Hugh Snape

I came across this little film made by Pye in the early fifties. Amongst other things it features quite a few shots of the company’s early cameras being used by BBC TV and may be interesting to some here . . .

Alan Taylor

That’s a great film with many fascinating sequences.

While watching the part where the imaging tubes were being made, it reminded me about the amazing range of skills that the early pioneers of electronic imaging had to master about 100 years ago in order to invent a viable electronic television system.  

The key parts couldn’t be bought off the shelf. Those who had ideas relating to electronic imaging systems had to build everything from raw materials. They would have needed to master complex glass work, ultra-precision mechanical  engineering, chemical deposition, vacuum pumps and any number of obscure technologies.  And that was just for the camera tube.  They also needed to design and build all the electronics to process the signals and then to display the images.

They needed so many complex and untried elements to all work together. I’m impressed by much progress was made in just a few decades.