Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German

technician A technician is a worker in a field of technology who is proficient in the relevant skill and technique, with a relatively practical understanding of the theoretical principles. Specialisation The term technician covers many different speciali ...

and inventor. He invented the

Nipkow disk A Nipkow disk (sometimes Anglicized as Nipkov disk; patented in 1884), also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, rotating, geometrically operating image scanning device, patented in 1885 by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow. This scanning disk was a funda ...

, which laid the foundation of

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. Hundreds of stations experimented with television broadcasting using his disk in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was superseded by all-electronic systems in the 1940s. Nipkow has been called the "father of television", together with other early figures of television history like

Karl Ferdinand Braun Karl Ferdinand Braun (; 6 June 1850 – 20 April 1918) was a German electrical engineer, inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology: he shared the ...

. The first public

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the eart ...

in the world,

Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow The Fernsehsender "Paul Nipkow" (''TV Station Paul Nipkow'') in Berlin, Germany, was the first public television station in the world. Carrying programming from Deutscher Fernseh-Rundfunk, it was on the air from 22 March 1935, until it was shut ...

, was named in his honour.

Beginnings

Nipkow was born in

Lauenburg Lauenburg (), or Lauenburg an der Elbe ( en, Lauenberg on the Elbe), is a town in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the northern bank of the river Elbe, east of Hamburg. It is the southernmost town of Schleswig-Holstein ...

(now Lębork) in the

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...

n province of Pomerania, now part of Poland. While at school in neighbouring Neustadt (now Wejherowo), in the province of

West Prussia The Province of West Prussia (german: Provinz Westpreußen; csb, Zôpadné Prësë; pl, Prusy Zachodnie) was a province of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and 1878 to 1920. West Prussia was established as a province of the Kingdom of Prussia in 177 ...

, Nipkow experimented in telephony and the transmission of moving pictures. After graduation, he went to Berlin in order to study science. He studied physiological optics with

Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Associatio ...

, and electro-physics with

Adolf Slaby Adolf Karl Heinrich Slaby (18 April 1849 – 6 April 1913) was a German electronics pioneer and the first Professor of electro-technology at the Technical University of Berlin (1886). Education Slaby was born in Berlin, the son of a bookbinde ...

Nipkow disk

While still a student he conceived an "electric telescope", mainly known for the idea of using a spiral-perforated disk (

), to divide a picture into a linear sequence of points. Accounts of its invention state that the idea came to him while sitting alone at home with an oil lamp on Christmas Eve, 1883. Alexander Bain had transmitted images telegraphically in the 1840s but the Nipkow disk improved the encoding process. He applied to the imperial patent office in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

for a patent covering an "electric telescope" for the "electric reproduction of illuminating objects", in the category "electric apparatuses". This was granted on 15 January 1885, retroactive to 6 January 1884. It is not known whether Nipkow ever attempted a practical realization of this disk, but one may assume that he himself never constructed one. The patent lapsed after 15 years owing to lack of interest. Nipkow took up a position as a designer at an institute in Berlin-Buchloh and did not continue work on the broadcasting of pictures.

First TV systems

The first television broadcasts used an optical-mechanical picture scanning method, the method that Nipkow had helped create with his disk; he could claim credit for the invention. Nipkow recounted his first sight of television at a Berlin radio show in 1928: "The televisions stood in dark cells. Hundreds stood and waited patiently for the moment at which they would see television for the first time. I waited among them, growing ever more nervous. Now for the first time, I would see what I had devised 45 years ago. Finally, I reached the front row; a dark cloth was pushed to the side, and I saw before me a flickering image, not easy to discern." The system demonstrated was from the company

Telefunken Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company'). The name "Telefunken" ap ...

. From the early 1930s, total electronic picture scanning, based on the work of

Manfred von Ardenne Manfred von Ardenne (20 January 1907 – 26 May 1997) was a German researcher and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics ...

, became increasingly prevalent, and Nipkow's invention was no longer essential to the further development of television.

"Paul Nipkow" Transmitter

The world's first public

, started in Berlin in 1935, was named Fernsehsender "Paul Nipkow" after Nipkow – the "spiritual father" of the core element of first-generation television technology. He became honorary president of the "television council" of the "Imperial Broadcasting Chamber". Nipkow's glory was used by Hitler and the Nazi government as a tool of National Socialist scientific propaganda. Nipkow died in Berlin in 1940 two days after his 80th birthday and had an official ceremony organised by the Nazi government.

Bibliography

SCHMIDT, Claus-Dietrich, ''Paul Nipkow. Erfinder des Fernsehens (1860–1940). Sein Leben in den technischen Fortschritt'', Lebork Museum, 2009. The only detailed biography on Nipkow.

References

External links

*
"Seeing by Electricity" The Electrical World, New York, November, 14, 1885

"Une idée et son mythe : le disque de Nipkow"
a
Histoire de la télévision, site edited by André Lange
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nipkow, Paul Gottlieb 1860 births 1940 deaths People from Lębork People from Wejherowo 19th-century German inventors People from the Province of Pomerania Television pioneers