Paul Gottlieb Nipkow

Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (born 22 August 1860 in Lauenburg in Pomerania, died 24 August 1940 in Berlin) was a German technician and inventor.

Beginnings

While at school in Neustadt, West Prussia, Nipkow experimented in telephony and the transmission of moving pictures. After graduation, he went to Berlin in order to study science. He studied physiological optics with Hermann von Helmholtz, and physiological optics and electro-physics with Adolf Slaby.

Nipkow Disk

While still a student, he invented the Nipkow disk. Accounts of its invention state that on Christmas Eve, 1883 when he sat alone at home with an oil lamp and conceived the idea to use a spiral-perforated disk to divide a picture into a mosaic of points and lines. It should be noted here that Alexander Bain had transmitted images telegraphically in the 1840s but the Nipkow disk improved on the encoding process.

He applied for a patent in the imperial patent office in Berlin for an electric telescope for the electric reproduction of illuminating objects, in the category "electric apparatuses". This was granted on 15th January 1885, retroactive to 6th January 1884. It is not known whether Nipkow ever attempted a practical realization of this disk but one may assume that he himself never constructed one. Due to lack of interest the patent lapsed after 15 years. Nipkow took a position as a designer in a Berlin-Buchloh institute and did not continue work on picture broadcasting.

First TV systems

The first telecasts used an optical-mechanical picture scanning method, the method that Nipkow had helped create with his disk; he could claim some credit for the invention. Nipkow recounted his first sight of television at a Berlin radio show in 1928: "the televisions stood in dark cells. Hundreds stood and waited patiently for the moment at which they would see television for the first time. I waited among them, growing ever more nervous. Now for the first time I would see what I had devised 45 years ago. Finally I reached the front row; a dark cloth was pushed to the side, and I saw before me a flickering image, not easy to discern."

By the beginning of the 1930's electronic picture scanning, based on the iconoscope invented by Vladimir Zworykin was prevalent and Nipkow's invention ceased to have direct relevance.

Transmitter Paul Nipkow

The leadership of the Third Reich saw the propaganda value in claiming television as a German invention, and in 1935 named the first public television station after Nipkow. He became honorary president of the "television council" of the "Reich Broadcasting Chamber" -- a "German television-pioneer" who long before had dreamed up a method of broadcasting he did not implement.

Death

Nipkow died alone in 1940 in Berlin.

External links

The Television System of Paul Nipkow