1926-1929

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Ezra Scribner

• 1926
  • Charles Ezra Scribner dies on June 25th. Scribner , chief engineer at Western Electric, held more patents (441) than any man in an electrical industry. Scribner served as vice president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, was a member of the Engineering Foundation and a trustee of the U.S. Engineering Society.
  • Baird in Scotland and Jenkins in the U.S. demonstrate TV using neon bulbs and mechanical scanning disks.
  • P.M. Rainey at Western Electric patents the PCM methodology.
    

    

    A picture of O.G. Hutchinson (John Logie Baird's business manager) which is widely regarded as the first image broadcast via television (1927)
  • John Logie Baird produces television images of moving objects and succeeds in transmitting pictures over telephone lines between London and Glasgow. He patents a system for television using a trunk of glass fibers.
  • A commercial radio link for facsimile working is opened between the London office of the Marconi Wireless and Telegraph Company and the New York office of the RCA.
  • The Burroughs Adding Machine Company (formed in 1886) has produced a million machines.
  • "Sesquicentennial International Exhibition" held in Philadelphia (cf 1876).
  • In Britain, the Electricity (Supply) Act is passed, leading to the formation of the Central Electricity Board and the building of a national electricity "grid".
  • Ireland's Wireless Telegraphy Act 1926.
  • On January 2nd, Harold Wheeler invents the diode automatic volume control, which regulates the sound range of radio receivers.
  • June 2, C. Francis Jenkins applies for U.S. patent on a mechanical television receiver in which light passes along quartz rods in a rotating drum to form an image.
  • On July 1st, Southern Bell Telegraph and Telephone Company is formed.
  • Oct. 15, John Logie Baird applies for British patent on an array of parallel glass rods or hollow tubes to carry image in a mechanical television. He later built an array of hollow tubes.
  • December 30, Clarence W. Hansell outlines principles of the fiber-optic imaging bundle in his notebook at the RCA Rocky Point Laboratory on Long Island. RCA files for U.S. patent Aug. 13, 1927, and later files for British patent.

• 1927
  • A public demonstration of television by wire from Washington, D.C. to Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City was made on April 7th. Live television images of Herbert Hoover are sent over telephone lines from Washington, D.C., to New York City.
    

    

    First Long-Distance Television Transmission
  • First color photographs sent over wire from San Francisco to New York, for the New York World.
  • On September 26th, New Jersey Bell Telephone Company is formed.
  • Bell Labs’ Harold Black invents the negative feedback amplifier, which cuts distortion in long-distance telephony. Because it reduces distortion in communication signals, this device advances the development of long-distance telephony, radio, and high-fidelity amplifiers.
  • Bell Labs enables the first synchronized sound movies. Sound for a motion picture was recorded on vinyl records from wax disk molds, then replayed on a large turntable connected to a synchronized film projector. Here, inventors H.M. Stoller (left) and H. Pfannenstiehl are shown with the first commercial model of the disc record attachment for the motion picture projection machines.
  • A public demonstration of television by wire from Washington, DC to Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City is made.
  • The first picturephone conversation takes place. Bell Labs created the earliest electromechanical television-videophone called the ikonophone (from Greek: 'image-sound'), which operated at 18 frames per second and occupied half a room full of equipment cabinets. An early U.S. test in 1927 had their then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover address an audience in New York City from Washington, D.C.; although the audio portion was two-way, the video portion was one-way with only those in New York being able to see Hoover.
  • With the assistance of two colleagues at MIT, the American scientist, engineer, and politician Vannevar Bush designed an analog computer that could solve simple equations. This device, which Bush dubbed a Product Intergraph, was subsequently built by one of his students.
  • Scottish inventor John Logie Baird records television
  • Ralph V. L. Hartley introduces the concept of information as a measure for the quantity of data in a message.
  • IBM Svenska AB, the Swedish branch of IBM, is founded.
  • Opening of Imperial Wireless Chain, established for the British Post Office, based on Marconi's Beam System (cf 1924). The Post Office beam radio stations (soon) takes 65 percent of all Eastern Telegraph Company and Eastern Extension Telegraph Company traffic. The Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies were in financial difficulties, and chairman Sir John Denison-Pender (1855-1929, son of Eastern Telegraph founder John Pender) appealed to the government to save the company, leading to the formation in 1929 of Imperial and International Communications.
  • Ericsson acquires a majority stake in SRA, with Marconi as a minority owner. Ericsson stops its own manufacturing radio receivers for the consumer market.
  • Transatlantic telephone service from New York (AT&T) to London becomes operational, transmitted by radio waves. (cf 1956) Initially, only one circuit is open, transfering 2000 calls per year. Initially, these calls cost US$ 75 each for five minutes. In 1928 the price for a 3 minute call was was reduced to UKP £9.
  • U.S. legislation curtails spark-gap transmissions.
  • Harold Black (born April 14, 1898, died December 11, 1983), working for Bell Labs, invents "negative feedback", a novel technique for correcting instability and distortion in amplifying communications signals (US Patent No. 2,102,671).
  • July 23, Lord Irwin sends the first wireless telegram from India to King George V in London.
  • May 21, Charles A. Lindbergh is the first to fly alone nonstop across the Atlantic.
  • February 23, the 69th U.S. Congress approves Public Law No. 632, "An Act for the regulation of radio communications, and for other purposes", a.k.a the Radio Act of 1927. It recognized broadcasters' right to free speech.

