Charles Francis Jenkins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Not to be confused with Charles Francis Jenkins (1865-1951), a U.S. publisher.
| Charles Francis Jenkins | |
 Charles Francis Jenkins |
|
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Name | Charles Francis Jenkins |
| Nationality | American |
| Birth date | (August 22, 1867 |
| Birth place | Dayton, Ohio |
| Date of death | June 6, 1934 |
| Place of death | Washington D.C. |
| Work | |
| Significant advance | television |
Charles Francis Jenkins (August 22, 1867 – June 6, 1934) was an American pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies. His businesses included Charles Jenkins Laboratories and Jenkins Television Corporation (the corporation being founded in 1928, the year the Laboratories were granted the first commercial television license in the United States).
Jenkins was born in Dayton, Ohio, grew up near Richmond, Indiana, where he went to school, and went to Washington, D.C. in 1890, where he worked as a stenographer. He started experimenting with movie film in 1891, and eventually quit his job and concentrated fully on the development of his own movie projector, the Phantascope.
At the Bliss School of Electricity, in Washington, D.C., he met his classmate Thomas Armat, and together they improved the design. They did a public screening at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895 and subsequently broke up quarreling over patent issues. Armat eventually won the case in which Jenkins had tried to claim sole ownership of the patent, and Jenkins sold out to him. Armat subsequently joined Thomas Edison, to whom he sold the rights to market the projector under the name Vitascope.
Jenkins moved on to work on television. He published an article on "Motion Pictures by Wireless" in 1913, but it was not until 1923 that he transmitted moving silhouette images for witnesses, and it was June 13, 1925 that he publicly demonstrated synchronized transmission of pictures and sound. He was granted the U.S. patent No. 1,544,156 (Transmitting Pictures over Wireless) on June 30, 1925 (filed on March 13, 1922).
His mechanical technologies (also pioneered by John Logie Baird) were later overtaken by electronic television such as devised by Vladimir Zworykin and Philo Farnsworth.
In 1928, the Jenkins Television Corporation opened the first television broadcasting station in the U.S., named W3XK, which went on air on July 2 and first sent from the Jenkins Labs in Washington and from 1929 on from Wheaton, Maryland on five nights a week. At first, the station could only send silhouette images due to its narrow bandwidth, but that was soon rectified and real black-and-white images were transmitted.
In March 1932, Jenkins Television Corporation was liquidated, and its assets were acquired by Lee DeForest Radio Corporation. Within months, the DeForest company went bankrupt, and the assets were bought by RCA, which stopped all work on electromechanical television.
Charles Francis Jenkins died at age 66 in Washington, D.C. He is interred in Rock Creek Cemetery.
[edit] External links
- C. Francis Jenkins' 1897 Franklin Award includes info on the science of the Phantoscope and Jenkins' dispute with Thomas Armat and Thomas Edison over that invention
- Biography emphasizing his movie projector development.
- Biography emphasizing his television endeavours.
- W3XK
- Various biographic excerpts
- Some images
- Charles Francis Jenkins at Find A Grave
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jenkins, Charles Francis |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jenkins, C. Francis |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American inventor and pioneer of cinema and television |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 22, 1867 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dayton, Ohio |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 5, 1934 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
