Scophony model 123 "Standard High Speed Scanner Motor", manufactured by Scophony Limited, 1938.

Scophony model 123 "Standard High Speed Scanner Motor", 1938.

This is the line scanning motor and mirror drum/wheel from a 1938 Scophony mechanically-scanned projection television set. Scophony was a small company which pioneered 'home cinema' in the late 1930s, with these "Scophony Two Foot Screen Home Receivers". Pictures were successfully demonstrated at Radiolympia in 1938, and "the biggest and brightest to be shown".

The sets were expensive and it seems few were sold. No examples are known to exist today. All we have are a few parts like this. Scophony also produced large screen television projectors for cinemas (six feet by five feet) in the late 1930s.

The physicist E. H. Traub developed the Mihaly-Traub mechanical scanner, while G. Wikkenhauser was an engineer who worked at Scophony. This establishes the provenance of this particular motor, and suggests that Wikkenhauser was collaborating with Traub around 1938.