Mechanical TV

The mechanical era as hardware. Nipkow discs, mirror drums, the Televisor, radiovision kits, neon lamps and magnifying lenses. This is the smallest facet in the archive and that is a measured fact rather than a gap: about sixty genuinely mechanical files exist on Wikimedia Commons in total. It survives on film chiefly through the people who still build working thirty-line receivers today.

Part of Television

80 moments in this segment.

  1. - Disco di nipkow per televisore meccanico. Disco di Nipkow in alluminio a spirale di fori (ovvero i fori sono disposti a spirale in prossimità del bordo più esterno). Ha quattro razze con una superficie verniciata di nero. Funzione Disco utilizzato per analizzare e riprodurre le immagini in un televisore meccanico Fracarro.
  2. - Windmill Tower, Wickham Terrace, Brisbane. Reports differ on whether the Telephane was successfully implemented. The first television broadcast in Australia took place on 30 September 1929 at the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne, using the electro-mechanical Radiovision system. Other transmissions took place in the city over the next few weeks.
  3. - Televisón de los 1900. A model of a television of the 1900s, built to show the arrangement that followed Nipkow's invention of the scanning disc. Nipkow patented the disc in 1884, decades before anyone transmitted a moving picture with one.
  4. - Phantoscope charles francis jenkins. The Phantoscope and a phantoscope picture roll, Jenkins's early motion picture apparatus. Jenkins came to television from film projection, which is why his approach was built around mechanically moving images rather than electronics.
  5. - Radio equipment - Indiana State Museum - DSC00410. Early radio and television equipment, Indiana State Museum, 650 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Left to right: 1915 De Forest Audion vacuum tube was the first device which could amplify electrical signals, creating the field of electronics. 1923 Crosley "Pup" radio; this single tube receiver was manufactured in Cincinatti.
  6. - Charles Francis Jenkins and G. E. Arneman. Charles Francis Jenkins with G. E. Arneman arriving at Langley Field, where Jenkins lectured the Army Tactical School in January 1923. Jenkins courted military interest early, and US Navy representatives were present at his public demonstration of radio transmitted images in June 1925.
  7. - Dr. David Todd & C.F. Jenkins, 8-21-24 LOC npcc.11973. Dr David Todd and Charles Francis Jenkins, seated in front, photographed in August 1924 for the National Photo Company. Jenkins was working towards the public demonstration he gave in June 1925, when he transmitted the silhouette of a model windmill by radio.
  8. - C.F. Jenkins & J.W. Robinson, 6-15-25. Charles Francis Jenkins with J. W. Robinson, photographed on 13 June 1925, the day Jenkins publicly demonstrated the transmission of moving images by radio. He sent the silhouette of a model Dutch windmill turned by an electric fan from the Naval Radio Station at Bellevue to his rooftop on Connecticut Avenue, with US Navy representatives present.
  9. - Motion pictures by radio coming soon. Motion pictures by radio is very near, predicts C. Francis Jenkins,. Francis Jenkins, who has designed this small radio- vision receiving set for use in the homes. It is only a few inches square and is attached to the regular radio receiving set. A miniature motion picture screen is placed on the wall of your home, as shown in this photo.
  10. - Charles Francis Jenkins, inventor, 1925. The inventor Charles Francis Jenkins, photographed in 1925 on a glass plate negative. Jenkins demonstrated radio transmitted moving images publicly on 13 June 1925, seven months before Baird's public demonstration, a fact British accounts routinely leave out.
  11. - The JLB Digital Archive - In 1925 Robert Shaw was 'Televised' by John Logie Baird. On Robert Shaw being televised by Baird in 1925. The specific claim Baird holds up best is tonal gradation, meaning grey values rather than black-and-white silhouettes, which is the thing Jenkins shadow images did not have.
