SEEING BY WIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 357, 7 April 1910, Page 8

SEEING BY WIRE.

Soinidhinir rather more tangible than television has been deviled liy a French inventor, Edouard Belin, who is making an appartus by which a series of photographs can be telegraphed one after the other instantaneously, and reformed so as to «ive a cinematograph reproduction of an event at any distance, awav (says the London Daily Mail). Thus if a series of pictures were taken of some event, at a city such as Newcastle, the}' eouid be rapidly prepared tor the telegraph, and a facsimile reproduction of the event seen immediately on a screen in London. 11. Belin uses a paper photograph of quite an original type as the sending "record." An ordinary half-tone newspaper illustration, if examined closely, is seen to consist of innumerable dots which combine to form the picture with its light and shade; M. Belin's paper records consist of innumerable perforations in a sheet of paper, each hole of a certain size and corresponding to the dots of a half-tone photograph.

This is laid on a metal base and drawn along under a set of metal brushes: the Wider the whole, the more contact there is between the brush and the metal underneath. By this means the amount of electric current sent to the distant viewing screen is varied. The currents of various strengths are made to illuminate more or less strongly small portions of the viewing screen, each of which corresponds to a perforation in the picture transmitter. By passing a series of cinematograph photographs under the brushes at the transmiting station a reproduction would be seen with all the original life and motion in it. The practicability of the idea lias already been tested between a suburb of Paris and a station in Paris itself, but M. Belin has not yet constructed a receiver capable of more than demonstrating that the idea is not a vain one.

He claims that television with selenium, as used in the methods already described, is not practicable owing to the slowness with which the selenium "cell" responds to changes of lisht, while his own apparatus is purely mechanical and. depending only on mechanical precision, should solve the problem of transmitting "living" images over the wires.