Narrow-bandwidth Television Association

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Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

We are a dedicated group of people from all walks of life interested in the many aspects of early television whether it is the history, the construction, or the computing side of the subject, NBTV has plenty to offer.

The Narrow Band TeleVision Association is a non-profit organisation here in the UK catering for people interested in all aspects of early television. Although based in Britain it boasts a world-wide membership including Europe, the USA, and Canada and as far away as New Zealand and Australia.

The club is run to promote all aspects of Narrow Band Television and presents a forum for the exchange of ideas through a three monthly newsletter. Technical articles as well as news of forthcoming events, local meetings and the yearly Convention are publicised in this journal. Aspects of the transmission and reception of TV signals over the airwaves are also featured by our Radio Amateur members along with timing of regular 'skeds'.

We are attempting to increase our current 150 plus membership and to encourage 'new blood' into the association. The club 'shop' featured in the newsletter provides a stock of electronic and specialised components used in the construction of NBTV equipment for members. Bulk purchasing avoids minimum order and carriage charges to our members as well as providing competitive pricing.

An application form, with details of the current membership rates, is available from our membership secretary and treasurer Dave Gentle who can be contacted either through e-mail ..... david.gentle@ukonline.co.uk.... or at 1 Sunny Hill , Milford, Derbyshire, DE56 0QR , England.

Please be aware that the club is not a business venture, people run the membership and club shop on a voluntary basis in their spare time and this should be respected.

You may well be wondering at this stage how it all started and Doug Pitt has provided us with the following short explanation....

A Short History of NBTVA

The birth of our Club arose from a few concurrent events. Doug Pitt, a Nottingham science teacher, proposed in 1972 the building of a mechanical TV system as an interesting project to colleague Stan Kujawinski, a keen amateur engineer.

A few months later, Doug read a "letter to the Editor" in "Wireless World" from an Australian schoolboy, Chris Long. Chris, it became clear, had already built a 30-line disc camera using a photomultiplier and had even put out signals on the amateur bands with the aid of a "ham" friend.

It then occurred to Doug that there might be many other people who were thinking along the same lines, so he placed advertisements in a number of technical magazines, inviting correspondence. The results were immediate and soon a healthy "low definition" circle was established and "Ideas Sheets" - single pages of suggestions - distributed at irregular intervals.

By 1975 the circle had grown to more than forty people and a meeting was called in April at the Clifton Training College (now Nottingham Trent University) and attracted more than a dozen correspondents.This meeting established the "Low Definition Television Association", open world-wide to anyone interested in the techniques. There were only two volunteers for office, Stan K. agreeing to be Membership Secretary & Treasurer, while Doug P. coped with other functions. Fred Ward G2CVV agreed to be the Club's first President.

In April 1976 the first 12-page newsletter was published and the first annual exhibition held. This was to become a regular event. In 1978 the Club's title was changed to the present one.

In 1981 Jeremy Jago undertook the job of dispatching the newsletters every quarter and in 1984 also took over the printing of regular photographs. With its committee thus strengthened, the Club's membership rose rapidly and in 1993 Les Robotham G8KLH took over Club Sales, improving matters still further.

The website, organised by Grant Dixon G8CGK (1996) represented a new departure and was quickly dedicated to making the Club and its activities known over the widest possible field.

Technically, the work of members has passed through a number of stages. The earliest cameras (Long, Kujawinski, Pitt) were photomultiplier-based but after 1977 and 1978, when Dave Sumner G3PVH and Alan Short demonstrated phototransistor-derived images, semiconductor-based cameras became the dominant type.

In 1988 when Don McLean demonstrated a digital standard convertor, a new stage was initiated, many other convertors arising over the years that followed. In recent years, computer generation and enhancement of images have made great strides.
The Club's newsletter and website enjoy a high reputation and talks by members are in demand. In recent years, lectures have been given, among others, to the Society for Information Displays, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Society.

D.B.P. August 2001

 

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