  12. - Francis Jankins [i.e. Charles Francis Jenkins] qui transmet par radio des cartes géographiques renseignant. Sujet : Jenkins, Charles Francis (1867-1934) -- Portraits Portraits -- 1914-1945 Référence bibliographique : Rol, 118186 Appartient à l’ensemble documentaire : Pho20Rol Image de presse Couverture :.. avril 1927 Langue : français.
  13. - Mechanical television receiver 1927 - Indiana State Museum. A prototype mechanical television receiver built by Morris VanWay for RCA in 1927. The video signal from a receiver was applied to the neon bulb at top, and it was viewed through holes in the spinning disk (Nipkow disk) at rear, which created the scan lines, resulting in a dim orange monocolor image about one inch square. Before modern electronic scan television systems were developed around World War 2, the first television systems used this mechanical scan technology.
  14. - Charles Francis Jenkins. 13 June 1925, seven months before Baird's public demonstration. He transmitted a model Dutch windmill turned by an electric fan, with US Navy representatives present. British accounts of television's invention routinely omit him.
  15. - First television broadcast NBC. Publicity photo National Broadcasting Company (NBC) issued for their 30th anniversary in 1956. The photo depicts their work in television beginning in 1928. The Felix the Cat doll shown in the photo was used by the company for over a decade beginning with mechanical television in 1928 and continued to be used to help develop electronic television.
  16. - Group. Charles Francis Jenkins (2nd from left) showing his Mirror Drum Television Receiver. Charles Francis Jenkins, second from left, showing his mirror drum television receiver to a group. A mirror drum used angled mirrors around a rotating cylinder instead of a perforated disc, giving a brighter picture for the same scanning rate.
  17. - Identified! (Group. Charles Francis Jenkins (2nd from left) showing his Mirror Drum Television Receiver) (LOC). Charles Francis Jenkins, second from left, demonstrating his mirror drum television receiver to a group, photographed by Harris and Ewing. The mirror drum used angled mirrors on a spinning cylinder in place of a perforated disc.
  18. - John Logie Baird, negative, 1928 (Lafayette; NPG x49619). John Logie Baird photographed by Lafayette on a whole plate film negative in March 1928. 1928 was the year Baird transmitted a picture across the Atlantic from London to Hartsdale, though the exact date of that transmission is not established.
  19. - Phonovision record 1928. A Phonovision record of 1928, Baird's attempt to store a 30 line television picture on a gramophone disc. Because the mechanical signal was slow enough to fit within audio bandwidth, it could be cut to a record, making these among the earliest recordings of a television image.
  20. - Radio News Sep 1928 pg222. The Scanning Disc, Television's Canvas Radio News, September 1928. Volume 10 Number 3. Published by Experimenter Publishing, New York, NY Editor-in-Chief and Publisher: Hugo Gernsback Table of Contents Image:Radio News Sep 1928 pg194.png The page numbers were on an annual basis, not per issue.
  21. - Baird television, 1929. A Baird receiver of 1929, from the period when the BBC was transmitting 30 line pictures using Baird's mechanical system. The image was built up by a spinning disc pierced with a spiral of holes rather than by a tube.
  22. - Frank Gray Television. Frank Gray peering into a mechanical television device at Bell Labs in 1930. Bell Labs ran a serious television programme in parallel with the individual inventors, and Gray's work on scanning fed into later electronic systems.
  23. - Televisore meccanico, a disco di Nipkow - Baird Televisor.. A mechanical television built on a metal footed plate carrying the drive motor, the socket for the neon lamp which is now missing, a lens viewer and a variable potentiometer, in the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Milan. The neon lamp is the part that made the picture: it glowed brighter or dimmer with the signal while the disc scanned across it.
  24. - Flying spot scanner television studio 1931. Drawing of an early television studio in the 1930s using mechanical flying spot scanner television cameras, owned by the Jenkins Television Co. During the 1920s and 30s, before modern electronic-scanning television systems debuted around 1940, dozens of experimental stations broadcast television programs using mechanical scanning technology. Instead of a television camera that recorded an image, a powerful light source called a "flying spot scanner" (bottom) projects a moving spot of intense light onto the subject (top) in the darkened studio.
