Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton

<p>Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton <a href="/facts/Fellow_of_the_Royal_Society/cWs8TdC5">FRS</a> (18 October 1863 – 19 February 1930) was a Scottish consulting <a href="/facts/Electrical_engineer/YYXW1KLW">electrical engineer</a>, who provided the theoretical basis for the electronic <a href="/facts/Television/X4YG5nT1">television</a>, two decades before the technology existed to implement it. He began experimenting around 1903 with the use of <a href="/facts/Cathode-ray_tube/8NVGx5C7">cathode-ray tubes</a> (CRTs) for the electronic transmission and reception of images. Campbell described the theoretical basis for an all electronic method of producing television in a 1908 letter to <i><a href="/facts/Nature_(journal)/XmlJXkFx">Nature</a></i>. Campbell-Swinton's concept was central to the cathode ray television because of his proposed modification of the CRT that allowed its use as both a transmitter and receiver of light. The CRT was the system of electronic television that was subsequently developed in later years, as technology caught up with Campbell-Swinton's initial ideas. Other inventors would use Campbell-Swinton's ideas as a starting-point to realise the <a href="/facts/CRT_television/8moTsqhB">CRT television</a> as the standard, workable form of all electronic television that it became for decades after his death. It is generally considered that the original credit for the successful theoretical conception of using a CRT device for imaging should belong to Campbell-Swinton.
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Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton open-in-new

Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton