Here's Looking at You
YOUR PHOTOS. Some of you have contacted me with photos of your projects.TOM MACIOLEK SCANNER. Accelerate a fax machine by several thousand times, and you have mechanical TV. Almost. Every 14 seconds, you'll need to replenish the paper! Tom Maciolek followed a more direct approach. He built a 32-line, scanning disc TV based on Peter Smith’s design. Tom's machine plays shows that the Narrow Bandwidth Television Association recorded on CDs. The technology follows John Baird's sets, but adds modern innovations like phase-locked sync. A super LED matrix replaces the neon kine tube. Mechanical TV sets display a surprising amount of detail. Viewers of Tom's magnified, three-inch picture easily recognize TV performers. The project debunks notions of mechanical TV's alleged “lack of entertainment value.”
CLIFFORD BENHAM COLOR WHEEL. In 1955, very few of us had color TV sets. They were toys for the wealthy. Then along came tiny, Indiana company Col-R-Tel. In 1955, Col-R-Tel offered color TV to the mass market. Mind you, Col-R-Tel wasn't for just anybody, though. You had to know how to solder. Still, if you read Popular Science from October 1955, you lusted for Col-R-Tel. The magazine made a bold promise, and Col-R-Tel delivered: With $150 and some assembly, you could enjoy color telecasts on your monochrome TV! Clifford based his three-color converter on a Col-R-Tel unit that he once owned. He applied modern electronics to the color wheel. His superior converter produces saturated, well-defined, field-sequential color pictures.
RUDY BOREL COLORDAPTOR. A 1956 Radio-Electronics article appealed to intrepid color TV experimenters. The magazine described how to build a complete color demodulator. From scratch. For economy, the magazine's Colordaptor uses color wheel instead of a new picture tube. The color wheel converts the TV to a field-sequential color receiver. (Since a monochrome set can only display one color at a time, sequential color is a necessity.) Next, a hand-wired chassis adapts the incoming signal from simultaneous to sequential color. The chassis also keeps the wheel in step with the signal. That way, color transitions only take place during the vertical blanking inverval. Rudy Borel's Colordaptor produced the first color pictures in his town.
HOW ABOUT YOUR PROJECT? Besides rust and spiders, what's going on in that shop? Are you a weekend inventor? If you're working on something related to television or illusion generators, please drop me a line! Your project need not be a historical one. Of course, the historical aspect helps. Still, if it's not mechanical television, are you working on an illusion generator? What's that? Games, electronic music, refurbishing DuMont oscilloscopes, recording on aluminum discs, movie equipment, QRP, 3-D, programming.
Please tell me, and send pictures! If I can use them, I will. You get the photography credit. Can I make you famous? Definitely...not. But you'll have a new outlet, bragging rights, and maybe even some admirers. Please, and thank you!
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