  25. - John Logie Baird and mechanical television. John Logie Baird showing his mechanical scanning television system in 1931. By this date the BBC was transmitting 30 line pictures using Baird's system, which remained in service until electronic television replaced it in 1937.
  26. - Spinning-disk television receiver 1931. An early television receiver from 1931, using a spinning disk with holes to display the image. It was used with experimental mechanical-scan television programs broadcast by the first experimental TV stations in the 1920s - 30s. It consists of a homebuilt 6 tube video receiver unit (right) which tunes the 2 - 3 MHz band used for experimental television broadcasts.
  27. - Televisore a valvole, bianco e nero, midget - Magneti Marelli RV 175.. Questo televisore è contenuto in un mobile in legno e radica con un'apertura quadrata sul lato frontale. Tale apertura, smussata agli angoli e protetta da un vetro, permette la visione dello schermo del tubo catodico (cinescopio) Sotto lo schermo sono presenti 5 comandi a manopola con le seguenti funzioni: sincronia orizzontale/sintonia, luminosità, fuoco, sensibilità, sincronia verticale/contrasto. Nella parte superiore uno sportello incernierato permette di ispezionare l'interno del televisore dove è presente il circuito a valvole (mancanti) costituito da 24 valvole, gli elementi circuitali (condensatori), il tubo catodico posto in orizzontale e un sistema di trasformatori che permetteva l.
  28. - Tomorrow's World 1996 - 30-line TV restored from 1927-28 and 1933. A Tomorrow World item from 1996 on 30-line television restored from 1927-28 and 1933 recordings. Baird recorded television signals onto shellac discs, a process he called Phonovision, and the restoration work recovered moving images from them decades later. The set is the subject here, not the programme.
  29. - Tomorrow's World 1998 - 30-line TV restored from the 1930s. Tomorrow World returning to the 30-line restoration in 1998. The 30 holes in Baird disc produced a 30-line image, which is the floor of what can be called a recognisable picture, and this footage shows exactly how little information that is.
  30. - CNN 1999 - 30-line TV video recordings news feature. A 1999 CNN news feature on the recovered 30-line television recordings. American coverage of Baird is rarer than British coverage, and this item is useful precisely because it reaches an audience taught the Farnsworth story instead.
  31. - Baird televisor. A Baird Televisor, the receiver sold to the public for watching the 30 line mechanical broadcasts. A perforated disc spun behind the small viewing window and a neon lamp behind it varied in brightness as the picture was scanned.
  32. - Colour Televisor. A colour televisor. A test card, the famous "Test Card F", can just be seen through the lens on the right.
  33. - Stooky-Bill. A modern replica of Stooky Bill, made by members of the Narrow Bandwidth Television Association to reproduce Baird's early experiments. The original ventriloquist's dummy head was used because the arc lighting required to register an image was too fierce for a human sitter.
  34. - NipkowDiskWithColourPicture. A colour test image reproduced through a Nipkow disc at 32 vertical lines, made by a modern builder. The Nipkow disc is a flat plate pierced with a spiral of holes, and a full picture is assembled as each hole sweeps one line.
  35. - Nipkow Spiral Disk. A close look at a Nipkow spiral disc itself, the component the whole era is named after. The spiral is what converts one rotation into a full frame of scan lines.
  36. - Iain Logie Baird on the invention of television. Iain Logie Baird, grandson of John Logie Baird and a television curator, on the invention. A family descendant who is also a museum professional is a useful voice on a subject where the family legend and the documentary record diverge.
  37. - 32 lines nipkow disc television demo.MOV. A 32-line Nipkow disc television demonstration. Thirty-two lines is the Baird 1925 figure; Kenjiro Takayanagi reached 40 lines on a cathode ray tube display in Hamamatsu on 25 December 1926.
