Distant Electric Vision

REFERRING to Mr. Shelford Bidwell’s illuminating communication on this subject published in NATURE of June 4, may I point out that though, as stated by Mr. Bidwell, it is wildly impracticable to effect even 160,000 synchronised operations per second by ordinary mechanical means, this part, of the problem of obtaining distant electric vision can probably be solved by the employment of two beams of kathode rays (one at the transmitting and one at the receiving station) synchronously deflected by the varying fields of two electromagnets placed at right angles to one another and energised by two alternating electric currents of widely different frequencies, so that the moving extremities of the two beams are caused to sweep synchronously over the whole of the required surfaces within the one-tenth of a second necessary to take advantage of visual persistence.

Indeed, so far as the receiving apparatus is concerned, the moving kathode beam Has only to be arranged to impinge on a sufficiently sensitive fluorescent screen, and given suitable variations in its intensity, to obtain the desired result.

The real difficulties lie in devising an efficient transmitter which, under the influence of light and shade, shall sufficiently vary the transmitted electric current so as to produce the necessary alterations in the intensity of the kathode beam of the receiver, and further in making this transmitter sufficiently rapid in its action to respond to the 160,000 variations per second that are necessary as a minimum.

Possibly no photoelectric phenomenon at \present known will provide what is required in this respect, but should something suitable be discovered, distant electric vision will, I think, come within the region of possibility.