Narrow Band Television recording onto
Edison Phonograph cylinders.
In 1870 Paul Nipkow invented the Nipkow disc which John Logie Baird and others used for mechanical television.
In 1887, Edison invented his phonograph using wax cylinders, for recording speech and music.
Edison was interested in using a phonograph on which to record images, but the cine film overtook that approach.
Had he met Nipkow the two men may well have discused how to record images or even mechanical television onto cylinders, although electronic amplification was not available at that time.
In 1927 Baird did experiment recording onto the large diameter ‘Concert’ cylinders but gave this up as in the same year he started his experiments recording onto standard flat gramophone discs.
One problem with the concert cylinder was the lack of any sync connection between the recorded cylinder and the Nipkow disc.
He then experimented with flat disc recording where the disc is directly coupled to the Nipkow disc.
So I am attempting to create a piece of history that never was, as it were,
With my EDIKOW machine, named after EDIson and nipKOW.
To record NBTV (Narrow Band Television) onto standard diameter Edison wax cylinders.
Here is a general photo of the machine followed by the first recognisable image I recently obtained from it. There was no synchonisation so the result is a little top/bottom reversed etc.
But this image is probably the first such image ever recorded onto a standard Edison wax cylinder so I show it here.