TELEVISION

Hokitika Guardian, 25 May 1931, Page 3

TELEVISION

WIRELESS KPICT.URKS OF

RECORD SIZE

AMELUC AN ’ S ACHIE VE M ENT

•SAN FRANCISCO,. April y. The biggest television pictures ever to be -reproduced • flashed across a tenfoot screen in the laboratory >6l Mr U..A. Sanabria, a 24-year-old engineer in Chicago. Tlie wireless pictures, beautifully clear,’perfectly defined, and possessing the illusion -of depth; danced across the big screen, while young Sanabria, dark-eyed and serious, described modestly his achievements. Renowned radio authorities bad said that television would not be practical lor years, that pictures sent over tlie air probably never -would be larger than six or eight inches square because of the technical difficulties involved. While they,wore making their pessimistic pronouncements, the youthful Sanabria invented “triple-scan-ning,” which makes detail in television pictures possible. Then he devised an electrical retouching system which obviates Hie ghastly make-up early television performers thought necessary. Stiff his pictures could .i»°t be shown on a large screen. “I could not get a light bright enough,” die said. “And then my friend, Mr AY. G. Taylor, invented a new lamp, utilisipg a neon arc, which makes these brilliant, large-sized pictures possible.” •

Air Taylor, himself barely 30 yeat'S old, also wjas present at the demon-' stratum in Sanabria’s tool-littered laboratory in Chicago iri a machine shop. And Taylor, too; was modest, thinking only of ways to improve his lamp. “The pictures have a slightly pinkijsli tinge,” Tie said. ‘'That is the fault of the lamp. I think I can build another which will project pictures of pure black and white.” The lamp glows in a brass tube behind the largest “lens disc” in the world, perfected by Sanabria. Iho d*sc is a solid aluminium wheel with 45 lenses sunk in it. Ail electrical motoi drives tlie disc at a speed of 120 miles per hour on its outer edge, so that tin* whirling lenses distribute the light over the 10-loot square screen in front of the device. Ihe light races so rapidly over tlie screen, and its intensity varies so accurately, that the human eye sees actual motion pictures.

'l'lie apparatus is much too ponderous and expensive for home use, hilt Mr Sanabria now is manufacturing, similar equibnieii! for an advertising concern, which ‘bitends t<o use the giant television pictures to draw crowds to display rooms in most of (lie big cities of the country. Radio and theatrical executives hieanwhile are- making frequent pilgrimages to Mr Sanabria’s worksmip. The moving-picture men particularly j/fe interested in the development - of large-size wireless pictures, with -the possibility not far distant that a film now being unreeled in one theatre may lie reproduced instantaneously and .accurately in hundreds of other theatres throughout the land.