Walter Bruch

Walter Bruch (2 March 1908 – 5 May 1990) was a

German electrical engineer and pioneer of German Walter Bruch
television. He was the inventor of closed-circuit Born 2 March 1908
television.[1] He invented the PAL colour television Neustadt an der Weinstraße,
system at Telefunken in the early 1960s.[2] In addition Germany
to his research activities Walter Bruch was an honorary Died 5 May 1990 (aged 82)
lecturer at Technische Hochschule Hannover. He was Hanover, Germany
awarded the Werner von Siemens Ring in 1975.[3] Occupation Electrical engineer

Biography
He was born in Neustadt an der Weinstraße in the German Empire. At his father's request he attended a
business school, but then trained as a machinist apprenticeship in a shoe factory. From 1928 he attended
the university of applied science Hochschule Mittweida in Saxony. After that, he was a guest student at
the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin), where he met
Manfred von Ardenne and the Hungarian inventor Dénes von Mihály.

From the early 1930s Bruch was involved in the development of television technology: in 1933 he
presented a "people's television receiver" with a self-built telecine. In 1935 he started work as a
technician in the Television and Physics research Department of Telefunken which was headed by
Professor Fritz Schröter and where Emil Mechau developed a special television camera for the 1936
Summer Olympics. The Summer Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin became a milestone for audiovisual
technology and Bruch was able to field test the first Iconoscope camera, developed by Emil Mechau
based on a tube by Walter Heimann.[4] One year later, at the Paris International Exposition, he introduced
an iconoscope television unit that he had designed. During World War II he operated a closed-circuit
television system installed at the Peenemünde launch site, so that the V-2 rocket launches could be
watched at a safe distance from a bunker.[5]

In 1950, Telefunken commissioned him to develop the first post-war television receivers. Some time
later, he returned to physics research and later colour television. He studied and thoroughly tested the
American NTSC system and what would later become the French SECAM system. His work led him and
co-workers like Gerhard Mahler and Dr. Kruse to devise a new colour television system that
automatically corrected for the differential phase distortion that can occur along the transmission channel.

On 3 January 1963, he gave the first public presentation of the Phase Alternation Line System to a group
of experts from the European Broadcasting Union in Hannover. This is considered to be the date of birth
of the PAL-Telefunken system, which was later adopted by more than thirty countries (at present, more
than one hundred). When interviewed by German talk show host Hans Rosenthal on why he had named it
the "PAL system", Bruch replied that certainly no German would want to have a "Bruch-System" had his
family name been used as the eponym; Bruch in German is synonymous with "broken".
He received the David Sarnoff Medal from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in
1971 and the Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor from the German Eduard Rhein Foundation in 1981.[6] He
died in Hanover, aged 82.

Awards
1967: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany; Knight Commander's Cross with
star
1968: Goldene Kamera 1967 (Golden Camera 1967)
1973: Culture Award, German Society for Photography
1975: Werner von Siemens Ring
1979: Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria; Grand Decoration of
Honour in Gold
1982: Niedersächsischer Staatspreis (Lower Saxony State Prize), for Science
1986: Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art

References
1. Bradford, Lowell (27 August 2019). "A History of CCTV Technology: How Surveillance
Technology Has Evolved" (https://www.surveillance-video.com/blog/a-history-of-cctv-technol
ogy-how-video-surveillance-technology-has-evolved.html/). Retrieved 6 July 2021. "Walter
Bruch, a man who invented Closed-circuit television for the purposes of learning about
weapons, not people."
2. "Walter Bruch and the PAL Color Television System" (http://scihi.org/walter-bruch/). 2 March
2020. Retrieved 6 July 2021. "In 1963, when he gave a public presentation of the Phase
Alternation Line to a group of experts from the European Broadcasting Union in Hannover"
3. "Walter Bruch; PAL Television" (https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/walter-bruch-pal-television/). 7
December 2019. Retrieved 14 July 2021. "In 1950s, when Telefunken commissioned Bruch
to invent an automated differential phase correction for color television. That's why he was
awarded."
4. Redlich, Gert (December 2008). "Walter Bruch war weltweit bekannt geworden durch die
Verbindung zum deutschen PAL Farbfernsehen" (http://www.fernsehmuseum.info/walter-bru
ch.html). Deutsches Fernsehmuseum (1) Wiesbaden – Museum für professionelle
Fernsehtechnik und Fernsehgeschichte im Internet (in German). Retrieved 24 April 2013.
5. Harford, Tim (2020). The Next Fifty things that made the modern economy. London: Bridge
Street Press. pp. 151–2. ISBN 9781408712665.
6. "The Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor Recipients" (https://web.archive.org/web/2011071823410
6/http://www.eduard-rhein-stiftung.de/html/Ehrenring_e.html). Eduard Rhein Foundation.
Archived from the original (http://www.eduard-rhein-stiftung.de/html/Ehrenring_e.html) on 18
July 2011. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
Moralejo, Manuel; Edelmiro Pascual (1975). La electrónica (in Spanish). Barcelona: Salvat.
ISBN 84-345-7458-6.

External links
45 Years Anniversary of Walter Bruch's PAL Color Television (http://www.radiomuseum.org/f
orum/45_years_anniversary_of_walter_bruchs_pal_color_television.html)
 Hochschule Mittweida: Walter Bruch (https://www.hs-mittweida.de/index.php?id=1698) (in
German)

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