  38. - Mechanical Scanning Disk Television 1928 Repro. A reproduction of a 1928 scanning disc television. Reproductions are captioned as replicas rather than as period objects, because almost no original disc receiver survives in working order.
  39. - 30 line Baird compatible television designed by F. Kerkhof pre war. A 30-line Baird-compatible receiver designed pre-war by F. Kerkhof, built and demonstrated. The narrow bandwidth television community keeps the 30-line standard alive as a transmittable format.
  40. - televisie nipkow. A Dutch physics demonstration of the Nipkow disc. The disc dissects an image into a line-by-line sequence, and that single idea underpins every mechanical television ever built.
  41. - Mirror screw. Applicable for receiving set and allows larger image size versus Nipkow disc. Exhibition of Czech National Technical Museum, Prague.
  42. - Being televised on a mechanical television system. Someone being televised on a working mechanical system, which is the exact experience Baird witnesses had in 1925 and 1926. The resolution is the story.
  43. - Mechanical color television. Mechanical colour television running, filmed off the screen. Field-sequential colour puts red, green and blue fields on screen in sequence and lets the eye fuse them, which is why a spinning filter wheel is enough to make colour.
  44. - Iain Baird, The Role of the Museum for Television. Iain Baird on the role of the museum in keeping television hardware. The argument matters for this archive: mechanical television survives as objects in institutional collections and as replicas, and almost not at all as working original equipment.
  45. - Mechanical Television Demonstration. A mechanical television running at the Early Television Museum, filmed off the aperture so you can see what a disc picture actually looked like. This is the answer to the question the photographs cannot settle: how coarse the image was, and how much the eye fills in.
  46. - Vintage television, 80 years old, restored and working. An eighty-year-old receiver restored to working order and showing a picture. The vertical tube and mirror-in-the-lid arrangement of many pre-war sets was a hardware consequence: early kinescopes were long, and standing the tube upright made the cabinet shallower.
  47. - How did the first television work? / Mechanical Television. A short explanation of how the first television worked, built around the mechanical scanning principle. The mechanical system died for hardware reasons: resolution is capped by disc size and rotation speed, the image is tiny, synchronisation is fragile, and the camera could not move.
  48. - Restored Baird television playing a clip from the Avengers. A restored Baird set running a clip from The Avengers, which is a deliberately absurd pairing and a good test of the hardware. Baird designations, prices and production numbers are not settled in the sources, so this is captioned by what is visible on the bench.
  49. - mechanical television for spark museum in bellingham washington. A mechanical television built for the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention in Bellingham, Washington, documented by its builder. Museums increasingly commission working replicas because the originals cannot be run.
  50. - spark museum mechanical television introduction. An introduction to the SPARK Museum mechanical television exhibit. A working replica in a public gallery is how most people will ever see a disc picture.
  51. - Mechanical Television: Incredibly simple, yet entirely bonkers. Technology Connections builds up the mechanical system from first principles, spinning disc to neon lamp, and is honest that the whole thing is a mechanical dead end. Every mechanical television is a variation on Paul Nipkow German patent 30105, filed 1884, for a spiral of holes in a spinning opaque disc. Nipkow himself never built a working television.
  52. - Mechanische Nipkow-TV-Übertragung - mechanical TV broadcast with Nipkow disc. A working Nipkow disc transmission demonstrated by a German amateur. The German tradition foregrounds Nipkow, whose claim rests on the 1884 patent alone, and the enthusiast scene there has kept the disc alive as a build project.
  53. - 1929 Western Visionette Mechanical Television. A 1929 Western Visionette mechanical television, one of the American disc receivers of the brief window when several US stations broadcast mechanical pictures. Jenkins own station W3XK went on air 2 July 1928 and eventually broadcast six nights a week.
