SEEING BY TELEPHONE

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 42, 4 May 1928, Page 15

SEEING BY TELEPHONE

Seeing the person you are talking ta. while making a telephone call is no longer a possibility of the future; it is heing done every day by Mr. J. L. Baird 1m his laboratory in St. Martin’s Lane, London. Mr. Baird can send from one room to another a recognisable image of the face of the speaker. The speaker sits in front of three intensely powerful electric Jamps which illumine his face with brightness. ‘The extreme image of the face.1s thrown by a lens upon an ap--paratus which picks out little bits of the image one by one with infinite nickness and throws them upon one of those wonderful little cells which respond to light and generate an electric | current which is stronger or weaker as_ ‘the light itself is strouger or weaker These electric currents are sent through the telephone line to a lamp at the receiving instrument, the rays of which are recombined one after another, with equal rapidity, so that the eve actually sees an image of the per« son sitting before the first instrument. The way in which the system is worked out is very technical, and Mr. Baird is now hard at work improving his imstrument, which he aptly calls the televisor. If his efforts are crowned with success "ue may hope before long to be able to fit teleyisors to our instruments at home; that is, those of us who do wish to see the person at the other end of the line. .