Charles Francis Jenkins

Charles Francis Jenkins studied at Richmond High School. The recorded working language is English. Works named in the authority record are Jenkins Mirror Drum and Phantoscope. Distinctions recorded are Elliott Cresson Medal, National Inventors Hall of Fame and John Scott Award.

• Name — Charles Francis Jenkins • Born — 22 August 1867 • Birthplace — Dayton, Ohio, U.S. • Died — 6 June 1934 • Place of death — Washington, D.C., U.S. • Resting Place — Rock Creek Cemetery Washington, D.C., U.S. • Education — Bliss Electrical School • Significant Projects — Over 400 patents related to a variety of inventions • Significant Advance — Motion picture projector and television • Significant Awards — Elliott Cresson Medal (1897) John Scott Medal (1913) Charles Francis Jenkins (August 22, 1867 – June 6, 1934) was an American engineer who was a 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). Over 400 patents were issued to Jenkins, many for his inventions related to motion pictures and television. 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.

Jenkins started experimenting with motion pictures in 1891, and eventually quit his job and concentrated fully on the development of his own movie projector, the Phantoscope. As the Richmond Telegram reported on June 6, 1894, about his endeavors to show his parents, friends, and newsmen a gadget he had been working on for two years: a "motion picture projecting box". They gathered at Jenkins' cousin's jewelry store in downtown Richmond and viewed what may have been the first live-action film screening in front of an audience. The motion picture was of vaudeville dancer Annabelle doing a butterfly dance, which Jenkins had filmed himself in the backyard of his Washington boarding house. According to later accounts, each film frame was painstakingly colored by hand. A July 1894 article in the Photographic Times noted how the Phantoscope had several advantages over Edison's Kinetograph; it was small (5 x 5 x 8 inches), portable and cheap. Although Jenkins had written that he intended to make a nickel-in-the-slot device (comparable to Anschütz's Electrotachyscope and the Kinetoscope), the machine could project its images "upon any size screen" with a magic lantern (comparable to the Zoopraxiscope that Muybridge used to project traced contours of his chronophotographic pictures). The magazine published a selection of 15 circular frames of the 50 frames movie of a man putting a shot. Jenkins also planned to synchronize the movies to sound recordings with a phonograph (as previously suggested by Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Muybridge and others since very soon after the introduction of Edison's device in 1877). At the Bliss Electrical School, in Washington, D.C., Jenkins met his classmate Thomas Armat, and together they improved the design. They did a public screening at Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895 and subsequently broke up quarreling over patent issues. This modified Phantoscope of Jenkins and Armat was patented July 20, 1897. Jenkins eventually sold his interest in the projector to Armat. Armat subsequently sold the rights to Thomas Edison, who marketed the projector under the name Vitascope. It was with this projector that Edison began public showings in vaudeville theaters of filmed motion pictures, with paid admission. In 1898, Jenkins published Animated Pictures, an early overview of the historical development and explanations of the methods and machines.

• Illustration — July 1928 On June 14, 1923, Charles Jenkins broadcast the world's first wireless motion pictures. The inspiration for his invention came from a letter he received from a deaf child who asked if he could create a device that would enable the deaf to see sign language from a distance. This idea led Charles Jenkins to invent the wireless motion picture machine. During the demonstration, attended by representatives from the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Post Office, the machine captured images of live hand movements and transmitted them wirelessly to a receiver in an adjacent room. There, the images were projected onto a viewing screen, allowing Jenkins to fulfill the child's request. This event marked the first time that motion pictures of any kind had been sent through the air. On June 13, 1925, Charles Jenkins revealed his invention to the world in a highly publicized event. To demonstrate motion, a small model of a Dutch windmill was constructed, and its blades were turned slowly by the wind generated from an electric fan. With the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, this moving image was broadcast from the Naval Radio Station in Bellevue, Washington, D.C., and received by Jenkins' rooftop antenna at 1519 Connecticut Avenue where the images were projected for the public. Charles Jenkins was awarded the U.S. patent "Transmitting Pictures by Wireless" on June 30, 1925 (U.S. Patent Number 1,544,156). 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 from the Jenkins Laboratories at 1519 Connecticut Avenue in Washington D.C., eventually broadcasting six nights a week at 8pm. 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. The Jenkins Television Corporation went public in December 1928 and gained a market value of 10 million, bringing Charles Jenkins both widespread fame and considerable fortune. From 1929 the broadcasts were sent from Wheaton, Maryland. 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 March 1932, Jenkins Television Corporation was liquidated and its assets acquired by Lee de Forest Radio Corporation. Within months, the De Forest company went bankrupt and the assets were bought by RCA stopping all work on electromechanical television.

Jenkins also dabbled in automobiles with Jenkins Automobile Company. In 1898, he invented the first automobile with an engine in the front of the car. In 1901 he constructed the smallest car for the 26-inch tall Cuban performer Chiquita. Jenkins married Grace Love in 1902.