  54. - pre-war television, 80 years old, restored and working. A pre-war British receiver, about eighty years old at filming, restored and working. Britain built roughly 19,000 television sets before the Second World War against 7,000 to 8,000 in the United States, so a surviving pre-war set is more likely to be British than American.
  55. - The JLB Digital Archive - "One of the rarest television sets ever made.. complete with cellarette!". A very rare Baird receiver complete with its cellarette, filmed as an object. Cabinet features like this are the evidence for the furniture argument: the set was sold as a piece of domestic joinery with electronics inside.
  56. - Berlin (1927) 32-line Nipkow Disc Demo. A 32-line Nipkow disc demonstration presented as Berlin 1927. Germany is the other centre of mechanical television, with Manfred von Ardenne as its electronic claimant; the exact date and scope of his 1931 Funkausstellung demonstration are not established here.
  57. - 1930s television, 80 years old, restored with rebuilt CRT tube. A 1930s set restored with a rebuilt CRT. Rebuilding a picture tube means opening the envelope, replacing the gun and re-evacuating, and it is the only way a pre-war receiver can be made to display again once the original tube has gone soft.
  58. - HMV 900 , Pre War Television 1936 , showing the Baird 240 line system and EMI 405 line system. An HMV 900 from 1936 shown running both the Baird 240-line system and the Marconi-EMI 405-line electronic system, which is the exact comparison the BBC was making at Alexandra Palace. From 2 November 1936 the BBC alternated the two, and ceased Baird transmissions in February 1937.
  59. - Home made Mechanical television. A home-made mechanical television running. Builders in this scene generally drive the disc with a modern motor and feed it from a microcontroller, which sidesteps the synchronisation problem that defeated 1930s viewers.
  60. - On This Day: 26 January 1926. Associated Press marking 26 January 1926, the date of Baird first public demonstration. Worth setting against Charles Francis Jenkins, who had given a publicised public demonstration in Washington on 13 June 1925, seven months earlier, with US Navy representatives present. British accounts routinely omit Jenkins.
  61. - I Built a Mechanical Digital Camera With a Nipkow Disk. A mechanical digital camera built around a Nipkow disc. Running the disc as a pickup rather than a display shows the other half of the mechanical system, the part that had to sit in punishing light.
  62. - Mechanical Television Sets in the Early Television Museum. The Early Television Museum in Hilliard, Ohio walks its shelf of mechanical sets: Nipkow disc receivers, neon lamps and the magnifying lenses that made a postage-stamp image watchable. The picture in a disc set is the size of the aperture, which is why almost every one of them was sold with a lens in front. Dated to the era of the objects on the bench rather than the upload.
  63. - John Logie Baird gives the World's First Public Demonstration of Television 1926. A reconstruction of the 26 January 1926 public demonstration at 22 Frith Street, London, to members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times. That date is the publicity. The achievement was 2 October 1925, in private, when Baird transmitted the head of a ventriloquist dummy called Stooky Bill at 32 lines and five pictures per second, then fetched office boy William Edward Taynton to become the first living person televised in full tonal range.
  64. - The Western Television Model 41 Mechanical Scanning Disc TV. A long look at a Western Television Model 41, one of the American scanning-disc receivers sold when Chicago and Washington were broadcasting mechanical pictures. The disc, the motor and the synchronising problem are all visible in one cabinet. Viewers of these sets adjusted the speed constantly because transmitter and receiver discs had to stay in lock.
  65. - Making of the 1933 Bush Baird Mirror Drum Televisor Replica. A replica of the 1933 Bush Baird mirror drum Televisor being made, shot as a workshop record. The mirror drum was the alternative to the disc: a rotating polygon of mirrors sweeping the image line by line. It is the strand of mechanical television that photographs badly and films well.
  66. - Bush Baird Televisor Mirror Drum Televisor 1933 Replika 2021-22. The finished Bush Baird mirror drum Televisor replica, built 2021 to 2022 and running. Original mirror drum receivers are museum objects in single figures, so the replica scene is how this hardware can still be seen working at all.
