A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DCharles Francis (C. F.) Jenkins : 1867 - 1934
While [John Logie] Baird promoted and developed mechanical television in Britain, Charles Francis Jenkins promoted it in North America. A lone tinkerer from Dayton, Ohio, Jenkins created "radio vision" and performed his first transmission, from Anacosta, Virginia to Washington in 1925. Described as a multitube radio set with a special picture receiving attachment, by 1928, Jenkins had managed to sell several thousand sets at a cost that varied between $85 and $135. The device, consisting of and electric motor and prismatic rings, managed to produce a cloudy 40 line image on a six-inch square mirror. Jenkins also opened and operated North America's first television station, W3XK in Wheaton, Maryland.
Charles Francis Jenkins a native of Richmond, Indiana developed the first motion picture projector and was also an early television pioneer. Jenkins invented his motion picture system to settle a bet that 5 gaited horses could have all four feet in the air at the same time. The animated movie was shown in downtown Richmond in an upstairs apartment over a local jewelry store on June 6, 1894 and thus is claimed (by the source) to have been the first public showing of a motion picture.
Charles Francis Jenkins, American television pioneer, b: August 22, 1867 d: June 5, 1934 near Dayton, 0. Washington, D.C. spent his boyhood on a farm near Richmond, Indiana. He attended country school, high school and Eariham College; then in 1890, he went to Washington as secretary in the United States Life Saving Service, but resigned in 1895 at the age of twenty-three to take up inventing as a profession. Photography as a hobby fired Jenkins' interest in motion pictures, and in 1892 he projected a moving picture before an astonished group of friends, using a silk handkerchief as the screen. A year later he added an arc light, and this machine was a forerunner of the motion-picture projector. He sold his invention for a few dollars, but lived to see the movies grow into a billion-dollar industry. The films led Jenkins into radio facsimile and television. As early as 1894, he outlined a scheme for the electrical transmission of pictures. Other high spots in his career include his proposal on September 27, 1913, of wireless moving-picture news; and in 1923 he transmitted pictures of President Harding by radio from Washington to Philadelphia, 130 miles. In December, 1924, clear images of the signature of Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, were sent from Washington to Boston, 450 miles. From pen-and-ink photoradio Jenkins turned to television, and on June 13, 1925, in Washington, he demonstrated a mechanical scanning system using a revolving disk, the rim being lined with tiny lenses. Collaborating with the Navy, in 1926, he flashed weather maps from Arlington, Virginia, to ships at sea, using a mysterious radio "pen". In March, 1932, he described a new principle far advanced from the early shadowgraph stage. Now the images, estimated to be 3,600 times brighter, appeared on a sensitized emulsion on an animated lantern slide. Incoming signals quickly changed the surface from opaque to clear, equivalent to the lights and shadows, thereby painting an ever changing pattern corresponding to the scene transmitted. Several of the Jenkins motor-driven mechanical scanners were demonstrated in New York; the receivers had a large glass bullseye like screen. Through this instrument many people witnessed television for the first time during the early thirties. Jenkins died on the threshold of television. in explaining television he had remarked...
"It's easy. Don't you remember when we were little tykes, mother entertained us by putting a penny under a piece of paper, and by drawing straight lines across the paper, she made a picture of the Indian appear? Well, that's the very way we do it. The incoming radio signals turn the light up and down as it moves swiftly over the screen and you see the distant scene.... Source: Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., Radio's One Hundred Men of Science
The inventor Charles Francis Jenkins, b. near Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 22, 1867, d. June 6, 1934, pioneered in the early development of cinematography and television. In 1924 he invented the phantascope, one of the earliest successful motion-picture projectors. He also designed (1925) an experimental television system based on a mechanical scene-scanning method, invented by Paul Nipkow. Jenkins was awarded more than 400 patents and was the founder and first president (1916) of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers.
One of the better known experimenters with mechanical television was Charles Francis Jenkins, a Quaker farm boy from Ohio, college dropout, and one of history's most prolific and wealthy American inventors. In 1916, Jenkins then primarily involved with the motion picture industry, pulled together a dozen manufacturers and their technicians in order to form the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, SMPE, an organization dedicated to nurturing this new and rapidly growing medium, to create the standards necessary to regulate its practices, and to educate the professional community through its publications. In May 1920, at the Toronto meeting of SMPE, Jenkins introduced his "prismatic rings" as a device to replace the shutter on a film projector. This invention laid the foundation for his first radiovision broadcast. He claimed to have transmitted the earliest moving silhouette images on June 14, 1923, but his first public demonstration of these did not take place until June of 1925 when he transmitted moving pictures of a windmill. Jenkins Laboratories constructed a radiovision transmitter, W3XK, in Washington D.C. The short-wave station began transmitting radiomovies across the Eastern U.S. on a regular basis by July 2, 1928. Wall Street rewarded Jenkins's corporation with $10 million in stock. By 1928's end, 18 stations were broadcasting across America, using Jenkins's system and that of others. Jenkins wrote in 1929:
"This gave the amateur action-pictures to "fish" for; and during August following a hundred or more had finished their receivers and were dependably getting our broadcast pictures, and reporting thereon, to our great help."It was in this way that Jenkins actively promoted enthusiasm and experimentation in the short-wave radio community, and the U.S. experienced its first television boom, with an estimated 20,000 lookers-in. But the First Great Television Boom, as Tube calls it, went bust by 1932. Images were so murky that announcers would describe what the audience should see, and all existing systems used mechanical scanning, which was inherently too slow and bulky. The way ahead belonged to the two proponents of purely electronic television, Farnsworth and Zworykin. The Society founded by Jenkins in 1916 did however finally embrace television in 1950, changing its name to SMPTE, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.
