is to turn your televisor inside out. It’s now a television camera.”

“With a superior televisor viewer on top.” Hollis agreed in wonderment. “How many people can view this at once?”

“Well there are optical peculiarities to my mirror helix. What I call sweet spots for optimum viewing. But 120 degree field of view is possible. Entertainment for the entire family.”

Hollis took a deep breath. “Mr. Palance…Bob what you’ve shown me is truly amazing even revolutionary. Your mirror helix, image capacitor, and your little electric valve chips are all multi-million dollar ideas. If you went to RCA or Westinghouse I’m sure you could walk away a millionaire. Why are you showing them to a little struggling company like Shortwave and Television Corporation?”

He continued, “As you say you’re clearly not stupid. Then you must have examined our financials for the last several years. We haven’t been doing too well. Our radio side is the only thing that has kept us afloat. Televisor sales are dropping partly due to the crash but also due to a loss of interest. People are getting tired of seeing tiny orange images of mediocre entertainment. We could not possibly pay you for the real value of your inventions. What is your real intent?”

Bob looked down and thought a minute before responding. “Well for one thing I’m already a millionaire. Partially it’s due to my parents. Texas cattle business don’t ya know. Allowed me to pursue my interest in chemistry and physics. Even University in Germany for a while. After graduation I turned what I knew into several lucrative patents. I was smart enough to avoid the worst of the crash and now a lot of my wealth is diversified in things that won’t lose value. Canadian distillaries for instance. The bloom is off the rose for Prohibition as well as television. It won’t be here for much longer.”

“Then why?”

“Well while in Germany I picked up more than an education. I won’t upset you with revolutionary ideology but basically I don’t like to see big guys beating up and destroying little guys. Part of my Texas upbringing I guess. If I went to that bastard Sarnoff at RCA with my ideas he’d shake my hand, dump a pile of money in my trunk and as I drove off he’d stick all my patents in a locked safe and forget about them. Look at what he did to that poor guy Farnsworth. And now he’s running with vacuum tube television saying he invented it.”

“Whew! So you think he’s not an honest businessman?”

Bob smirked, “Oh he’s great for his investors. As far as the public well he’ll give them television, but on his own terms and his own price, likely an order of magnitude higher. Getting an electron beam to behave like a simple Nipkow scanner light spot takes a lot of complicated electronics.”

He then continued in a more serious tone, “Cathode ray tubes are great for research labs but techs understand the hazards and take proper safety precautions. Putting a high voltage, x-ray emitting, subatomic particle accelerator in your family room for entertainment purposes is…ah unwise.”

“It does have the potential to produce higher resolution.”

“Sure. But what’s the point of higher resolution on a 6 inch screen? That’s the best tube television can do today. I can give you 12 inches with my mirror helix easy. And the FRC restricts television station bandwidth to 100 kilocycles; just enough for 60 lines though I’ve heard a station in Bakersfield, California is planning 96 lines and audio using something called a single sideband suppressed carrier system. We’ll have to look into that later.”

Bob held up his hands, “Look, I’m not saying cathode ray tubes don’t have a future in the television business, just that some important safety issues have to be addressed before we seat children in front of an electron gun in a brittle glass vacuum tube.”

“So you think we are a better, safer bet to get television to the public. Aren’t you afraid we’ll just sell out to a big corporation? That’s what many little television stations are doing now.”

“Well everything I see about you tells me you really care about the future of television, and your customers too! Your advertisements reveal that. I know how to read people. You’re a good man.”

“I try to be a good Christian.”

“And you succeed. Look, I’m not a church goer but I can tell a man who really lives his faith from fakes. You’re no fake.”

“Um, thank you…I think.”

“Anyway the big corporate conglomerates are working hand in hand with the Federal Radio Commission to push the small mechanical television stations in America off the airwaves. Limiting bandwidth, prohibiting advertising of any kind, and refusing to grant commercial licenses is just a strategy to kill you off in favor of the big shots. I’m sure once you’re all gone allowed bandwidth will magically expand and commercial licensing will get amazingly easier.”

“Mr. Pala…Bob, we all know this is happening but what do we do about it? You can’t fight city hall.”

“Well fortunately in America you can, if you’re smart. There’s this little piece of paper called the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech you know?”

Hollis shook his head, “I don’t think that applies. The Radio Act of 1927…”

Bob held up his hands. “I know I know…the radio and television stations are required to serve the ‘public interest, convenience, and necessity’ or lose their licensing. Since those terms were never clearly defined, they have been interpreted to mean whatever political power brokers want them to mean. Such as banning all ‘obscene, indecent, or profane language’ from the airways.”

