Old fashioned Mechanical Television (Bissiri version)

I am still remembering the Black&White CRT tube television.

In the early ’80 there was a little amount of televisions where the images were seen are with no colours (Red Green Blue lights), just greyish from vague black into bright white.

You are not so young to remember also this kind of TV and probably you’re born with yout fantastic OLED ultralight TV 50″ panel mounted like a poster into your dining room.

Havbe you ever wondered what is the oldest technology used on the proper TV in the format we actually know?

Let me tell you something. Yes it existed.

Do you know that a genious italian man from Sardinia patented the first TV in the World? You cannot believe but it is true.

No transistors, no tubes, no complex circuitry, no way! “Simple” mechanical parts and just the minimum available electronics used at that time.

Don’t  be scared, the mechanism to use a TV in the oldest way with mechanical parts is feasible, seriously.

I discovered this primitive television just doing a web search of some Image transmision formats (MPEG2 DVB n.d.t.) and one link in Google Images pointed at an inusual stuff.

The Mechanical Television.

What’s that?? M.E.C.H.A.N.I.C.A.L. T.E.L.E.V.I.S.I.O.N  ??????

Oh My Gosh!!!!

At first I didn’t realized what exactly it was but just a quick check  show me a suprisingly fact.

The first real complete television is done by a man originally from my beautiful Island, Sardinia.

Surprised by this fact, I serch more info.

The inventor was Augusto Bissiri, born in Seui (a little town in Sardinia) in 1879 “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Bissiri”

It is accredited as the first inventor of the Television.

What’s the point of this discussion?

Simply, moved by my curiosity I done an investigation and I found the Patent “Live Picture Prodution US1546193” filed in  1925 where the invention is described.

As Engineer I have to find solutions at problems, so Let’s create a problem.

Problem: I don’t have a mechanical TV so could I create one of this piece of history?

The answer is YES, I can.

I started thinking how to build one of this exemplar trying to follow the entire patent description without any other trick, which it will invoves CAD design for mechanical parts(probably 3d printing or tooling), Electronic parts accordingly to the patent description.

I looked at the patent and I read it line by line founding very marvelous information on it. I will describe them later during the development of the model.


Next updates soon.