jan 3, 1884 - Paul Nipkow - Nipkow Scanning Disk

Description:

The spinning disk in a mechanical TV is referred to as a Nipkow disk, after its inventor, [Paul Gottlieb Nipkow]. [Nipkow] conceived and patented the idea of a spinning disk with a spiral of holes to dissect an image sequentially into a series of lines in the 1880s, but without the benefit of the electronic amplification that would come a few decades later was unable to produce a viable system to demonstrate it.

It would be in the 1920s before [John Logie Baird] would develop the first working television system using [Nipkow]’s invention.

The operation of a Nipkow disk is simple enough. An image is projected onto its surface across the region through which the spiral of holes pass.

As the disk rotates, each of its holes traverses its own arc across the image that is immediately adjacent to that traversed by the hole before it. As each of the holes performs the traverse they gradually scan the image line by line, and when the last hole in the spiral has passed it is immediately followed by the first one at the other end of the spiral and the process is repeated. If a light-sensitive detector is placed behind the disk then it receives a light intensity that corresponds to a voltage output representing the picture as video scan lines.

(https://hackaday.com/2017/06/28/mechanical-image-acquisition-with-a-nipkow-disc/)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKmy9s6t3hs)

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