“Is that so bad Bob?”

“Not unless that ban is interpreted to include anything that isn’t middle class corporate conservatism.”

“So?”

“Well things like religious ideas you don’t like, or political ideas like socialism, communism, even a call to end Prohibition. Or scientific ideas like evolution, the billion year age of the earth, or the fact it orbits the sun. Goodbye to the marketplace of ideas.”

“Well we are a Christian nation.”

“There are some Indians I knew while living in Texas who would disagree with you and the educated in Europe were really amused at the foolishness of the Scopes Trial. Think we all must be idiots. Superstitious ignorant hillbillies.”

Hollis was skeptical. “Even if I agreed with you over content of television how could we possibly prevail against that power?”

“Well obviously you have to have an edge. I think I may have one. The FRC controls the radio airways and makes sure the independent television business stays nice and polite while they are strangled in their beds. They may not even be aware how they’re being used as corporate thugs. So in football terms we need to make an ‘end run’ around their offensive line. Here look.”
 

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Bob moved over to the 135C televisor and turned the electronics portion on. Hollis saw that behind it was another console. Bob opened up the top. It was a phonograph player.

“My idea about this didn’t start with television. Back in the early 20’s I remembered seeing an electromagnetic recording instrument called a telegraphone invented by a Danish scientist named Poulsen a decade earlier. The one I saw had a steel disk with a shallow groove. An electromagnetic stylus ran along the groove as the disk turned encoding a magnetic signal from a microphone on it which could later be recovered with another electromagnet as audio.”

Bob pointed to the stylus, “Mine’s made out of a nickel iron alloy with high magnetic permeability, used on trans-Atlantic telegraph cables. Works great to focus an electromagnetic signal onto a surface.”

He flipped open the reproducer head revealing the tiny electromagnetic windings.

“I tried to get the Edison Company to consider adding a magnetic material to their Diamond Disk Re-Creations and recording sound that way. But back then Edison was obsessed with pure mechanical acoustic sound recording and the idea was rejected.”

“Later on I read an article about the other Baird, the one in England, attempting to record a television image of a singer on a phonograph record. Of course he used a standard mechanical phonograph with a mechanical stylus and the idea came to nothing.”

“I’d have followed up but was busy developing the thin film application technology that made that electric valve and the image capacitor possible.”

The inventor laughed, “And of course managing my growing fortune.”

“Finally when the Edison record business closed its doors a month before the stock market crash I was in a position to bid on some of their surplus record manufacturing equipment and documentation on disk manufacture. After the crash I was busy on other things and the equipment stayed in storage. But with the help of some former Edison employees I finally set the systems up in a warehouse.”

“That’s where the major part of my manufacturing is located so don’t worry about setup costs. I’m looking for competent partners in the television business not a handout.”

Bob opened a drawer and pulled out a flat disk.

“Anyway here’s the product from all that work. It’s slightly thinner than the Edison disks to avoid any hint of copyright infringement and the grooves are completely smooth. The brown color is due to the addition of finely ground magnetite to the Edison disk Condensite formula. My lawyers say I’m safe from patent lawsuits as long as I only encode information on the disks electromagnetically. And after all Edison threw this technology away. They’re free to re-enter the phonograph business if they choose.”

“In the interest of economy all of my disks will be 12 inches in diameter. There are two models, one with 150 grooves per inch giving approximately 7 minutes recording time per side and another with 300 grooves with twice the recording time. Plenty for television shows, especially since they can be erased and reused.”

“Wait a minute! Are you telling me that this thing records television?”

“Yep! Audio too. Mr. Armstrong at Columbia was very helpful in giving me pointers designing a multiplex super heterodyne system for it. He thinks frequency modulation is the future but…well I don’t want to leave our current television audience in the dust.”

“Damn…I mean darn!”

“Heh! The FRC restriction on broadcast bandwidth actually works in my favor in this instance. Since stations are so constrained it means my little records are perfect for recording 60, 48, 45 line television. If someone insisted on going to 400 or 600 lines I doubt my disks could record it…at least for now.”

Hollis lifted an eyebrow. “So how does this help you do an end run around FRC regulations?”

“Well think about it. Currently radio and television broadcasting work on the same basic business model. Stations broadcast over the airwaves and the public consumes the content. If they don’t like it they just switch to another of a limited number of licensed stations in the area. You are the producer and they are the consumer. And the FRC controls the type of content you provide to the consumer by controlling licenses. And they absolutely prohibit commercial advertising on television. Hah, and they call the Russian Bolsheviks Communists!”

