The science show Henry Sutton

[Harry Dalek]

Interesting hearing this on Mr Suttons inventions

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... on/4441244

[gary]

Yep Sutton invented television and Wayne Swan is the "worlds best treasurer" - good old ABC...

[Harry Dalek]

Yep Sutton invented television and Wayne Swan is the "worlds best treasurer" - good old ABC...

They did give him a very good wrap in this!
I sort of think of it like the Americans would never really think of Baird as the inventor of televison Philo Farnsworth would come to mind if any one at all ...same gos for a lot of countries with early television experimenters who ever was doing it was there hero .

Sounds like he was a bit of mega mind but perhaps not great on recording hes work for the future.

Really the only way to tell if perhaps hes television system could work or party give some interesting results would be to try a modern version only trouble he had no electronics to amplify any thing ...could it be done with amplifying hes light sensitive device via transformer coils ,if you were trying it would have to pick a high frequency transformer for the bandwidth ...this would drop if hes going for flickering 10 or less but he didn't do that
They had a few pages on this system in an electronics Australia or one of the magazines we had in the 70s 80s in Australia , if i ever track it down again in my magazine collection i will post it ....i was thinking it was a joke at the time as i never heard of him and thinking it was to early for any one to even think of tv system..
Such a pity not even a photo of it

[gary]

Harry, I have studied him quite a bit and there is no doubt that he contributed a great deal to the "science" of television, particularly in Kerr Cell development - but he never built a working version - simply because he lacked something that Baird had - electronic amplification.

Unfortunately it is difficult to now extract the real from the fanciful with regards to his achievements - for instance - it is claimed that he actually televised a Melbourne Cup race over telegraph wire to Ballarat - without electronic amplification - I'm afraid I can't accept that.

In my mind, Baird has to be recognised as the inventor of television because he demonstrated greyscale pictures first - end of story.

When I look at Sutton's schematics I see nothing significantly different to Nipkow's original patent which, of course, predates Sutton's work.

[Harry Dalek]

Harry, I have studied him quite a bit and there is no doubt that he contributed a great deal to the "science" of television, particularly in Kerr Cell development - but he never built a working version - simply because he lacked something that Baird had - electronic amplification.

Looking at hes system theres no amplifying idea in it at all...i can only think to amplify with out electronics you would only have electric magnetic ideas to try some sort of transformer amplifying idea ..they could do that back then nice thin copper would be hard to get if at all ?

Unfortunately it is difficult to now extract the real from the fanciful with regards to his achievements - for instance - it is claimed that he actually televised a Melbourne Cup race over telegraph wire to Ballarat - without electronic amplification - I'm afraid I can't accept that.

That was in the magazine as i recall they went into some detail about it but i just thinking this has to be a joke ...no internet back then to google it .
Yes its hard enough to do it with electronics of today.

In my mind, Baird has to be recognised as the inventor of television because he demonstrated greyscale pictures first - end of story.

True he got a working one going had enough of that inventor in him to make it work in just at the right time ...
i think due to the number of people working on it it would of been done by some one perhaps a year or 2 later but he won no guts no glory .

To make television even at that time you had to use the inventions of others Nipkow Michael Faraday, Fleming, Lee De Forest so on it would be a very big list but i suppose thats the way it works .

When I look at Sutton's schematics I see nothing significantly different to Nipkow's original patent which, of course, predates Sutton's work.

As above you need to be doing trying to do it at the right time need stuff to be invented to make your invention and you need to put the idea to the test ...
Little did he know he's original system would be our hobby far in the future .

[gary]

True he got a working one going had enough of that inventor in him to make it work in just at the right time ...
i think due to the number of people working on it it would of been done by some one perhaps a year or 2 later but he won no guts no glory .

And that is true of just about every invention there is.

Little did he know he's original system would be our hobby far in the future .

No, he had far grander visions than that! LOL

[Andrew Davie]

Nonetheless, he obviously knew what he was doing. I have on my desk wall at work a copy of his diagram showing a television apparatus from 1884 which basically, as far as I can understand it, would have worked. It used polarised light, a mechanism to 'rotate' the polarisation based on electrical input, and two prisms to mask out the 'unwanted' light. It's very interesting. Personally I think this man deserves more recognition.

[gary]

Oh I agree, quite amazing really. I just find the claim that he invented television, well, highly dubious at best.

I would also point out that there were others who came up with "in principle" working systems well before Baird. They were unfortunately hampered by the technology (or rather lack thereof) of their day.

Keep in mind that, as we all in this hobby know well, for a working television, all you need is a reasonably fast light sensor, a reasonably bright light source capable of modulation, a suitable scanner, some simple optics, and some form of amplification. All of these were available (at least in a general sense) from the time of Nipkow's famous patent - *except* amplification (at least the kind of amplification necessary).

