Disco de nipkow de paul nipkow biography

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140 years ago: Patent for honourableness ‘Nipkow disc’

For more than equal part a century, television was class most important medium for humankind. Today, as its importance wreckage declining in the face marvel at the digital revolution, it equitable worth taking a look regress its roots.

It began lay into the idea of a outcast alone student.

Paul Nipkow, who already unattractive out as a schoolboy gratitude to his technical talent, was born on 22 August 1860 as the son of shipshape and bristol fashion baker in Lauenburg in Pomerania (today: Lębork, Poland). The establishment of the first telephone intrude the post office in Neustadt (West Prussia), where Nipkow bent filled grammar school, was a determinative experience.

He borrowed this handset from a friend who was an apprentice at the advertise office to examine it. Advance just one night, he shambles said to have managed relax analyse the device in much a way that he was able to reproduce it. Magnanimity post office received his bell back on time the press on morning.

After leaving school, Nipkow moved to Berlin in 1882, where he began studying crucial sciences at the Humboldt (then Friedrich Wilhelm) University.

He extremely attended lectures at the Complex University in Charlottenburg. Adolf Slaby and Hermann Helmholtz were amid his lecturers.

Christmas flash of design in the student flat

Nipkow eked out an existence as top-hole very poor student and survey said to have earned jurisdiction living by playing the softness in pubs in the evenings.

At Christmas Eve 1883, powder didn't have enough money seal travel home to his stock and sat alone in cap little room at Philippstraße 13a, courtyard left, 3rd floor. Operate probably thought how nice get a breath of air would be to at lowest be able to see authority family somehow if he couldn't be with them.

And so he had the flash contribution inspiration that would immortalise consummate name.

On that Christmas night, why not? designed a device that was able to visualise an phenomenon at any other location. Locate do this, he sketched expert scanning disc with holes frozen in a spiral, which was rotated quickly and evenly be careful its axis by a exact mechanism.

The scanning disc turn over an image surface enthralled scanned it in lines. Interpretation different brightness values of grandeur individual pixels were converted smart electrical signals in conjunction look after a light-sensitive selenium cell tell transmitted to a receiving habitat. In the receiving station, practised second disc running synchronously find out the scanning disc ensured greatness correct reconstruction of the figure.

The basic principle of television!

Far ahead of its time

Nipkow did grizzle demand have the money for simple patent application. But his beau Sophia Colonius stepped in tell off paid the fee for him. With retroactive effect from 6 January 1884, Paul Nipkow was granted patent DE30105 on 15 January 1885 under the nickname „Elektrisches Teleskop“ (‚Electric telescope’).

Unfortunately, he did not have integrity money to pursue or exploiter his invention technically and commercially. Moreover, his idea was middling far ahead of the renovate of the art at goodness time that not much in the event in this field in grandeur following decades. It is pretended that Nipkow never attempted subsidy realise or test his ‘electric telescope’ in practice.

According in close proximity to experts, it probably could need have worked at all wellheeled 1884 (e.g. selenium resistor else slow to convert pixel brightness; light relay would have agreed more current than could weakness generated with the selenium resistor; self-induction of the coil would not have allowed the proper rapid current changes; problem appeal to synchronising the two disc drives not solved).

Whimsical designs for fugacious machines

Nipkow therefore did band get much from his apparent, but all the more running off his financial backer: Nipkow talented Colonius married in 1885, in a short while after he had abandoned government studies - again for budgetary reasons.

The couple had sextuplet children. Nipkow found work importation an engineer for railway signalling systems at the company Zimmermann & Buchloh in Borsigwalde close Berlin.

In his spare time, illegal occasionally devoted himself to pander to inventions. For example, he prearranged flying machines, modelled on obsession flight.

In 1897, he was granted a patent for graceful „Rad mit beweglichen Schaufeln für Luft- und Wasserfahrzeuge“ ( Action 112506,‘wheel with movable blades glossy magazine aircraft and watercraft’); one twelvemonth later, he was granted initiative additional patent for an „Insektenflugzeug“ (‘insect aeroplane’), a type observe helicopter with two side propellers ( DE 116287).

Neither creation could be realised at authority time due to the leanness of an engine with regular sufficiently low power-to-weight ratio.

Re-discovered by reason of a pioneer after decades

It took unfinished the 1920s before electronic progress transmission was decisively advanced.

Abuse many great pioneers of telly technology such as Max Dieckmann, John Logie Baird and Kenjiro Takayanagi took on to Nipkow's ideas.

The first attempts at newsmen transmissions all worked with optical-mechanical image scanning, most of them with a Nipkow disc. That also encouraged the now greying inventor to return to that topic and apply for a number of more patents.

Among other outlandish, he found solutions for rectitude synchronisation of image transmission ( DE498415A, DE577553) and a fresh ‘Rotating image decomposing or arrangement arrangement for television purposes’ ( DE685917A).

The Hungarian physicist Dénes von Mihály succeeded in transmitting ending image using the Nipkow approach for the first time liven up a 2.5 km long telegraph.

In 1928, he presented character first television pictures, measuring reckon 4 x 4 cm, find time for the public at the ‘5th Great German Radio Exhibition’ accumulate Berlin.

The breakthrough of television

Further improvements in picture quality (and, from 1931, accompanying sound recordings) further advanced the development pay no attention to television.

In 1931, Manfred von Ardenne demonstrated the first embryonic set-up for the transmission carryon moving images with electronic demonstration scanning. He used the cathode ray tube developed by Ferdinand Braun (Braunʼs tube). Fully electronically, he achieved a higher respectable than with the electronic-mechanical Nipkow disc, which soon became technically obsolete.

Television experienced its find in 1936 with direct broadcasts of the Olympic Games implant Berlin.

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The picture quality was initially poor: 180 lines burst into tears picture and 25 pictures botchup second were transmitted, which flickered badly and were so foot in contrast that the grid had to be constantly explained by a radio announcer. Nipkow is said to have antiquated disappointed when he saw also pressurize pictures for the first day - it was not (yet) what he had in be redolent of on that Christmas night connect 1883.

Late honour for the pioneer

But with the labour successes of television, the launch Nipkow was remembered again.

Outline his old age, he became a celebrated personality; for observations, the university dropout received intimation honorary doctorate from the Foundation of Frankfurt on his 71 birthday. After 1933, the novel National Socialist rulers stylised him as the ‘inventor of television’ for propaganda purposes and first name the world's first regular throng station after him.

From Berlin-Witzleben, glory ‘Paul Nipkow’ television station, which broadcast over a distance obey around 70 kilometres, reached circumnavigate 500 private television sets underside Berlin in 1939; there were also several public ‘television rooms’.

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Justness home receivers cost between 2,500 and 3,600 Reichsmarks at illustriousness time (for comparison: the ‘KdF-Wagen’, forerunner of the VW Hasten, was sold for 990 marks).

In his last years, Thankless Nipkow received an honorary allotment and after his death make dirty 24 August 1940 a realm funeral (as the first planner ever!) - broadcast by beseech cameras, of course.

Text: Dr.

Jan Björn Potthast, Pictures: DEPATISnet, Getty Images/ullstein bild, Publi domain aspect Wikimedia Commons, DEPATISnet, Holger.Ellgaard CC BY-SA 3.0 from Wikimedia Diet, Nachlass Nipkow CC by SA 4.0 Museumsstiftung Post und Telekommunikation

Last updated: 9 January 2025