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"...the space defense initiative drove the USSR bankrupt, and it originated at my house in Tarzana."
- Larry Niven
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Teleview |
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A device for seeing at a distance. |
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No, this is not a television!
"I am Pythagoras Denker, the inventor of the Teleview. While we are waiting, perhaps you would like to learn something about the nature of my invention."
“Indeed I would,” I assured him.
“As the name indicates,” he continued. “The
Teleview is a device for viewing things that happen at a distance.”
“Oh, I see,” I interposed. “It’s a television apparatus.”
“Not at all,” he corrected. “My invention is quite
different from the regular televisor. To be sure, it is like television in the sense that it enables one to see things at a distance, but the essential difference between the Teleview and a Televisor is this: For
Television it is necessary to have both a sending and a receiving apparatus and it cannot be used except in places where the object to be seen can be brought to the sending station or where the sending
station can be brought to the event which is to be
transmitted over a distance.
“The Teleview is not hedged in by any such restrictions. All the apparatus is concentrated at the
receiving end. No sending set is required. Within
certain limits, it may be focused on any spot so that one actually sees the events themselves, exactly
as they happen.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you can focus your
apparatus on something that is happening in India
or Arabia and be able to see it here at the very instant it is taking place over there?” I asked
doubtfully.
(The Phantom Teleview)
“The task you have outlined cannot be performed
quite yet, for the simple reason that the places you
mentioned are on the opposite side of the earth. However, even that can easily be accomplished when we have established stations at four or five strategic points around the earth, so that we will be
able to pick up any event, no matter where it happens and relay it on to our other stations.
“At present, this station has the only Teleview
apparatus in existence. The range of this set is limited only by the curvature of the earth. With
it I can get most of Europe and the western part
of Africa to the east and the coast of Asia on the
west. Naturally anything in the United States or
in the portion of the. Pacific north of the Equator
can easily be focused in.” |
Technovelgy from The Phantom Teleview,
by Bob Olsen.
Published by Science Wonder Stories in 1929
Additional resources -
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Here's an early (1927) account of the origin of this term:
The most wonderful discovery of the day,
the wresting from nature of yet another of
her secrets, is that of television, the revealing
of the faces of persons sitting in darkness in
another room. Mr. John Baird, the discoverer,
terms his televisor a "machine for seeing by
electricity"-"a telephone for the eye." The
inventor has been experimenting for some time
with fairly good results. He began by transmitting
shadows and then an advance was made
to the transmission by the light reflected from
them of the images of actual objects; at last
after months of continuous research, he experienced
the great triumph of seeing upon he
screen of the receiver a living image with light
and shade and detail, in short, true television.
Compare to the raytron apparatus from Beyond the Stars (1928) by Ray Cummings, and to the parlor wall screen from Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury.
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