Not to be confused with Charles Francis Jenkins (1865-1951), a U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 publisher.

Charles Francis Jenkins (August 22, 1867 – June 6, 1934) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies. His businesses included Charles Jenkins Laboratories

Charles Jenkins Laboratories

Charles Jenkins Laboratories was the enterprise headed by Charles Francis Jenkins that was granted the first commercial television license in the United States, station W3XK. The Laboratories also operated experimental station W2XCR....

 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

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

). Over 400 patents were issued to Jenkins, many for his inventions related to motion pictures and television .

Jenkins was born in Dayton, Ohio

Dayton, Ohio

Dayton is the 6th largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, the fifth most populous county in the state. The population was 141,527 at the 2010 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 841,502 in the 2010 census...

, grew up near Richmond, Indiana

Richmond, Indiana

Richmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, United States, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport, which is in Boston Township and separated from the rest of the city...

, where he went to school, and went to Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 in 1890, where he worked as a stenographer.

Motion pictures

He started experimenting with movie film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 in 1891, and eventually quit his job and concentrated fully on the development of his own movie projector

Movie projector

A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying moving pictures by projecting them on a projection screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.-Physiology:...

, the Phantoscope.

As the Richmond Telegram reported, on June 6, 1894, Jenkins visited Richmond 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 the first film projected in front of an audience. The motion picture was of a vaudeville dancer doing a butterfly dance, which Jenkins had filmed himself in the backyard of his Washington boarding house. Not only was this the first showing of a reeled film with electric light before an audience, but it was also the first motion picture with color. Each frame was painstakingly colored by hand. Jenkins filed for a patent in November 1894 and it was issued in March of '95.

At the Bliss School of Electricity, in Washington, D.C., he met his classmate Thomas Armat

Thomas Armat

Thomas J. Armat was an American mechanic and inventor, a pioneer of cinema best known through the co-invention of the Edison Vitascope.-Biography:...

, and together they improved the design. They did a public screening at the Cotton States and International Exposition

Cotton States and International Exposition (1895)

The 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition was held at the current Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. It is most remembered for the speech given by Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895....

 in Atlanta in 1895 and subsequently broke up quarreling over patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 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 joined Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

, to whom he sold the rights to market the projector under the name Vitascope.

Jenkins married Grace Love, the daughter and descendant of an old established Maryland family, in 1902. Ms. Love was the sister-in-law of the prominent Washington, D.C. developer, L.E. Breuninger.

Television

Jenkins moved on to work on television. He published an article on "Motion Pictures by Wireless" in 1913, but it was not until 1923 that he transmitted moving silhouette images for witnesses, and it was June 13, 1925 that he publicly demonstrated synchronized transmission of pictures and sound. He was granted the U.S. patent No. 1,544,156 (Transmitting Pictures over Wireless) on June 30, 1925 (filed on March 13, 1922).

His mechanical technologies (also pioneered by John Logie Baird

John Logie Baird

John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube...

) were later overtaken by electronic television such as devised by Vladimir Zworykin

Vladimir Zworykin

Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes...

 and Philo Farnsworth

Philo Farnsworth

Philo Taylor Farnsworth was an American inventor and television pioneer. Although he made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television, he is perhaps best known for inventing the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device , the "image...

.

In 1928, the Jenkins Television Corporation opened the first television broadcasting station in the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, named W3XK

W3XK

W3XK is widely regarded as the oldest television station in the United States. It was operated by Charles Jenkins of Charles Jenkins Laboratories from July 2, 1928 to 1934. It was the first station to broadcast to the general public. The station's frequency started out at 1605 kHz, but moved to...

, which went on air on July 2 and first sent from the Jenkins Labs in Washington and from 1929 on from Wheaton, Maryland

Wheaton, Maryland

Wheaton is an unincorporated, urbanized area in Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, north of Washington, D.C., northwest of Silver Spring. Wheaton takes its name from Frank Wheaton , a career officer in the United States Army and volunteer from Rhode Island in the Union Army who rose to the rank of...

 on five nights a week. 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.

In March 1932, Jenkins Television Corporation was liquidated, and its assets were acquired by Lee DeForest Radio Corporation. Within months, the DeForest company went bankrupt, and the assets were bought by RCA

RCA

RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...

, which stopped all work on electromechanical television.

Achievements, awards

Jenkins was awarded the prestigious Elliott Cresson Gold Medal for scientific achievement in 1897 and the Scott Medal in 1913 by the Franklin Institute & Science Museum-Philadelphia.

He was the founder and first president of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (now includes television, SMPTE).

Jenkins wrote several books including Vision By Radio, Radio Photographs, Radio Photograms and The Boyhood of an Inventor, as well as many articles that focused on his inventions, which were published in a variety of national magazines.

He received an honorary degree from Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, at which he attended.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, best known for the annual Emmy Awards, remembers the contributions of Jenkins to the television industry by naming one of the academy’s most prestigious awards after him. The Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award is provided as a special engineering honor to an individual whose contributions over a long period of time have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering.
Charles Francis Jenkins died at age 66 in Washington, D.C. He is interred in Rock Creek Cemetery

Rock Creek Cemetery

Rock Creek Cemetery — also Rock Creek Church Yard and Cemetery — is an cemetery with a natural rolling landscape located at Rock Creek Church Road, NW, and Webster Street, NW, off Hawaii Avenue, NE in Washington, D.C.'s Michigan Park neighborhood, near Washington's Petworth neighborhood...

.

External links

• Case Files from the Franklin Institute on Jenkins's Phantoscope
• Biography emphasizing his movie projector development.
• Biography emphasizing his television endeavours.
• W3XK
• Various biographic excerpts
• Some images
• Jenkins marriage