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There
were complete receivers, of all types, were on show and some I believe were
available for purchase.
During the following weeks my mind buzzed with ideas. When on a visit to a
local newsagent I noticed they were redecorating their main window I saw
they were taking out numerous cigarette and chocolate sample boxes and
replacing them with a more up to date display.
The discarded cardboard boxes were being folded and collected in larger
storage boxes destined no doubt for collection by the dustman. Being a
valued customer, for I spent at least twopence a week on sweets there, I
asked the proprietor if he would let me have these discarded boxes and he
gladly let me take the complete box full of cardboard samples off his hands.
I filled the bedroom with these boxes, clearly they were of high quality
cardboard and my room soon began to look like a tobacconist shop. So much
scrap material did not please brother Jo who shared the bedroom with me. His
share of the space was now considerably reduced from what it previously had
been. There was no time to lose within a short time these sheets of
cardboard and boxes would be transformed into the most realistic television
receiver available to a small boy! Of course this was only the outer cabinet
but with some old plywood and Mecanno parts the internal workings would soon
start to take shape.
My existing projector light source was directed as a small beam of bright
light upon dozens of small mirrors mounted on the circumference of a shallow
rotating drum wheel.
The mirrors would them reflect the beam to a smaller but wider secondary set
of mirrors mounted upon a drum set at right angles to the first. The drums
were fitted with a central bush and double drive gears to give a large speed
ratio to the discs. Gears driven by the old clockwork motor that I had
removed from the old gramophone then connected these. I soon found the
completed the drive assembly was unable to get the required high run speed
without the addition of various belts and pulley to a large hand crack.
I found my motor could drive the assembly if I first powered it up by hand.
The resulting beam of scanned light was then projected though the 16 mm film
and focusing lens of the projector to produce a rectangular raster which was
focused onto a sheet of tracing paper set within one of the larger sample
boxes, forming a type of screen. This screen could be then viewed from its
reverse side that is it’s front giving a facsimile of a television picture.
The machine was not cinematography nor a television by any means but the
resulting image, with its horizontal scan lines gave the viewer the
impression of one.
Being only a child with limited resources the machine had no future. Fixing
the mirrors on the edge of the large disc needed precision and patience,
something I fear I have always been short off.
Even so because the mirrors were mounted out of line the resulting scan gave
the horizontal lines a wobble which in turn helped to give the resulting
picture the effect that it was a real transmitted television signal.
In the years before the war our parents often took us out in the Hillman for
drives into the country. After mass on Sundays sometimes we would drive to
Berkhamsted
where
there was a public school at which our Belgium grandfather Joseph Jumpertz
used to lecture as the Professor of Languages. He had opened the language
department there in 1918 when he was living in England.
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