1929 World Almanac - Radio Telegraphy and Telephony In June, 1925, Mr. C. Francis Jenkins gave the first public demonstration or the transmission of images of living subjects, and also of film records of persons and scenes. Mr. Jenkins effected his transmission by radio and in the latter case called his images of living subjects "radio vision," and his transmission of films "radio movies." In April, 1927, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company transmitted images of living persons from Washington to New York over telephone circuits. The same sort of images were also transmitted by radio from the A. T. & T. experimental station at Whippany, N. J. to the laboratories in New York City. In the considerable publicity given to the A. T. & T. transmissions the term "television" was used, and has largely been adopted by the general public as applying to any form of visual broadcasting. One cannot well quarrel with established usage, even though incorrect, but a discrimination should be made between the radio transmission of living subjects and transmission of film records of such subjects. Therefore (in this chapter) we will call the first system "television" (meaning radio vision, although the term does not say so) and the second one "radio movies." Now observe that in the A. T. & T. demonstrations wire and radio channels were used interchangeably. Thus the art of seeing at a distance is not necessarily a radio art and the reason for introducing it into a radio book lies in the expectation that some form of it will see wide distribution as an auxiliary to the present (acoustic) radio broadcasting. Independent wire development for public entertainment can be expected. Radiomovies Radiomovies are made possible by first photographing the subject with an ordinary motion picture camera. The problem then becomes that of transforming the lights and shadows of this film into electrical impulses which can be transmitted and at the receiving end reconverted into lights and shadows properly distributed on the receiving screen. Since in the ordinary moving picture theatre a flickerless picture necessitates running the film through the projector at the rate of about 16 pictures per second, we must carry out our process of conversion at this same rate, which is to say, we must in 1/16 of 1 second completely transform one "frame" or picture into electrical impulses and move it on so that the next "frame" may be similarly analysed in the next 1/16 of 1 second. The process of doing this is basically the same one of "scanning line-for-line" as is used in transmitting directly the image of a living person. However, the small size of the film permits some surprising simplifications and economies of the apparatus and without doubt the greatest accomplishments have been made along the line of transmitting and receiving silhouette and half-tone radiomovies. As transmitted from the Jenkins station W3XK, these have been well received over a considerable portion of the United States. The first radiomovies transmitted from the Jenkins Laboratories were only silhouettes in order to confine the frequency...
and as advertised by an antique bookseller in 1999 Jenkins, C. Francis. The Boyhood of an Inventor. Washington, DC: (C. Francis Jenkins), 1931. First ed. 8vo., xix, 275 pp., profusely illustrated with photographs, drawings and facsimiles. There is a dampstain to the first 120 pp., else a good copy. Jenkins was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1867, and spent his boyhood on a farm in Richmond, Indiana. He attended Earlham College and served as secretary of the U.S. Life Saving Service in Washington, D.C. from 1890 to 1895. He resigned to devote himself to inventing. A pioneer cinematographer, Jenkins was granted a patent for his first cine apparatus in 1895 (the Phantascope). He joined forces with Thomas Armat, with whom he made improvements in projection (patented as Viascope). Armat joined forces with Edison, and Jenkins sold his interest to Edison. He was a major contributor to the progress of cinematography, and was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute of Phila. for his work (1897). He produced the first photographs by radio, and a mechanism for viewing by radio, i.e., television. This volume details his life and applications of his over 400 inventions, and reproduces several of his radio addresses.
In 1925 Charles Francis Jenkins wrote an article about "the next development" soon after the introduction of what we know as television. The word television was not commonplace at that stage, Jenkins called it Home Radio Movies.
 Image Source: Dutch Society for Radiotelegraphy, 1916-1926
Home Radio Movies by C. Francis Jenkins Radio Movies for home entertainment is the next development in which the radio industry should be interested. This means exactly what it sounds like, i.e., the broadcasting of pictures from motion picture film direct, to be reproduced on a small screen in the home, carried there by radio. Radio Movies are distined to bring entertainment of the most enjoyable character to the greater home audience of good-picture lovers. While the Radio Movie receiving sets are not yet available for public distribution, they soon will be, for Radio Movies are a daily laboratory demonstration, and refinement is all that remains to be done before merchandising plans can be put into motion. Perhaps it may be explained that the same radio picture set in the home can receive Radio Vision pictures, from studio subjects or out-of-door scenes, just as readily as Radio Movies, i.e., pictures from film. Radio Vision was publicly demonstrated when on june 13, 1925, Secretary Wilbur, and others of the U.S. Navy; Acting Secretary Judge Davis of the Department of Commerce, and friends; and Director Dr. Burgess of the Bureau of Standards, saw in my laboratory in Washington what was then happening at the Anacostia Naval Air Station several miles away. Probably the first broadcasting will be a mixed program from both film (canned pictures) and living actors, just as the first audible radio was from "canned music" as well as from living performers direct. So it will not be very long now before one may see on a small white screen in ones home notable current events, like inauguralceremonies, ball games, pageants, as well as pantomime performance broadcast from motion picture film Washington, December 1925
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