The intermediate film system was a

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

process in which

motion picture film Film stock is an analog device, analog medium that is used for recording film, motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, film developing, developed, film editing, edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie proj ...

was processed almost immediately after it was exposed in a camera, then scanned by a television scanner, and transmitted over the air. This system was used principally in

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

and

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

where television cameras were not sensitive enough to use reflected light, but could transmit a suitable image when a bright light was shone through motion picture film directly into the camera lens.

History

John Logie Baird John Logie Baird (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first mechanical Mechanical television, television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the fi ...

began developing the process in 1932, borrowing the idea of Georg Oskar Schubert from his licensees in Germany, where it was demonstrated by

Fernseh Fernseh AG was a German television company headquartered in Berlin. Founded in 1929, it did research and manufacturing of television equipment. Etymology The company name "Fernseh AG" is a compound of ''Fernsehen'' ‘television’ and ''Aktien ...

AG in 1932 and used for broadcasting in 1934. The

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

used Baird's version of the process during the first three months of its then-"high-definition" television service from November 1936 through January 1937, and

German television Television in Germany began in Berlin on 22 March 1935, broadcasting for 90 minutes three times a week. It was home to the first regular television service in the world, named ''Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow''. In 2000, the German television marke ...

used it during broadcasts of the

1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad () and officially branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, then capital of Nazi Germany. Berlin won the bid to ...

.Television in Berlin
" ''Popular Wireless'', Sept. 19, 1936
Berlin 1936: Television in Germany
. In both cases, intermediate film cameras alternated with newly introduced direct television cameras. The exposed film, either 35mm or 17.5mm (35mm split in half, to save expense), travelled in a continuous band from the camera, usually atop a remote broadcast vehicle, into a machine that developed and fixed the image. The film was then run through a flying spot scanner (so called because it moved a focused beam of light back and forth across the image), and electronically converted from a negative to a positive image. Depending on the equipment, the time from camera to scanner could be a minute or less. An optical soundtrack was recorded onto the film, between the perforations and the edge of the film, at the same time the image was taken to keep the sound and image in synchronization. The intermediate film system, with its expensive film usage and relatively immobile cameras, did have the advantage that it left a filmed record of the programme which could be rerun at a different time, with a better image quality than the later

kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s ...

films, which were shot from a video monitor. Television tubes developed by Farnsworth and Zworykin in the United States, and by

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

in England, with much higher sensitivity to light, made the intermediate film system obsolete by 1937. Film continued to be used for time-shifting and as a long-term storage until electronic video recorders were invented.

References

Sources

* Raymond Fielding
''A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television''
University of California Press, 1967, p. 251.

External links

{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070808234029/http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/television.html , date=2007-08-08 .
Television Apparatus
U.S. Patent application by Fernseh AG, 1932 (in Germany, 1931).
Television Transmission Method
U.S. Patent application by Fernseh AG, 1933 (in Germany, 1932).

Michael Buckland, Professor. Emanuel Goldberg, Television & Zeiss Ikon. Television technology

History

See also

References

Sources

External links