Television. Very fine copy in very fine dust jacket

First Book on Television in English: Superb Copy

Dinsdale, Alfred. Television: Seeing by wireless. 8vo. 62pp. London: W. S. Caines for Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1926. 186 x 125 mm. Original printed paper boards, pictorial dust-jacket. Very fine copy. Boxed.

First Edition of the first book in English on television. Dinsdale discusses the technical challenges faced by early experimenters (Jan van Szczepanik, Boris Rosing, Denoys von Kihaly and others), but focuses primarily on the work of the Scottish engineer John Logie Baird (1888-1946), the first person to produce televised pictures of objects in motion. In February 1924 Baird produced the first television image in outline, and in April 1925 he transmitted the first pictures between two televisions. By the following October Baird had succeeded in transmitting images with gradations of light and shade, and on January 27, 1926, he successfully transmitted recognizable human faces between two rooms by television. Of Baird's early experiments, Dinsdale writes: "Baird's weird apparatus-old bicycle sprockets, biscuit tins, cardboard discs and bullseye lenses, all tied together with sealing wax and string-failed to impress those who were accustomed to the shining brass and exquisite mechanism of the instrument maker. The importance of the demonstration was, however, realized by the scientific world . . ." (p. 49). Although he did not succeed in producing a viable system of television, Baird paved the way for future technical developments. Television reached a state of technical feasibility in 1931, and the first high-definition broadcasting system was launched in London in 1936 by the BBC.

The copy we are offering is in nearly pristine condition, and is the finest copy we have seen in our four decades in business. The Richard Green copy, with a tape repair on the back panel of the dust-jacket and some minor rubbing, sold at Christie's on June 17, 2008 for $16,250.00. Shiers, Early Television: A Bibliographic Guide to 1940, 841.