Ardenne Flying Spot Scanner

Early Electronic Television

Ardenne Flying Spot Scanner

Manfred von Ardenne, a German television engineer, began experimenting with CRT receivers in 1930. Using mechanical scanners, he produced good quality images using CRTs. We have one of the Ardenne CRTs described here on display at the museum.

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Here is an early image, from December, 1930

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By April 1931, the picture quality was much improved

In April of 1931 von Ardenne had made a flying spot film scanner. It produced a 60 line picture, using a horizontal scan rate of 1500 Hz. and a vertical scan rate of 25 Hz. An 8000 volt power supply was used on the CRT. Here is the receiver used in the system.

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The scanner, with the CRT and raster visible

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A closeup of the film mechanism

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The neck of the CRT, showing the deflection plates

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A picture from the screen

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A block diagram. Notice that the scanner is connected directly to the monitor CRT. The signal was not broadcast.

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Here is a block diagram of a scanner with sync pulses added to the video, for possible broadcast.

From a Facebook post by Richard Hill:

THE FIRST FULLY ELECTRONIC TV (VON ARDENNE EQUIPMENT) EXHIBITION

In 1928 already Germany's success in CRT technology was widely reported in the American press.

At the Berlin Radio Exhibition (1931) Manfred von Ardenne demonstrated the world's first complete electronic TV system (with a "telecine" & CRT's) to the public.

A "sanctioned" faithful reproduction of the historic equipment was built by the Manfred von Ardenne Reserach Institute, Dresden in 1991 and presented to the Deutsche Technikmuseum Berlin in 1991 by von Ardenne himself.

The exhibit still forms the core of the museum's pre-war TV presentation.

Many are not aware that Manfred von Ardenne was an extremely talented physicist - TV was only one of his many inventions. In 1945 he fell into soviet hands and together with other leading German scientists were taken deep into the USSR - to build Russia's first atom bomb !

Early Television