Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 159

DINSDALE (ALFRED)
Television: Seeing by Wire or Wireless, FIRST EDITION, Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1926

24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £875 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

DINSDALE (ALFRED)

Television: Seeing by Wire or Wireless, FIRST EDITION, portrait frontispiece of John Logie Baird, 5 photographic plates, 6 full-page diagrams, publisher's printed boards, pictorial dust-jacket (light stain on lower blank cover, a few small tears), 8vo, Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1926

Footnotes

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST BOOK IN ENGLISH ON TELEVISION. Dinsdale discusses the technical challenges faced by early experimenters, but focuses primarily on the work of Scottish engineer John Logie Baird, the first person to produce televised pictures of objects in motion. In February 1924, Baird produced the first television image in outline, and in April 1925 he transmitted the first pictures between two televisions. By the following October, Baird had succeeded in transmitting images with gradations of light and shade, and on 27th January 1926, he successfully transmitted recognizable human faces between two rooms by television. Of Baird's early experiments, Dinsdale writes: "Baird's weird apparatus - old bicycle sprockets, biscuit tins, cardboard discs and bullseye lenses, all tied together with sealing wax and string - failed to impress those who were accustomed to the shining brass and exquisite mechanism of the instrument maker. The importance of the demonstration was, however, realized by the scientific world..." (p 49). Although he did not succeed in producing a viable system of television, Baird paved the way for future technical development.

Additional information

Bid now on these items

A Presentation Copy of Kennedy's First Book to Spencer Tracy. Kennedy, John F. 1917-1963. Why England Slept. New York: Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1940.

Signed to Spencer Tracy 1952 Hemingway, Ernest. 1899-1961. The Old Man and the Sea, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.

CORNELIUS, MATTHEWS, editor. 1817-1889. The Enchanted Moccasins and Other Legends of the American Indians.

CALEPINO, AMBROGIO. 1435-1511. [Dictionarium.] Calepinus Ad librum. Mos est putidas.... Venice: Peter Liechtenstein, January 3, 1509.

HEARN, LAFCADIO. 1850-1904. [Japanese Fairy Tales.] Philadelphia: Macrae-Smith, [But Tokyo: T. Hasegawa,] [c.1931].

HEMINGWAY, ERNEST. 1899-1961. PUTNAM, SAMUEL, translator. Kiki's Memoirs. Paris: Sign of the Black Manikin, 1930.