Member/brother Doug Rhodes sent me the following letters.  Author Peter
Wellburn is possibly the same as our new subscriber from UK.

Hmmm... I've forgotten - what's the Nipkow disk?

Robbie Rhodes

- - - - - - - - -

Howdy:

I culled the following thread from the 78-l listserv (record collectors)
that I indulge in. Thought you might find it interesting.

Cheers

Doug

FORWARDED STUFF FOLLOWS:¶
************************

Date: Tue, 29 Oct 96 9:09:59 GMT¶
Reply-To: 78-l@cornell.edu¶
Sender: owner-78-l@cornell.edu¶
From: Peter Wellburn <pe231pw@admin.nls.uk>¶
To: 78 RPM Records  <78-l@cornell.edu>¶
Subject: Phonovision

Greetings fellow 78 enthusiasts

You probably all pressed the delete button - after all what does vision
have to do with 78 records? Well last night over here on BBC television
there was a programme about some 78 records from the 1920s and 1930s.
Nothing special eh?  Except that the information coded on them was in
the form of images instead of sound.

They dated from the experimental broadcasts of John Logie Baird with
television.  One disc played was from 1928 and showed images of Baird's
secretary talking, the other was a bit more risque and showed a troupe
of girls dancing, recorded in 1933. There didn't appear to be any sound
although the presenter 'talked over' the records.

Apparently Baird invented this very early system of videorecording his
transmissions - but failed to invent a system of playing them back!
This has now been done after much painstaking research. I recorded the
programme (on my ultra-modern Taiwanese) VCR so if anyone wants more
details I may be able to provide them. The system is to go on show at
the National Museum of Film and Photography in Bradford (Yorkshire) - a
bit off the tourist track but well worth a visit!

The programme was part of the BBC's 'Tomorrow's World@ series. Maybe
one of your US networks screens it. Thought you might want to look out
for it.

Peter Wellburn¶
p.wellburn@nls.uk

**********************¶
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 16:06:21 -0800 (PST)¶
Reply-To: 78-l@cornell.edu¶
From: David Breneman <david.breneman@attws.com>¶
To: 78 RPM Records  <78-l@cornell.edu>¶
Subject: Re: Phonovision

Peter Wellburn SEZ -¶
(With deletions...)
>
> Apparently Baird invented this very early system of videorecording his
> transmissions - but failed to invent a system of playing them back!

Hmmmm...  I thought Baird produced a player with the turntable
mechanically coupled to the Nipkow disk so as to keep the record and
disk in sync.  One of the problems with using a phonograph record to
record video is bandwidth - I'm sure he used this system with his
30-line signal, but much beyond this you start generating signals that
are too high-frequency for a phonograph record (especially of the 20s)
to record.

--¶
•David Breneman                             More than just phones,¶
Senior Unix System Administrator           A cool round logo, too.¶
AT&T Wireless Services, Inc.¶
david.breneman@attws.com  Ph: +1-206-803-7362  Fx: +1-206-803-7410

*****************************************

Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 12:05:01 +0100¶
Reply-To: 78-l@cornell.edu¶
Sender: owner-78-l@cornell.edu¶
From: LIB3ROGERI@ntu.ac.uk (IAN ROGERS)¶
To: 78 RPM Records  <78-l@cornell.edu>¶
Subject: Re: Phonovision

Dear All

I was just reading about this subject in "New Scientist". If you have
access to this journal - there is a short article on p.22 of the 26th
October edition. Very interesting!

Best wishes,
                Ian

Ian Rogers¶
Nottingham¶
UK¶
lib3rogeri@ntu.ac.uk