Otto von Bronk

Otto Romanus von Bronk (born  February 29,  1872 in Danzig ; †  August 5,  1951 in Berlin ) was a German physicist and television pioneer.

Life

Otto von Bronk came from an old Pomeranian noble family. His parents were landowners and wanted him to study theology and become a pastor. At the age of 18 he escaped to Berlin, where he first worked in a printing company and then studied electrophysics. In 1896 he and F. Clausen founded a laboratory at Reichenberger Straße 36, where they worked on X-ray technology. After Clausen's death, he manufactured physical devices and selenium cells, which inspired him to inventions in the field of television. On June 12, 1902, on behalf of Telefunken AG , Bronk filed a patent application for a “method and device for making images or objects visible from a distance, with the images temporarily resolving into parallel rows of dots”. The patent, issued October 22, 1904, describes a television set in color, the signals of which are transmitted in the three primary colors. However, the mechanical scanning was too complex and only resulted in very slow image transmission. Because of this, the patent was economically worthless. However, it contained significant technical developments and was the starting point for NTSC color television.

from the patent specification for reflex circuit (1913)

After development work in the laboratories of the Marconi-Gesellschaft and C. Lorenz AG, he took over the management of the patent department at AEG- Telefunken at the beginning of 1911 , where he invented and patented the high-frequency amplifier in the same year. Around 1913 he developed the reflex circuit together with Wilhelm Schloemilch . Finally, in 1930, together with Fritz Schröter, he developed the first halftone telephoto images on a Braun tube .

literature

• Robert Piloty:  Bronk, Otto von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 633 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Adelslexikon, Vol. II, 1974, p. 124.
2. ↑ Patent list on xs4all.nl (PDF; 124 kB) , accessed May 1, 2009
3. ↑ hu-berlin.de: Information and communication in the past and present ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.