32 Line Mechanical Television III

When Paul Nipkow, who invented the Nipkow disk in 1884, saw the first time a working Nipkow disk televisor on the Berlin Funkausstellung in 1928, he went away, grim and very disappointed due to the low video quality. Of course, the camera and amplifying technology of these times did not tap the full potential of the Nipkow disk.

This here is a demonstration which shows how good mechanical television in reality can be.

In the times of HDTV, many people think that a television standard of appr. 30 lines per frame and a video bandwidth which can be distributed in telephone bandwidth, might not able to display recognizable video content.

This video demonstration should reject this opinion. As video source was selected a RCA Victor commercial from 1961 for color tv, displaying in black and white on a Nipkow disk based on the standards of 1928 and recorded in 2006. One can see that most of the video content is recognizable - even as it is displayed in 32 line format.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Paul
• Nipkow
• scanning
• disk
• mechanical
• television
• John
• Logie
• Baird
• televisor
• NBTV
• RCA
• color
• commercial
• Funkausstellung

[mubd1234]

The guy who owns this mechanical set really needs a color tv!

[TeslaMaster]

Yes, I will create a mechanical color set, and then you can watch this ad in color on the Nipkow disk. ;-)

[NipkowDisk]

Way cool. Thank you for posting this!

[TeslaMaster]

In the next year, I will try to make a better video for Youtube without the large vertical bars resulting from the different frame rate of camera and Nipkow disk. But for now the mechanical Nipkow disk tv set is on an exhibition of the World Heritage Voelklingen Ironworks. I have to wait until I get it back.

[rasticlock]

Its not fake,

1) you can notice that the frame is repeated vertically.

2) The high definition picture is because there are an horizontal limit of 32 "pixels" (lines),

but vertically the resolution is NOT limited by the mechanical disk (i mean is virtually infinite)

3) If you look at the video response you will notice the process from the start, when the image slowly starts to get sync.

Good Job Teslamaster !!!

[creaturebotman]

Very great work!

Every since I was a kid i wanted to make the Nipkow scanning disk. You inspire me to just do it.

My hats off to you sir!

[joeylawn36111]

Man, those old commercial jingles were awful.

[kovona]

I thought 48 lines was the standard during the 1920s television "excitement"?

[EnerG15]

I've built a mechanical television and I was wondering if you could tell me how to convert ordinary video signal to 32 line signal?

[Kargaroc286]

@Kargaroc286 now, the color version of this is up

[modderpomp]

how the hell does it work?

[Omarti1]

thats how rasterization works good to know

[franchute63]

you're really doing a good work. and I want to add my congratulations to the others comments.

My regards, Roger

[miguelmouta]

Good work . Congratulations. Thank You for posting.