Mechanical Television: Incredibly simple, yet entirely bonkers

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John Logie Baird is often considered to be the inventor of television, but not of television as we know it. His mechanical television is a remarkable invention for its simplicity, but as you'll soon see, it would never have been all that practical.

Link to the video on Analog TV:

Links to various not-crap mechanical TVs:

And a video of a much larger, color mechanical television using mirrors:

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Image credits!

Random apartment building:

Images of the Pantelgraph early facsimile system are used under Creative Commons attribution with the following copyright holder:
CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2012 | Alessandro Nassiri | Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Milano

All other images are either free of copyright, or are in the public domain.

[Phredreeke]

Didn't analog TV (except for France who always has to do things the other way around compared to the rest of the world) use negative modulation and as such the image would become darker as stronger the amplitude is?

[bobuk]

Hi. To join the club, my Dad (I'm in my late 60's) built a mechanical scanning disk tv. Long time ago (violins play ....) well before WW2. After the BBC long wave radio shut down at 11pm there were test transmissions. Would be viewers disconnected the loudspeaker and connected a neon bulb in its place. Then a rotating disk with 64 small holes regularly spaced and arranged in a 1 inch wide spiral around the circumference was rotated in front of the neon bulb. The result, if you managed to get the receiving disk synchronised with the transmitting one in the studio (done with a piece of string wrapped around the motor axle), was a 1 inch square rather reddish 64 line TV picture. I suspect the motor speed here in the UK would have been 3, 000 rpm. Originally they transmitted still images of the Kings head. Very patriotic! Dad told me all the neighbours in the road were crammed in around this small set up trying to watch! BobUK.

[buppie]

I'm retiring after 35 years in TV and I've gotta say that's the clearest explanation of Nipkow for laymen. Impressive.

[jasonsage]

I'm a long time electronics buff, turned computer programmer (30 years ago) - and I learned a lot about the mechanical television from this great video and I commented because I wanted to tell you how impressed I am with your narration, articulate delivery, knowledge of the subject matter and good "techniques" like humor and sarcasm to make good points "Fax before Telephone - WHA??" etc.
Great Job!

[jadegecko]

The mental image of a six-story disc bursting out of its housing spinning at Mach 6, and rolling down the interstate at a furious pace, is probably the funniest thing I've heard all day

[SM-oksz]

I love how they used to draw radio waves as lightning bolts in old drawings.

[WAQWBrentwood]

My grandfather was a huge radio "nut" in the 1920s and built a couple different mechanical disk "TV"s, in the late 1930s he built (from a kit) an all electronic (CRT) set. He was obviously "bullish" on the prospect of TV, When TV was finally mainstream, he bought a "Proper" Westinghouse set, even though Pittsburgh had a grand total of 1 channel at the time! 👍 He'd be damned impressed (but not really surprised) by HD and 4K sets of today.

[matthewrichardson]

Two smaller discs could rotate together, synchronized with gears, and they could have holes drilled with a vernier pattern, which would reduce the disc size and rpm required, while increasing resolution.

[colombianguy]

I build a mechanical TV and camera for a physics class in college, i only managed to send basic geometrics images, and the transmitter and receiver discs were hold together with a single axel and motor to eliminate sync errors. Excellent channel by the way, the analog TV video was amazing, i repaired several CRT TV's but some of the basic things had me wondering, brilliant video! greetings from Colombia.

[android]

Love watching this three years on; ‘I’m absolutely thrilled that this channel has over 21 thousand subscribers...’ now it’s over 1 million!

[BM-jycb]

3 years ago: "I never dreamed I would get 21000 subscribers.
Today's subscriber count: 830, 000.
Well done!

[antonnym]

My grandfather worked at the FCC. He told me about early TV systems that used a spinning disc. Very cool stuff! i gave you a thumbs-up. All good wishes.

[ross]

Wow, I didn't know that fax machines predated the phone and I had no idea about mechanical TV. Such a great video.

[robinbockman]

John Logie Baird is still remembered in Australia every year with the TV Week Logie Awards.

[LazerJass]

I discovered this video just now when i thought i've seen them all. Hearing you being thrilled to have over 21000 subs in this video not believing this channel would ever grow that big and seeing that you've just hit one million subs in two and a half years since this video makes me very glad. Your content is pure love. Congrats!

[dutrekker]

The spinning wheel was used by CBS when they developed their first color TV system. It used a rotating color wheel to create color. The FCC made their system the standard until RCA demonstrated all electronic television. This explains why CBS refused to go to color broadcasting until the late 1960's.

[HROM]

Thanks for that. My Father machined the original mechanical discs for Baird long before WWII. I remember him describing the difficulty with that project.

[daver]

A 75 foot disc that is taller than your building? Stop making excuses and get it done. We don't watch your channel for lame excuses.

[josephconsoli]

Very good explanation of mechanical television. I think what's great about it is that it's just plain ingenious. You really don't care about the definition. You're just amazed at it making any image at all. In the late '20's-early'30's it must've been downright miraculous, especially with the accompanied broadcast audio. Approximately 5, 000 of these primitive receivers were sold. A relatively small number, but still more than you'd expect. I must add that typically a magnifying lens was used to enlarge the picture, and, another big negative to the definition is that these signals were transmitted over the airwaves. Likely, if you saw a dark silhouette against your reddish-orange background, you were doing good. Once word got out of all electronic television using a CRT in the early '30's, mechanical television just became a footnote in electronics history. Love to have one of those sets now though!

[markcondrey]

I consider this video to be very good. You break the subject matter down in such a way as to be understood by a layperson...not an easy task. I used to service CRT televisions for Zenith back in the day and your presentation is a trip down memory lane. I think the Sony Trinitron was the apex of this type of technology.