A. А. Campbell Swinton: master prophet of electronic television

Задание I. Следующие слова Вам нужно выучить наизусть. Это поможет лучше и легче понять текст.

1. Remember – помнить, вспоминать;

2. to put into practice – претворять в жизнь, осуществлять;

3. to achieved – достигать;

4. at least – по крайней мере;

5. property – свойство, качество;

6. to be aware of – знать, сознавать, отдавать себе полный отчет;

7. to be acquainted with – быть знакомым с;

8. coated metal plate – пластина, порытая металлом;

9. cathode ray beam – луч электро-лучевой трубки;

10. to trace back – восходить к какому-то периоду в прошлом;

11. as far as – поскольку, настолько, что касается в отношении, до, вплоть;

12. to bring up – воспитывать;

13. aptitude – способности, пригодность;

14. transfer – переносить;

15. curriculum – курс обучения, ученый план;

16. manage – руководить, управлять, стоять во главе;

17. persuade – убеждать;

18. to include – заключать, содержать в себе;

19. to master – овладеть, справиться;

20. to leave/left/left – оставлять, покидать.

Задание II. Прочитайте текст, найдите в нем следующую информацию и расскажите по-английски.

1. Идеи создания электронного телевидения в начале прошлого столетия.

2. Биография Свинтона (где, когда родился, родители, где учился и трудился.)

3. Какой основной вклад внес в создание телевидения.

Задание III. Будьте готовы перевести любое предложение из текста, если преподаватель попросит Вас об этом.

TEXT

It is perhaps a little ironic that a man who was a great experimenter is now best remembered for an idea he was unable to put into practice and did not live to see succeed. In the early years of this cen­tury, Alan Archibald Campbell Swinton had the extraordinary imagination and foresight to suggest the basic structure of an all-electronic television system. The idea was way ahead of its time and was not achieved in practice until the 1930s. Though he is remembered for that now - at least in television engineering circles - at the time his other successes, such as X-ray photography, seemed more notable.

Swinton's ideas on electronic television first appeared in print in a letter to the science journal Nature on the 18th June, 1908. Even before that there had been speculation over "distant electric vision". This was inevitable once the three basic properties of television were known: the conversion of light into an electric signal; photoconductive properties of selenium, (1873); the transmission of electric signals by telegraphy (1837) and the conversion of electricity into light (incandescent lamp, 1879).

By the turn of the century, however, Swinton was aware that the situation had changed a little. By then he was well acquainted with cathode ray experi­ments and the Braun oscillograph invented in 1897 (the first basic oscilloscope). Though nothing seems to have been published at the time, he revealed in 1926 that he had experimented with electronic television as early as 1903/04: "... not long after the production of the Braun oscillograph in 1897 ... I actually tried ... around 1903/04 ... some not very successful experiments in the matter of getting an electrical effect from the combined action of light and cathode-rays upon a selenium-coated surface..."

With two assistants, he had attempted to make a camera tube ("transmitting apparatus") out of a home-made Braun oscillograph. The normal fluorescent screen was replaced by a selenium-coated metal plate onto which the op­tical image was focused by a lens, "... the end of the cathode-ray beam being caused electromagnetically to traverse the projected image".

Swinton also attempted to build an electronic receiver. "Experiments were also tried in receiving with a Braun tube ... but in its then 'hard' form it proved very intractable." That Swinton had even thought of using cathode ray electronic scanning at both the camera and receiver end of the television chain at that early date marks his proposals as the first for electronic television. That he also attempted some "not very successful" experiments makes it a double first. The nearest similar idea was Rosing's cathode-ray display tube at the receiver (1907).

Swinton's 1908 letter to Nature was his earliest simple description of his ideas. These were elaborated in 1911 during his presidential address to the Roentgen Society in London, when a circuit diagram was included of how electronic television might be achieved. It was "an idea only," he said, "a suggestion of a direction in which experiment might possibly secure what is wanted."