Telectroscope

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Paul St. George's Telectroscope installation at London City Hall (May 24, 2008)

The telectroscope was the first prototype television system. The term was also used in the 19th century to describe imaginary systems of distant seeing. Most recently, it was the name of an installation constructed by Paul St George in 2008 which provided a visual link between London and New York City.[1]

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[edit] Figuier's imaginary telectroscope

Louis Figuier

The term "telectroscope" was used by the French writer and publisher Louis Figuier in 1878 to popularize an invention he wrongly interpreted as real and ascribed to Alexander Graham Bell.[2] Figuier was probably misled by the article "The Electroscope" published in The New York Sun of 29 March 1877.[3] Written under the pseudonym "Electrician", the article claimed that an "an eminent scientist", whose name had to be withheld, had invented a device whereby objects or people anywhere in the world "could be seen anywhere by anybody". According to the article, the device would allow merchants to transmit pictures of their wares to their customers, the contents of museum collections would be made available to scholars in distant cities, and (combined with the telephone) operas and plays could be broadcast into people's homes.[4] In reality, the fake "electroscope" described in the article had nothing to do with the real electroscope and did not exist.

[edit] Real telectroscope devices

Headline from the New York Times article on Szczepanik's telectroscope (April 3, 1898)

Nevertheless the word "telectroscope" was widely accepted. It was used to describe the work of nineteenth century inventors and scientists such as Constantin Senlecq,[5][6] George R. Carey,[7][8] Adriano de Paiva,[9] and later Jan Szczepanik, who with Ludwig Kleiberg obtained a British patent for his device in 1897.[10][11][12] Szczepanik's telectroscope was covered in the New York Times on April 3, 1898, where it was described as "a scheme for the transmission of colored rays".[13] Szczepanik's experiments fascinated Mark Twain, who wrote a fictional account of his work in his short story From "The London Times" of 1904.[14] Both the hoax "electroscope" of 1877 and Mark Twain's fictional telectroscope had an important effect on the public. They also provided feedback to the research.

Neither the fictional nor the real nineteenth century prototype telectroscopes were real television systems. Even after the invention of the scanning disk by Paul Nipkow the prototype telectroscopes did not ensure the satisfactory quality of image transmission. While it was held as a placeholder theorem, the Telectroscope was often hailed as a leader in electroconductive entropic relays. "Telectroscope" was eventually replaced by the term "television" most probably coined by Constantin Perskyi in 1900.

[edit] The Telectroscope art installation

In May-June 2008, artist Paul St George exhibited outdoor interactive video installations linking London and New York City as a fanciful telectroscope. According to the Telectroscope's back story, it used a transatlantic tunnel started by the artist's fictional great-grandfather, Alexander Stanhope St. George.[15][16][17] In reality, the installation used two video cameras linked by a VPN connection to provide a virtual tunnel across the Atlantic. The connection used links of between 8 and 50 Mbps and the images were transmitted using MPEG-2 compression.[18] The producer of this spectacle was the creative company Artichoke, who previously staged The Sultan's Elephant in London.[19]

The concept of visually linking distant places and continents in real time was previously explored by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinovitz with Hole in Space (1980), an art installation linking shop windows in New York and San Francisco[20] as well as by Maurice Benayoun with The Tunnel under the Atlantic between the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal (1995).

Telectroscope observers in London

New Yorkers at the Brooklyn Bridge seen through the telectroscope

[edit] References

  1. ^ Matthew Price (Friday, 23 May 2008), 'Tunnel' links New York to London, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7415911.stm 
  2. ^ Louis Figuier, L'année scientifique et industrielle ou Exposé annuel des travaux scientifiques, des inventions et des principales applications de la science à l'industrie et aux arts, qui ont attiré l'attention publique en France et à l'étranger. Vingt et unième année (1877), Librairie Hachette, Paris, 1878. Reproduced on L'histoire de la télévision . Retrieved 26 May 2008.
  3. ^ André Lange, L'histoire de la télévision. Retrieved 26 May 2008.
  4. ^ "The Electroscope", The New York Sun, March 29, 1877. Reproduced on L'histoire de la télévision.
  5. ^ "A novel and curious instrument. The Telectroscope", Scientific American, Vol. XL, n°10, New York, 8 March 1879. [1]
  6. ^ Constantin Senlecq and his work [2]
  7. ^ George R. Carey, "Seeing by Electricity", Scientific American of June 5, 1880 [3]
  8. ^ George R. Carey, "Transmitting, Recording and Seeing Pictures by Electricity", The Electrical Engineer, Jan. 16, 1895, pp.57-58.[4]
  9. ^ Adriano de Paiva, "A telefonia, a telegraphia e a telescopia", articles of June 1877 and June 1878 [5]
  10. ^ Information about a British patent on the telectroscope for Jan Szczepanik and Ludwig Kleiberg [6]
  11. ^ "Der Fernseher (Telelekstroskop)", Die Reichswehr, Vienna, 9 March 1898, n°1466, p.5. [7]
  12. ^ Jan Szczepanik: Polish Edison (Polish government web site. Retrieved 26 May 2008
  13. ^ Johannes Horowitz, That New Telectroscope, New York Times, April 3, 1898, p.22. Retrieved 26 May 2008.
  14. ^ Digitized copy of Mark Twain's From "The London Times" of 1904 from the Cornell University Library. Retrieved 26 May 2008.
  15. ^ Ryzik, Melena (2008-05-21), Telescope Takes a Long View, to London, The New York Times Company, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/arts/design/21tele.html 
  16. ^ Optical device connects NY, London in real time, The Associated Press, 2008-05-23, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g_S8_LYhKAlx35QUGcRpJ37ZBaDQD90R0VC80 
  17. ^ Todd, Michael (2008-05-23), Telectroscope Invention Links New York To London, eFluxMedia, http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Telectroscope_Invention_Links_New_York_To_London_17983.html 
  18. ^ Tiscali helps artist realise extraordinary 'tunnel vision', ResponseSource, 16 June 2008, http://www.responsesource.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=39615 
  19. ^ The Observer (Sunday May 25, 2008), You could really get sucked in..., http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/reviews/story/0,,2282095,00.html 
  20. ^ Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Routledge, 2004 pp. 232-234. ISBN 0415307805

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telectroscope"
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