DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH TELEVISION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 60, 8 April 1946, Page 7

DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH TELEVISION

A camera which takes 10,000 pictures a second is one of a series of remarkable new items on the peacetime production programme of a well known United Kingdom firm which specialises in the design and manufacture of apparatus involving mechanical, technical, electrical and electronic features. During the war it concentrated on the development of radar and other new British scientific inventions. One of its most important contributions was the "skiatron," an invention which finally resulted in an instrument that helped the R.A.F. night fighters to track German raiders. The firm is now working on the application of the skiatron not only to radar and television, but in many new fields. Their wartime output of radar equipment was based on pre-war experience. In the field of television they are now concentrating on current development and improvements.

One. wartime activity was the manufacture of thousands of highspeed electric induction motors, mainly for aircraft. Thanks to their great superiority over all other types chiefly in reliability and -saying of weight and space, these motors will be in big demand for special peacetime industrial purposes. Specialised types of optical instruments were made for war, industrial and technical purposes. The stroboscope is another unique instrument for which is forecast a big future; this instrument, claimed to be the finest product of its kind available, shows in slow motion fastmoving objects. It enables the speed of rotating or reciprocating mechanisms to be watched, and discloses defects or adjustments necessary in mechanisms or products during the course of manufacture.

An automatic typesetting instrument which produces artistic spacing of letters without the use of a skilled artist was also developed specially for ordnance survey purposes, but its value is obvious in other and wider fields.