Clothes Washer

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Television is Developed

John Logie Baird (1888-1946) applied for a patent for a mechanical television in 1923. He ran successful experiments in transmitting images in 1926, and in 1930 he worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to begin mechanical television broadcasting. He also tried, rather unsuccessfully, to mass-market his television transmitter. In 1923 Vladimir Zworykin (1889-1982) also applied for a patent. He was for a television camera that converted optical images into electrical pulses. On November 18, 1929, at a convention of radio engineers, Zworykin demonstrated a television receiver containing his “kinescope”, a cathoderay tube. That same year Zworykin joined the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in Camden, New Jersey. As the director of their Electronic Research Laboratory, he was able to concentrate on making critical improvements to his system. Zworykin’s “storage principle” is the basis of modern TV.

Meanwhile, in Japan, Kenjiro Takayanagi was developing electronic television, too. He was ahead of Zworykin, but better publicity gave Zworykin the nickname “father of television.” Takayanagi transmitted an image electronically in 1926, with a 40-line resolution and film running at 14 frames per second. In 1932 the BBC ventured the first regularly broadcast programs using Baird’s mechanical equipment, though it had been broadcasting special events and other sporadic transmissions since 1927. The first special-purpose television station was built in Germany in 1935 in preparation for the Berlin Olympic Games. That Olympic year, NBC experimented with electronic broadcast from the top of the Empire State Building. The first live journalistic event covered by television was the 1937 coronation of Britain’s King George VI. That year, the BBC began the first regular, high-quality broadcasting service using an electronic system.

And you wonder why it is called the Stone Age. In the good old days, clothes were washed in a stream, by bounding the garments with rocks, stones and heavy sticks. Forget about soap - water was the sole cleansing agent. Fire added heat to the laundry mix, when clothes were washed in tubs with water heated over open fires and soap made at home from a combination of lye and ashes. Clothes were scrubbed on a corrugated board, wrung by hand, rinsed, then wrung again, and draped on lines or bushes to dry. Women's hands were freed by 1927, when wringer washers became standard, eliminating the washboard, open tubs and the boiler. A few "pumps" with the foot started the motor of the machine and kept it humming.

The first automatic washer - one that washed, rinsed and extracted water from clothes in one process - debuted at a county fair in Louisiana, in September of 1937. After World War II, the demand for washers was enormous. By 1953, automatic washers were outselling wringer washers ten to one. Today, washers offer a variety of features including a selection of cycles for washing different types of garments and water temperature and level options.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-26