author
C. Francis (Charles Francis) Jenkins
1867–1934
A restless American inventor helped shape both early motion pictures and the first era of television. His experiments with projection, radio pictures, and mechanical TV made him one of the most fascinating tinkerers of the early screen age.
1 Audiobook
Vision by radio, radio photographs, radio photograms
by C. Francis (Charles Francis) Jenkins
About the author
Born in Ohio in 1867 and raised partly near Richmond, Indiana, Charles Francis Jenkins grew into a remarkably wide-ranging inventor. He studied at Earlham College and became known for practical imagination as much as technical skill, building ideas that ranged from motion-picture equipment to later television systems.
He is best remembered as a pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors associated with television. In the 1890s he worked on motion-picture projection, and later he became an important American advocate of mechanical television, developing and demonstrating systems for transmitting pictures by radio. Britannica also credits him with an early image transmission in 1922, and his later work helped establish some of the first licensed television activity in the United States.
Jenkins died in Washington, D.C., in 1934, but his reputation has lasted because he bridged two major media revolutions: movies and television. For listeners interested in the people behind modern screen culture, his life offers a vivid look at the experimental, hands-on spirit of invention in the early 20th century.