• 1928
  • Graybar Electric Company sold by Western Electric Company to the employees of Graybar.
  • Bell Labs introduces gold sputtering on record masters, technique that eliminated surface noise.
  • Design of a continuously-loaded Newfoundland-Ireland cable begins, as a joint AT&T-British Post Office project.
    • The planned loss was 165 dB over 1800 miles.
    • It used 4 layers of Perminvar tape for loading.
    • Manufacturing in Germany began in 1930. The Depression caused all work to be abandoned. By the late 1930s, submerged repeaters and multiplexing promised more circuits at the same cost.
  • Zworykin files patents on electronic scanning TV using the iconoscope.
  • On May 27th, the first 350A Community Dial Office in the Bell System is opened in Arcadia, California.
  • Philo T. Farnsworth invents the television pickup tube.
  • IBM introduces the Type IV Tabulator, using 80-column, 12-row cards.
  • A teleprinter is invented and put to use by Siemens & Halske in Germany.
  • Metrovick merges with British Thomson Houston (BTH).
  • The Galvin Manufacturing Corporation is founded by Paul V. Galvin (1895-1959) and his brother Joseph E. Galvin (1899-1944), purchase a battery eliminator business in Chicago, Illinois. In 1947 the company is renamed Motorola.
  • The Telephone Association of Canada (cf 1921) completes an all-Canadian line linking Montreal and Winnipeg.
  • A (British) Imperial Wireless & Cable Conference is held.
  • January 13, the first public demonstration of television is made by Ernst Alexanderson. (cf 1906)

A picture of Gray & Barton employees with inventor and co-founder Elisha Gray (front row, center) at the Graybar in Chicago (1873)

• 1929

• • The first telephone is installed on President Hoover's desk. Up to this time, the President talked from a booth outside his executive office.
  • First public demonstration of television, in color, is made at Bell Laboratories in New York on June 27th.
  • Swedish royal telegraph agency starts using tele typewriters.
  • The Australian government nationalizes broadcast radio transmission facilities and contracts the provision of programming to the Australian Broadcasting Company, a consortium of entertainment interests.
  • September, the Great Crash 1929: the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street starts to tumble down. After a brief recovery in the spring of 1930, stocks continue to fall until the summer of 1932.
  • April, Imperial & International Communications (in 1934 renamed Cable & Wireless Ltd.) is formed at the instigation of the British and Dominion Governments, because the Imperial Wireless Chain (cf 1927) posed a threat to the British Empire's cable interests, by merger of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company (its communications network investments, patents and licences, but not its manufacturing assets), The Pacific Cable Board's Cables, The Pacific Cable Board's West Indian Cable and Wireless System, The Imperial Atlantic Cables, The Post Office Overseas Beam Services, and Eastern & Associated Telegraph Companies. Also included in the merger are Indo-European Telegraph Company. On formation, the company owns 304,140 km of submarine cable. This year, the Imperial and International transmits 244 million words by telegraph.
  • January 4, foundation of Associated Electrical Industries Limited (AEI) as a financial holding company for a number of leading electrical manufacturing and trading companies in the United Kingdom, including British Thomson-Houston (BTH), Metropolitan-Vickers, Edison Swann and Ferguson Pailin.