René Barthélemy

René Barthélemy
René Barthélemy
	René Barthélemy c.1935
Born	March 10, 1889; Nangis, France
Died	February 12, 1954 (aged 64); Antibes, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Engineer
Known for	Development of television

René Barthélemy (10 March 1889 – 12 February 1954) was a French engineer and a pioneer in the development of television technologies.

Background

The invention of television was a slow enterprise of collective improvement between researchers and do-it-yourselfers from different countries, the first concepts of which date back to the end of the 1870s.^[1] It was the successive discoveries in electricity and optics that made it possible to formulate the theoretical projects, the first experiments and the first demonstrations.^[2]

Biography

Barthélemy was the son of a tailor from Nangis, and his teachers encouraged him to continue his studies in engineering in which during 1909–1910 he studied for a diploma from the École Supérieure d'Électricité. At 22 years old he was a radio-telegraphist at the Eiffel Tower. In 1922 he filed a patent on mains power supply for radio receivers for which, until then, heavy and bulky batteries were used; his invention assisted the development of radio broadcasting in France. He achieved the radio transmission of still images from the Eiffel Tower in January 1930. Prints of images were received at a resolution of 42 lines on a 132 mm wide roll of cyanotype paper.^[3]

Television

By 1929 Barthélemy had been made head of the new television research laboratory, created by Jean Le Duc at the request of Ernest Chamon, CEO of the Compagnie des Compteurs in Montrouge.^[4]

A demonstration of television had been carried out at the Olympia Cinema in November 1930 using John Logie Baird's system. The second public demonstration of television in France, on 14 April 1931,^[5] was in the amphitheater of the School of Electricity at Malakoff in front of 800 guests. The receiver used the lensed Nipkow disc with a screen of 40 cm x 30 cm and a mechanical mirror camera of Weiller design at a resolution of 30 lines, developed in the Compagnie des Compteurs laboratory. This "radiovision" experience is the first from a radio transmitter (located 2 kilometers away, in the buildings of the Compagnie des Compteurs), others having been carried out previously but by wire:^[6] viewers were shown the broadcast of the short film L'Espagnole à l'éventail presented by Suzanne Bridoux, a collaborator of René Barthélemy and the first presenter in the history of French television.^[7]

Continuing his work under the auspices of Postes, télégraphes et téléphones (PTT), Barthélemy developed from December 1932 a new design at 60 lines definition and produced an experimental program in black and white of one hour per week, "Paris Télévision". The first official French television broadcast took place on 26 April 1935, under the aegis of Georges Mandel, Minister of PTT, from the studio at 103 rue de Grenelle. It was a twenty-minute sequence in which the actress Béatrice Bretty read a text recounting her recent tour of Italy: Radio-PTT Vision, the first French television channel, was born.^[8]

From November 1935, the Eiffel Tower served as a transmitting antenna with a power of 10Kw. On 2 December 1935, continuing to perfect his devices, Barthélemy developed and produced an output of 180 lines of definition, but the time of "mechanical" disc television was over and advances in electronics were paving the way for modern television. At the beginning of 1937, programs were more frequent and took place every evening from 8:00 pm to 8:30 pm, broadcasting over a radius of 100 km.^[6]

Television took off, but the number of sets was still very low (in France; a hundred in 1935, 3,000 in 1949, half a million in 1956). René Barthélemy's “EMYVISOR” cathode-ray tube receiver was marketed by EMYRADIO, around December 1935.

René Barthélemy, by then a member of the Académie des sciences, despite poor health, continued to work effectively in the field of television, bringing to it his inventiveness, and undertook systematic research to detect the radiation discovered by the inventor Marcel Violet and to determine that its frequency is in a range beyond 10²⁴ .

Despite his recommendation to develop a broadcasting network at 1045 lines, it was the 819 standard achieved by Henri de France which was adopted by the Minister of Information François Mitterrand. Disappointed, Barthélemy decided to retire.^[9]

Barthélémy died on 12 February 1954 at Antibes,^[10] and is buried in the Fontenay-aux-Roses cemetery.