I myself may be less sceptical if *anyone* had developed a *real* television system that didn't involve electronic amplification. As far as I am aware this has never been achieved even with the modern technology at our disposal. Does anyone know any different?

Perhaps someone would like to take up the challenge? Harry?

[Harry Dalek]

Perhaps someone would like to take up the challenge? Harry?

Thats a big Challenge perhaps we could think it out first !

Ok trying to do it with the stuff we have today but no electronics just the Nipkow disks and the sensor we know is fast enough and we have lots of types of light devices again all those we use are fast enough.

So every thing there works ..
s
We need to think out side the box as far as amplifiers gos how did they amplify sound without electronics i only know of passive amplifiers for that time ..like speaker Horns

I suppose at the light modulating end you could come up with a mica mirror at the end of the horn and light being directed to the nipkow disk vibrations varying the lights direction to the hole i know light communication has been done in the past a bit like this but might just have to be toooooo big

An idea that comes to mind is perhaps solar cell driving a tesla coil ? solar cell camera the sparks being the modulated light like the corona nipkow system used once in early tv or driving a fluro or neon. i think it would have the bandwidth to work ...i have seen experimenters of tesla coils modulate them with sound perhaps a solar cell array would be enough to get it to spark given enough light for the camera .

What do you think Gary i think the last one might have a bit of promise







.

[gary]

The problem with that is there is no "power" amplification - i.e. voltage goes up but current comes down (or vice versa) - what you need is to be able to feed in extra power and have that modulated by the sensor signal. Magnetic amplifiers may be able to do this but I don't think they have the necessary bandwidth - that is where I would start though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_amplifier

Somehow I think if you followed this course you would end up reinventing electronics - but you never know!

[Harry Dalek]

The problem with that is there is no "power" amplification - i.e. voltage goes up but current comes down (or vice versa) - what you need is to be able to feed in extra power and have that modulated by the sensor signal. Magnetic amplifiers may be able to do this but I don't think they have the necessary bandwidth - that is where I would start though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_amplifier

Somehow I think if you followed this course you would end up reinventing electronics - but you never know!

Interesting i would like to see an example , i see reading this it was tried out .
looking at this experiment i just found doing it with high frequency transformers might have promise.
http://sparkbangbuzz.com/mag-amp/mag-amp.htm
theres a bit out there on this idea i will read some more.....
http://sparkbangbuzz.com/mag-audio-amp/ ... io-amp.htm
very interesting !

[aussie_bloke]

I listened to the audio, it's amazing to know that the first practical demonstration of television goes back to 1885 and was invented by an Aussie! I did a Google on Henry and found one of his patents from Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review (7th November 1890) http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/images/d/db ... ention.pdf .

[Harry Dalek]

I listened to the audio, it's amazing to know that the first practical demonstration of television goes back to 1885 and was invented by an Aussie! I did a Google on Henry and found one of his patents from Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review (7th November 1890) http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/images/d/db ... ention.pdf .

Hi Troy
If it worked or not it would be interesting to read up on the witnesses as that sort of proves he did make some thing and not just a patent drawing

http://guerin.ballarat.edu.au/curator/h ... tton.shtml
.

1885: Henry's invention of the Telephane was the forerunner to television 3 years before John Logie Baird was born. Around 1871 at the age of fifteen Henry invented a method so that any big event in Melbourne could be seen in Ballarat by medium of the telegraph. Henry was so sure of this that he wrote the particulars to Mr R.L.J. Ellery, Government Astronomer of Victoria, so the invention could be in the hands of someone capable of stating his claim of being the first in this direction. Some years later, in 1885, Mr R.L.J. Ellery was witness to the transmission of the images of the Telephane. In 1885 Henry transmitted the Melbourne Cup race to Ballarat through the Telephane. It was stated that it worked quite well. Henry a few years later in 1890 went to England and France and demonstrated the Telephane to the scientific community. Henry's paper on the Telephane was published in England, France and America and Scientific America republished his paper again in 1910. Henry did not patent the Telephane but Baird did use Henry's principles to invent television some 43 years later. The Telephane is considered to be Henry's magnum opus by some people.



Telephane - 1885

Telephane was the forerunner of the television invented by Henry Sutton in Ballarat, 3 years before the 'birth' of Scotsman John Logie Baird, who made use of Sutton's patent. Sutton devised the telephane to transmit the running of the Melbourne Cup horse-race in Melbourne to the town of Ballarat.

It did not have a screen, and the viewer had to look into a hole at the end of a long tube with a signal transferred by telegraph line.