“But what if this televisor recording and playback technology is available to hundreds, thousands of individuals and groups? It’s not much more expensive to produce than your televisor. People recording personal items, birthdays, christenings, weddings. Organizations recording speeches, instructions, parades, and then making copies to give to friends, relatives, associates. Buying, selling, trading recordings in an open marketplace of ideas. The possibilities are endless. Stores where you can buy or rent pre-recorded disks of entertainment. Like this.”

Bob placed the brown disk on the turntable and moved the reproducer head to the record edge and set it down with a lever.

“Hmm, I’ve seen that mechanism before on an Edison phonograph player.”

“Yeah, the Edison system tracks with a worm gear. My electromagnetic stylus rides lightly in the groove so that keeps it from skipping. My first experimental systems were Edisons with some special modifications.”

‘Any risk of patent infringement lawsuits?”

“Actually the subcontractor that made the gearing for Edison is now making the systems for me. It’s just the state of the art of the technology according to my lawyers. And as I said Edison tossed this stuff in the dumpster. If companies sued others over every little thing their workers came up with our entire economic system would collapse worse than it has. That’s not what the patent system was for.”

“I see the turntable is driven by a slotted belt.”

“Yep, a tough rubber impregnated fabric. Minimal stretching. A toothed gear on the spindle of the televisor motor and nubs on the edge of the turntable guarantee an eleven to one ratio for a 15 frame per second television signal at about 82 rpm.”

“Any problem with synchronization?”

“Nope. That’s another reason I like your televisor. Most units use a synchronous motor that maintains speed based on power line frequency. Your phonic wheel uses synchronous pulses from the television signal itself to maintain synch. Any minor divergence between the record and the mirror helix is corrected by moving the light modulator on this slotted track. As long as I keep tolerances fairly tight it all works fine.”

Bob turned on the televisor motor. As it sped up he said, “I recorded this earlier with a device that converts a 24 fps 35 millimeter sound movie film to a 15 frame per second television and audio recording. If you ever switch to 20 frames per second, my systems should be able to handle it.”

He adjusted the framing lever and the image of the popular cartoon character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit stabilized on the mirror helix. Sound came from a speaker under the turntable. There was some loss of resolution and a slight jerkiness from the reduced frame speed, but the helix really filled in the spaces between the scan lines very well.

“During a depression, it’s amazing how many cartoons and other old films become available at reasonable price for recording purposes. Some studio heads came to me with boxes full of film cans, begging to be recorded on a…MagnaVision Disk. I’ve got plenty of show business contacts ready to jump on the bandwagon once we start moving. We certainly won’t be starved for content. We could make a tidy profit on a televisor MagnaVision sales and rental store.”

Hollis smiled, “MagnaVision huh? I like the sound. By the way can you increase resolution to 60 lines? We’re at 48 lines due to difficulties with our scanning system at higher resolution but I suspect you don’t have that problem.”

“Sure I can. I’ve even experimented with 96 lines with good results though the recordings are inferior. More R&D. I prefer a complete system where all the components are in balance. Sixty lines seems optimal for the moment.”

“Bob?”

“Yes Mr. Baird?”

“Uh, why haven’t I read about any of this work from the radio journals?”

“Well Mr. Armstrong is a rather quiet person, much like you in fact. Great mind but not much of a showman. He agreed to keep my inquiries confidential. As for me, well most of my previous work was in obscure areas of industrial chemistry. My patents were bought by a big corporation and promptly suppressed, an ugly truth I learned the hard way.”

“Back then television was just a hobby. When I realized what I could do with it I decided to keep a low profile until I was ready to go public in a way that would prevent corporate interference, suppression. That time is now. Working with a small television studio with a radio station connection, a televisor manufacturing business, and an inventors spirit of innovation seemed ideal.

The inventor’s eyes beamed as he spoke.

“Imagine if we could ask people to send us recordings either on a disk with a return postage envelope or by a special telephone line connected to our retail outlets. Music, comedy, drama skits. There’s lots of hams out there hoping to be discovered. A free source of television talent for your station. Think your WIXAV station would be willing to set up a weekly Amateur Hour or two for evening broadcast Mr. Baird?”

“Call me Hollis. Yes I think they would. We’d have to be careful about content. I don’t want to lose my broadcast license.”

“We’ll be careful, at least at first. There are a couple of guys who used to run an old roving radio station from the back of a truck before the FRC took their license. They’ve still got it in a garage. They want to go back in business, covering local events, parades, disasters, interviewing people but with a couple of television recorders. Bring the records in for our use as part of an evening news broadcast.”

Hmm, interesting. Maybe they could send us the recordings by wire. That would expand their range. You mentioned special telephone line use?”

Bob smiled, “Quite so Hollis. Let me show you.”
 

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