The Invention Of Fibre Optics Imaging By Television Pioneer John Logie Baird

Peter Waddell; Leslie Mair

doi:10.1117/12.960980

29 October 1989 The Invention Of Fibre Optics Imaging By Television Pioneer John Logie Baird

Peter Waddell, Leslie Mair

Proceedings Volume 1120, Fibre Optics '89; (1989) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.960980
Event: Sira/Fibre Optics '89, 1989, London, United Kingdom

Abstract

Television pioneer John Logie Baird, a Scot from Helensburgh near Glasgow, described in his 1928 British patent No. 285,738 a honeycomb bundle of hollow metal tubes or thin solid rods of various types of glass. The tubes or rods were to be used for dissecting optical images in order to allow an ordered scanning of the dissected image pieces in a T.V. transmitter. Each tube or rod carried one small piece of the total image. The dissected image light passed along the tube or rod length, remaining inside the solid rods by internal reflection. By using hollow tubes Baird could also transmit all wavelengths of infra-red as well as visible light. By using hollow metal tubes Baird had ready made waveguides for the control of centimetric or millimetric radio waves. Baird's tube bundles would appear in publications of 1926, as part of the world's first military infra-red night vision units. The 1926 apparatus used on infra-red searchlight to illuminate the target, the reflected rays were dissected, scanned in a desired pattern and then converted into visible images by Baird's T.V. unit which was called a NOCTOVISOR (night vision). The range of the unit was stated as being 25 miles.

Citation Download Citation

Peter Waddell and Leslie Mair "The Invention Of Fibre Optics Imaging By Television Pioneer John Logie Baird", Proc. SPIE 1120, Fibre Optics '89, (29 October 1989); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.960980

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