City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

284 NOTES TO PAGES 35–39
4. H. C. Saint-René, ‘‘On a solution to the problem of remote viewing,’’
Comptes Rendus 150, pp. 446–447 (1910), translation by Jean-Louis Trudel, Oct.
1994.
5. Kaye Weedon found this detail when he examined the packet that Saint-
René had sent to the French Academy; it was not published in Comptes Rendus.
Kaye Weedon, unpublished manuscript.
6. Hubert Masson, letter to author, May 10, 1996. Masson is vice president
of the agriculture school and deputy mayor of Crezancy.
7. Michael Ritchie, Please Stand By: A Prehistory of Television (Overlook Press,
Woodstock, N.Y., 1994, p. 24).
8. See, e.g., R. W. Burns, ‘‘J. L. Baird: success and failure,’’ Proceedings IEE 126,
No. 9, pp. 921–928 (Sept. 1979); Archer S. Taylor, ‘‘Origins of British television,’’
CED: Communications Engineering and Design, June 1995, p. 162.
9. J. L. Baird, British Patent 285,738, ‘‘An improved method of and means for
producing optical images,’’ filed Oct. 15, 1926, issued Feb. 15, 1928.
10. Ray Herbert, letter to author, Aug. 17, 1994. Herbert worked with Baird.
11. David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher, Tube: The Invention of Television
(Counterpoint, Washington, D.C., 1996).
12. Jenkins’s importance in early motion-picture development is controversial.
He and Thomas Armat patented a projector called the Phantoscope (US Patent
586,953, issued July 20, 1897) but later split, with Armat obtaining a later patent
on a variant projector. Jenkins insisted he projected the first motion pictures, but
his claims were never verified. Armat claimed he deserved sole credit for inventing
the projector, because the Jenkins-Armat patent was impractical. Armat licensed
his patents to Thomas Edison, leading to the common perception that Edison
invented motion pictures. Edison’s contribution was the camera. See Raymond
Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1967), especially F. H. Richardson, ‘‘What happened in
the beginning’’ (pp. 23–41). Jenkins’s gift for self-promotion earned him flattering
magazine profiles: ‘‘The original movie man and his first ‘show,’ ’’ The Literary
Digest, Apr. 30, 1921, pp. 38–39; Homer Croy, ‘‘The infant prodigy of our industries:
the birth and growth of motion pictures,’’ Harper’s Monthly 135, pp. 349–
357, (Aug. 1917).
13. Wright, ‘‘Successful inventors,’’
14. Hugo Gernsback of Radio News (who would soon publish the world’s first
science-fiction magazine) and Watson Davis of Popular Radio.
15. Background on Jenkins and his mechanical television systems comes
from Albert Abramson, ‘‘Pioneers of television—Charles Francis Jenkins,’’ Journal
of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Feb. 1986, pp. 224–
238.
16. C. Francis Jenkins, US Patent 1,683,137, ‘‘Method of and apparatus for
converting light impulses into enlarged graphic representations,’’ filed June 2,
1926, issued Sept. 4, 1928.
17. Technical details from Abramson, ‘‘Pioneers of television.’’
18. ‘‘Broadcasts pictures,’’ New York Times, May 6, 1928, p. 3.
19. Ritchie, Please Stand By; (pp. 22–31); for a fuller account, see Fisher and
Fisher, Tube.
20. Frank Melville Jr. Memorial Library, State University of New York, Stony
Brook, Special Collections Dept.: Clarence Weston Hansell Collection, Collection
209, biographical sketch of Hansell.