  67. - Fracarro 30 Line mechanical television at the Early Television Museum June 2022. A Fracarro 30 line mechanical receiver of the early 1930s at the Early Television Museum. Thirty lines was the BBC's mechanical broadcast standard, enough to recognise a face and nothing more.
  68. - Mechanical 32-line COLOUR TV monitor. A 32-line mechanical colour monitor built by an enthusiast, using colour filters on the scanning path. It is a working demonstration of the principle Baird showed in 1928 and that CBS later took to the FCC.
  69. - The JLB Digital Archive - "The Missing Chapter". The JLB Digital Archive on what it calls the missing chapter of the Baird story. Useful as a corrective: the standard telling makes the BBC decision look like politics, when the documented reason was mechanical.
  70. - The JLB Digital Archive - Ray Herbert “Baird’s forgotten work on colour television’. Ray Herbert on Baird forgotten work on colour television, from the JLB Digital Archive. Baird demonstrated colour on 3 July 1928 using scanning discs with three spirals of apertures, each carrying a filter of a different primary colour. That is field-sequential colour, mechanically implemented, twenty-two years before the FCC approved a field-sequential system as the American standard.
  71. - Vintage Mechanical Television Jenkins Radiovisor model #100 1931. A Jenkins Radiovisor, the receiver kit Jenkins sold to American home constructors around 1931. This is the earliest consumer television hardware in America and it was a kit rather than an appliance. Model designations and sales figures for the Radiovisor line are not established, so the object is described rather than catalogued.
  72. - The JLB Digital Archive - The unknown secret war work at Baird Television. On the wartime work at Baird Television, a strand of the company history that the invention narrative usually skips entirely. The mechanical system died for hardware reasons: resolution is capped by disc size and rotation, the image is tiny, synchronisation is fragile and the camera could not move.
  73. - The JLB Digital Archive - “A WORLD FIRST - The Frith Street Demonstration". The JLB Digital Archive on the Frith Street demonstration. The archive is run by a named production company working with Baird material rather than an anonymous compilation channel, which matters on a subject this heavily re-uploaded.
  74. - The JLB Digital Archive - "The rooftop discovery at Long Acre". The JLB Digital Archive on a rooftop discovery at Long Acre, where Baird Television had premises. Object-level archive work of this kind is where the unglamorous hardware history of the company actually survives.
  75. - The JLB Digital Archive - John Logie Baird at Crescent Wood Rd in war time. Baird at Crescent Wood Road during the war. The Crystal Palace fire that damaged the Baird facilities is part of why so little of the company hardware survives.
  76. - Televisor 6 - Mechanical Television. A later Televisor in the same builder series, showing how far the amateur reconstruction of 30-line hardware has been carried. Baird disc had 30 holes producing a 30-line image, and his mechanical system later reached 240 lines on BBC broadcasts in 1936, the ceiling of what spinning metal could do.
  77. - How to make a simple mechanical tv. A simple mechanical television build, shown end to end. The disc, the lamp and the lens are the whole receiver, which is why kits could be sold to home constructors in the first place.
  78. - I made a hilarious mechanical TV. bitluni builds a mechanical television as an electronics project. The modern replica scene is the reason this hardware can still be filmed working, and it is unusually well documented compared with the surviving originals.
  79. - 100 Years of Television - The John Logie Baird Lecture 2025. The Institution of Engineering and Technology John Logie Baird Lecture for 2025, marking a century since the 1925 transmission. A long technical lecture from a named engineering body is the opposite of the anniversary listicle this subject usually attracts.
  80. - The Story of Stooky Bill. The First Ever Television Image. 1924. The story of Stooky Bill, the ventriloquist dummy head Baird used because it could sit under punishing light without blinking. Note the two dates that most tellings merge: 2 October 1925 was the private achievement, 26 January 1926 the public demonstration.
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