Narrow-Bandwidth Television Association

I remember as a kid getting two cocoa tins with a hole in the bottom of each through which a string was
knotted and run to the second tin. Two people could then talk to each other by alternate talking and listening
into the cocoa tin, keeping the string tightly stretched. Base of the tins formed the diaphragm.

I wonder if thinner better quality diaphragms and thin wire instead of string would transmit
higher frequencies up to NBTV standard?

It would be nostalgic to combine NBTV with far lost speech transmission.

This must be THE daftest NBTV idea ever, but then I am daft.

Viewmaster wrote:I remember as a kid getting two cocoa tins with a hole in the bottom of each through which a string was
knotted and run to the second tin. Two people could then talk to each other by alternate talking and listening
into the cocoa tin, keeping the string tightly stretched. Base of the tins formed the diaphragm.

I wonder if thinner better quality diaphragms and thin wire instead of string would transmit
higher frequencies up to NBTV standard?

It would be nostalgic to combine NBTV with far lost speech transmission.

This must be THE daftest NBTV idea ever, but then I am daft.

Hi Albert

It might work...sort of works a bit via Air from speaker to mic but really depends on the transmitter and receiver ,in my case i just used what i had at hand ...works well for slow scan tv .
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1716&hilit=speaker+transmitter
Not a crazy idea at all Albert ...thats something i have never tried or heard of any one trying so perhaps ?
Need that bandwidth what ever is the mechanical transmitter and receiver really needs to be able to vibrate at many KHZ
This is not really on your topic but always liked this idea

Thanks for that Harry. Interesting. You seem go into the most weirdest corners of NBTV etc.

It might be worth a try only because of the great name I would give it.
...........Kids used COCOA tins.

So from word nipKOW we have...........

........The KOWKOW tin machine !

But maybe I should just NIP that idea in the bud?

Brilliant idea. I can't see why it wouldn't work, just as NBTV transmitted by sound over the air would work. It all depends on the quality and phase characteristic of the transducers at each end. Thinking about a 'soggy' stretched cord though, would this tend to attenuate the higher frequencies? Maybe you could have a 'focus' control actuated by changing the string tension...

You could have stretched cords serving the whole neighbourhood with NBTV, with pulley-wheel cornered take-offs at each house.

I hope this will be Albert's next project.

Steve O

P.S. Fifty years ago, one of my ideas when I was at boarding school was to launch an 8-line 'television service' using sound transmission, though this would have used modulated ultrasonic sound.

There are some geeks on the net discussing networking between PCs using the stretched wire idea !!
How many bytes per second could be managed?

I was glad to see some are even more potty than I am.


I'm afraid that the 'KOWKOW tin machine' will have to wait as I am working on that other project
putting various lines/frames images onto my laptop.

I guess an initial experiment would be to input various frequencies sound and see
how much they get attenuated at the other end using various materials. Overcoming
the natural vibration freq of the wire would need attention too.

Steve, I shall order some lossless pulley wheels one day.
Running the wire underground down to Radiocraft !

Probably need some KOWKOW repeater stations on the way at Rugby or Daventry.

Albert, that all sounds much too complcated - all that kinkable wire and hard to find tin cans, when all you need is an 8 qubit (quantum bit) quchannel (quantum channel) which will give you more than enough bandwidth for NBTV (32kHz to be exact)

To make a quchannel simply pop down to your local quantumware shop and buy just 16 atoms of rubidium.

Take 2 of those atoms and bring them close enough together to become entangled, do this for all 8 pairs (4^8 quantum states).

Now take 1 atom of each pair and take them to the location of your NBTV monitor.

That's it! Easy Peasy - just send your NBTV signal down the 8 qubit quchannel.

I'll expect a report on your quNBTV experiment in, what?, say, 24 nanoseconds?

The first subject on your NBTV "programme" could be Einstein who reckoned this couldn't be done, and the second could be John Bell who mathematically showed how one could construct an experiment that eventually proved that it can be done - sort of.

Oh! and your monitor could be on Mars with no delay in transmission! (The delights of spooky actions at a distance).

Gary, reply in 24 nano seconds?
Maybe you can work out how many nano seconds I am late in replying.

I'm so sorry about that but my atomic alarm clock is running 6 hours, 4 minutes, 8 seconds
and 100,000 nano seconds late..........as usual!

I only live in a small English village and there are no quantumware shops here
I'm afraid.

The last one closed down a few years ago due to lack of demand. It was run by
the village idiot, Stringfellow.

So maybe eBay is the way to go.

If I can find out how long a piece of string is I might have a go making,
The KOWKOW tin machine.

Thanks for your interest in getting me unknotted.

Viewmaster wrote:I'm so sorry about that but my atomic alarm clock is running 6 hours, 4 minutes, 8 seconds
and 100,000 nano seconds late..........as usual!

Don't worry Albert, it's all relative.

Hi Albert i still think your idea is workable its a design problem .
Since SSTV is pretty low in Bandwidth i would try that first and work way up .
Its not impossible you can even drop the band width of the old analog tv and still see detail ,i used to do dx satellite tv and adjusted the bandwidth you lost the colour first but the the b/w picture was a small price to pay dragging the signal out of the snow ,i could not tell how low a bandwidth i was using but this link gives an idea ...
http://www.utaharc.org/utah_atv/if_filt.html
How low can NBTV go ?
A thin taut wire electromagnets in some form .... iffy about speakers and such as you would not know if the air was helping ..and a frequency sweep might show the limits ..

gary wrote:

Viewmaster wrote:I'm so sorry about that but my atomic alarm clock is running 6 hours, 4 minutes, 8 seconds
and 100,000 nano seconds late..........as usual!

Don't worry Albert, it's all relative.

I didn't know that Einstein was a relative of yours, Gary.

Viewmaster wrote:

gary wrote:

Viewmaster wrote:I'm so sorry about that but my atomic alarm clock is running 6 hours, 4 minutes, 8 seconds
and 100,000 nano seconds late..........as usual!

Don't worry Albert, it's all relative.

I didn't know that Einstein was a relative of yours, Gary.

That's just a (conspiracy?) theory Albert.

gary wrote:

Viewmaster wrote:

gary wrote:
Don't worry Albert, it's all relative.

I didn't know that Einstein was a relative of yours, Gary.

That's just a (conspiracy?) theory Albert.

Well that's thrown some light on the matter.

String theory now of the KOWKOW machine.

Viewmaster wrote:
Well that's thrown some light on the matter.

String theory now of the KOWKOW machine.

That's it Albert! NOW you are on board! How many curled up dimensions do you need?

gary wrote:

Viewmaster wrote:
Well that's thrown some light on the matter.

String theory now of the KOWKOW machine.

That's it Albert! NOW you are on board! How many curled up dimensions do you need?

Veroboard is what I am working on at present.

My cat is all curled up, maybe I should rename her, 'Dimension.'

Viewmaster wrote:

gary wrote:

Viewmaster wrote:
Well that's thrown some light on the matter.

String theory now of the KOWKOW machine.

That's it Albert! NOW you are on board! How many curled up dimensions do you need?

Veroboard is what I am working on at present.

My cat is all curled up, maybe I should rename her, 'Dimension.'

Better yet, how about "schrodinger"?