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c 1879/80 in Ireland, Denis Redmond builds (possibly as early as 1879) his télescopie électrique (Electric Telescope) and transmits an image electrically. This is argueably the first 'television' system. In 1880 he publishes the first book about television as we now know it.(see counter argument below)

Source: 2500 Years of Communications History

In late 1999 I received the following eMail(s) from Prof. Dr. André Lange of the University of Brussels (Belgium) who writes...(in part and with some [grammatical corrections and additions] by the author)

Dear Dr Naughton,

On your site there is a page - rather empty - on Denis Redmond and referring to La télescopie électrique as being the first book about television.

This is not correct, you are confusing Denis Redmond with Adriano de Paiva.

De Paiva published a paper titled La téléscopie électrique basée sur l'emploi du sélénium in the Portuguese publication O Istituto. A copy of an 1880 reprint by de Paiva is available on my website http://histv2.free.fr.

In this reprint, de Paiva is not very clear on the date of the first publication [quoting] "20 de fevereiro 1877" but footnoting the reference to the publication O Instituto of "Março de 1878".

In the foreword, de Paiva [also refers to] the first article and then speaks of its "reproduction" in the publication Commercio Portuguez of April 27, 1878. I suppose then that February 20, 1877 was the date of finalisation of the paper by de Paiva and March 1878, the date of publication.

Abramson in his classic The History of Television, 1880 to 1941, McFarland, 1987, probably [confused] the two dates when he refers to the publication [of] the 20 February 1878.

It appears from Abramson's footnote (pp.274-275) that he did not have access to the original documents and used a second hand source, G. Goebel, From the History of Television - The First Fifty Years, Bosh Technische Berichte 6, n.5/6 (25 may 1979).

Abramson quotes the Redmond Paper as : Denis D. Redmond, An Electric Telescope, English Mechanic, 28 (7 February 1879)

Yours sincerely,

Prof.Dr. André Lange
University of Brussels (Belgium)

I replied to Prof. Dr. André

Thankyou for your eMail. I am very happy when more information comes my way - even if it proves my data to be incorrect. I will [...] adjust my information accordingly. I do appreciate your contact and I might ask of you more information on this matter if I may. Material 1880-1900 is not easy to come by.

Thank you for your mail. I do not have much more material. It was a miracle to find the de Paiva brochure by an "alfarabista" (antiquariat bookseller) in Porto. I think you should anyway use Abramson's book to verify your data. It is in general very precise.

Many thanks again for the update - the de Paiva brochure is certainly a real 'treasure' - brochures do not survive time like hard covered books. Regarding accuracy - I try to get to the truth by way of seeking as many sources as close to the 'real' thing as possible - in some cases I have very little to work with and thats how mistakes happen as in the case of the Redmond page - the De Paiva brochure is a perfect example of where you can be sure of the facts.

If it is OK with you I will add your letter to the "REDMOND_BIO" page pointing out this error and linking to your site for the real story. I really like to get mail such as yours - it gives my site 'life' and shows how people though thousands of miles apart, can work together.

newly found...

Seeing by electricity occupied the minds of theorists and practical experimenters from Alexander Graham Bell's development of the telephone (1876) onwards. The opto-electrical properties of selenium had been known since 1873 (5) and in 1878, Adriano de Paiva, Professor of Physics at Orporto Polytechnical Academy, proposed a television camera based on those phenomena (6).

Later the same year, a French lawyer, Constantin Senlecq, contributed the concept of scanning by which a flat-plane image might be transmitted as a string of single points each having predetermined brightness (7). Six years elapsed before Paul Nipkow patented the first practical means of Image dissection, the Nipkow disc (8) , which Max Dieckmann and Gustav Glage used in 1907 for a 20-line detector feeding a cathode-ray tube receiver (9).

A. A. Campbell Swinton outlined the principle of a CRT-based camera in 1908 (10) but the first national television broadcasting service, started by the BBC in London, was to use the Nipkow concept applied and improved by John Logie Baird.

footnotes:

5. 'Effect of light on selenium during the passage of an electric current' by Willoughby Smith, Nature, Febuary 20th 1873.

6. 'La telescopie electrique, basee sur 'emploi du selenium' by Adriano de Paiva, Da Silva, Oporto 1880.

7. 'Telectroscope' by Constantin Senlecq, L'Electricite November 1878.

8. German Patent 30,105, Paul Nipkow, 1884.

9 'Fernübertragungseinrichtungen hoher Mannigfaltigkeit' by Max Dieckmann, Prometheus issue 1010, March 3rd 1909.

10. Letter to the editor from Alan Campbell Swinton, Nature June 18th 1908.

Source: http://www.ibeweb.com/museum/25years_a.htm

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