A Nipkow Disk Mechanical TV Simulator

Several years ago I came across the first issue of "Television" magazine from 1928 and reading it blew my mind in a couple ways. (https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=37097) First, the overall tone is remarkably similar to a 1970s homebrew computer club newsletter, including defining what "television" even is (and isn't). For example, We learn on page 10 that "television is not tele-photography."

It's clear from this magazine that early television was the domain of home tinkerers and hackers. On page 26 is a detailed tutorial on how to construct your own selenium condenser cell from scratch, including which London chemist had appropriately high-quality selenium, where to buy copper sheets, mica insulator (.008 thick) and brass bars.

That analog television not only was prototyped nearly a hundred years ago but then began being deployed at vast consumer scale ~75 years ago is still just so amazing. It's worth understanding a bit about how it works just to appreciate what a wildly ambitious hack it was. From real-time image acquisition to transmission to display, many of the fundamental technologies didn't even exist and had to be invented then perfected for it to work.

The defaults it gives me are 180 lines, so if this were a real single turn spiral nipkow disk, then for the image to appear at the 3 inches wide it does on my screen (no magnification), the disk would have to be about 14 feet (4.3 meters) in diameter!

And at 1500 RPM no less.

"Don't sit too close to the television, Timmy, it might cut off your arm."

As best I can tell, the 180 line system was used with CRTs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-line_television_system

I think I did something wrong https://files.catbox.moe/tgli88.gif

This is interesting! But one important aspect isn’t being simulated: what about the curvature of the disk itself? Shouldn’t this cause the individual scanlines to bend slightly?

Have a play with a Mechanical Television simulated in your browser. Adjust all the mechanical and electrical settings and even use your own images and web cam.

I have always wanted to see one of these

Would have been cool to include an animated example.

Obligatory mention for tvdawn.com, which I've just discovered has gone, but has been archived:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260413085517/https://www.tvdaw...

the flickering on that image is probably going to be found to be a cause of epilepsy at some point in the future. instant headache.

The flavor text is very Claude.