[TELEVISION - SELENIUM CAMERA]. [CAREY George R. (1851-1906), inventor]. Carey’s personal autograph manuscript notebook containing his inventions. Lawyer’s office, City Hall, Boston, n.d. [ca. 1879]. 74pp., oblong 64mo (83 x 127 mm). Contains numerous sketches of inventions. Original cloth-backed wrappers (a bit sunned, light edgewear, several penciled and inked notations on covers by Carey). Several sketches of his inventions include a selenium telegraph, telephone receiver, improved selenium telephone, selenium electrical camera, and many others including a sketch of Edison’s telephone juxtaposed next to Carey’s improvements of the telephone. Most of these sketches are signed by Carey and a witness. Carey was an American inventor, notable for being one of the pioneers in proposing the telectroscope, an early concept leading to modern television. Working as a professional surveyor for the City of Boston, Carey utilized the photoelectric properties of selenium, following Willoughby Smith’s 1873 discovery that selenium’s electrical conductivity changed with varying light exposure. In the 17 May 1878, issue of Scientific American, Carey’s inventions were featured, highlighting their ingenuity in utilizing selenium. A more detailed article was published on 5 June 1880, further elaborating on Carey’s work. Carey’s inventions included two main approaches. The first involved an array of selenium photocells and wires to transmit an image to another array of lights, which would then expose photographic paper to create a single image. The second approach utilized a large array of photocells and wires to transmit signals to a visual display made of individual lights. Though theoretically effective, the latter method proved cumbersome and expensive due to the need for individual photocells and wired circuits for each pixel. -- [With:] correspondence between Carey and The Scientific American and several autograph postcards from Carey.