30-09-2015, 02:26 PM
The man in the street has heard of Baird and gives him credit where perhaps it isn't deserved. Very few have heard of Blumlein, let alone Schoenberg, White, Lubzynski and the other senior people at EMI who made the 405 system we adopted. It didn't help that EMI were a notably secretive company so we have relatively little, apart from patent applications, published by EMI people.
In the US the names of Jenkins and Farnsworth are public knowledge but again it was others who made the TV system work. Bell Labs published early as I've cited (BSTJ vol 6, 1927 pp551-652) Not sure how much RCA published. Zworykin is perhaps the most famous name from RCA.
Baird and Farnsworth were individuals who stood up against the might of large companies. As a result they have acquired folk hero status.
Go back further and we have Campbell-Swinton with his visionary papers. Also the Russian connection since both Schoenberg and Zworykin studied under Boris Rosing in St Petersburg.
The history of TV is a big subject, with many strange happenings. I'm sure there is still more to be discovered. Paul Marshall, in his fairly recent PhD thesis , uncovered a trove of new material in the Post Office archive. He also shed new light on the controversial relationship between EMI and RCA. He also found evidence that Baird made an iconoscope camera, in the manner of EMI and RCA, but of course Baird couldn't use it due to patent restrictions. How well did it work? We don't know.
In the US the names of Jenkins and Farnsworth are public knowledge but again it was others who made the TV system work. Bell Labs published early as I've cited (BSTJ vol 6, 1927 pp551-652) Not sure how much RCA published. Zworykin is perhaps the most famous name from RCA.
Baird and Farnsworth were individuals who stood up against the might of large companies. As a result they have acquired folk hero status.
Go back further and we have Campbell-Swinton with his visionary papers. Also the Russian connection since both Schoenberg and Zworykin studied under Boris Rosing in St Petersburg.
The history of TV is a big subject, with many strange happenings. I'm sure there is still more to be discovered. Paul Marshall, in his fairly recent PhD thesis , uncovered a trove of new material in the Post Office archive. He also shed new light on the controversial relationship between EMI and RCA. He also found evidence that Baird made an iconoscope camera, in the manner of EMI and RCA, but of course Baird couldn't use it due to patent restrictions. How well did it work? We don't know.
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv
