RADIO VISION:
Radio Photographs and Radio Vision, when both are done by the flat-plate method, are identical in principle, the difference being only in the speed of the apparatus, with such modification in the apparatus as will permit of the required speed.
Just as in the Radio Photograph the picture surface of the Radio Vision is covered with a small spot of light moving over the picture surface in successive parallel lines, with the light value of the lines changed by the incoming radio signals to conform to a given order, the order being controlled by the distant scene at the sending station.
And as the whole picture surface is covered in one-twelfth to one-sixteenth of a second, persistence of vision of the human eye is sufficient to get the picture from the white receiving screen—a photographic plate is not necessary.
When the machine of Radio Vision is turned over slowly, the little spot of light on the screen which makes up the picture looks for all the world like a tiny, twinkling star as it travels across the white surface of the screen in adjacent parallel lines, changing in light value to correspond in position and intensity to the light values of the scene before the lens at the broadcasting station.
But when the machine is speeded up until the succession of lines recur with a frequency which deceives the eye into the belief that it sees all these lines all the time, then a picture suddenly flashes out on the white screen in all the glory of its pantomime mystery.
To accomplish this, the apparatus must be speeded up until a whole picture can be assembled on the screen, say, in one-sixteenth of a second, to be seen by the eye directly.
It was necessary to modify the Radio Photo apparatus to permit this increase in speed. So a lens disc is substituted for the fast pair of prismatic plates. Each lens draws a line while the relatively slow rotation of the prismatic plates distributes the lines over the whole picture surface, just exactly as the plates do in the Radio Photo Camera.
The Radio Vision receiving set and the Radio Movies set are identical, and one may, therefore, see in one’s home what is happening in a distant place, an inaugural parade, football, baseball, or polo game (and we call it Radio Vision); or one may see the motion picture taken from the screen of a distant theatre (and we call it Radio Movies).
The Radio Vision receiving set, as now designed, is very simple; namely, a mahogany box, or small lidded cabinet, containing, beside the radio receiving set and a loudspeaker, only a small motor rotating a pair of glass discs, and a miniature, high frequency lamp for outlining the pantomime picture on a small motion picture screen in the raised lid of the cabinet, synchronism being maintained by the simple expedient of “framing” the picture on the screen exactly as this is done in a moving picture theatre.
The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to his friend, Professor D. McFarlan Moore, for a word name for this new device, i.e., “telorama” for the radio vision instrument, and “teloramaphone” for the instrument when it includes simultaneous reproduction of the music or sound accompanying the living scene.
