INITIAL ACTIVITIES:
The author’s work began with the publication in the Motion Picture News, of October 4, 1913, of an article entitled “Motion Pictures by Wireless.” This contemplated the employment of a flat receiving surface, but in the light of subsequent experience the scheme proposed therein is believed to be impractical. It did, however, provoke discussion of the subject and initiated the work which was thereafter rather continuously prosecuted, except for interruption to aid in the great World War.
After failure to find a practical, workable mechanism made up of devices already in use in applied science, diligent effort was made to discover the necessary, missing part.
PRISMATIC RING:
At length a device described as a prismatic ring was developed, a new contribution to optical science. In use it is comparable to a solid glass prism which changes the angle between its sides, giving to a beam of light passing therethrough a hinged or oscillating action on one side of the prism while maintaining a fixed axis of the beam on the other side of the prism.
As a convenience in fabrication this prismatic ring is ground into the face of a glass disc of suitable size, of selected mirror plate, which gives the ring its own support on the rotating shaft upon which it is mounted.