Museum Hours:

Saturday 10-6

Sunday 12-5
 
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Mechanical Television

Peck Television Corporation

Console Receiver and Camera

This is from a February 9, 1935 issue of Radio World magazine. The article describes the set as being a mirror drum type, 60 lines and 24 fps. A 21 candlepower automobile headlamp was used as the light source. The transmitter was to have 100 watts of power, operate on 41 mHz, and be installed "atop a mountain peak hotel" in Montreal later that year. Apparently Peck conducted tests for 5 weeks that December. It is likely that Peck used experimental station VE9AK to broadcast its tests.

Popular Science, January 1934

Popular Mechanics, March 1935

Radio News, October 1935

Popular Mechanics, July 1937

Popular Science, July 1937

Popular Mechanics, July 1937

Here is a quote from William Hoyt Peck, from Radio News and Short Wave Radio, January of 1935, three years after almost all mechanical TV broadcasting had stopped:

Television is already here. It meets all the requirements laid down by critics, at least as far as my system is concerned, which will provide images up to two by three feet, with detail comparable to that of home movie pictures, and bright enough to be clearly visible in a room containing two or three floor lamps.

Mechanical scanning will, in my opinion, be the most popular system. It affords a more sharply defined picture element than does the cathode ray tube, replacement of light source is necessary at longer intervals and costs but 10 cents instead of many dollars.