A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DVladimir Kosma Zworykin : 1889 - 1982
Russian-American Vladimir Kosma Zworykin [b. July 30, 1899, d. July 29, 1982] , has been called the father of television. He came to the United States in 1919, patented the iconoscope, the first television transmission tube in 1923, and filed a patent for a color tube in 1925. Becoming director of RCA's electronics research laboratory in 1929, he remained with RCA until retiring in 1954. His inventions include a television-guided bomb and a system to convert ultraviolet or infrared into visible light. He worked on developing the computer and electron microscope. During World War II he was a science advisor to the U. S. Government.
Kenneth Thibodeau
"Vladimir K. Zworykin: Passport Photograph, 1951"
The person most often associated as the father of television is Vladimir Kosma Zworykin. Teamed with David Sarnoff at RCA, Zworykin would lead the development of electronic television. Zworykin was cursed with living in interesting times, born in Russia in 1889, he studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. He was eventually hired by one of his instructors, Boris Rosing, who was seeking ways of extending mans vision. By 1907 Rosing had developed a television system which employed a mechanical disc system as a camera and a glass tube (cathode ray tube) as a receiver. The system was primitive but it was more electronic than mechanical. With the Russian Revolution, Rosing went into exile and died. Zworykin carried on his work. With the outbreak of World War I, Zworykin decided to leave Russia for the United States. Zworykin found work with Westinghouse. Based on their pioneering efforts in radio, he tried to convince them to do research in television. Turning down an offer from Warner Brothers, Zworykin worked nights, fashioning his own crude television system. In 1923, Zworykin demonstrated his system before officials at Westinghouse and applied for a patent. All future television systems would be based on Zworykin's 1923 patent. Zworykin describes his 1923 demonstration as "scarcely impressive". Westinghouse officials were not prepared to base an investment in television on such a flimsy system. The company's suggestion was that Zworykin devote his time to more practical endeavours. Undeterred, Zworykin continued in his off hours to perfect his system. He was so persistent that the laboratory guard was instructed to send him home a 2:00 in the morning if the lights of the laboratory were still on. During this time,. Zworykin managed to develop a more sophisticated picture tube called the Kinescope, which serves as the basis of the television display tubes in use today. In 1929, Vladimir Zworykin invented the all electric camera tube. Zworykin called his tube the Iconoscope (literally "a viewer of icons"). He demonstrated both the iconoscope and kinescope to the Institute of Radio Engineers. Zworykin's all electronic television system demonstrated the limitations of the mechanical television system. In attendance was David Sarnoff who eventually hired Zworykin to develop his television system for RCA. Under Sarnoff's watchful eye, Zworykin continued to develop the electronic system. When Zworykin started at RCA his system was scanning 50 lines. Experimental broadcasts started in 1930 first using a mechanical camera transmitting at 120 lines. By 1933 a complete electronic system was being employed with a resolution of 240 lines. Zworykin had originally told Sarnoff it would cost $200,000.00 to develop a television system, the final cost was estimated to cost RCA about $50,000,000.00. Zworykin was not alone. By 1934 two British electronic firms, EMI and Marconi, created an all-electronic television system. They used the Orthicon camera tube invented by an American company, RCA. This electronic system was officially adopted by the BBC in 1936. It consisted of 405 scanning lines, changing at twenty five frames per second.
Physicist, born in Murom, Russia. He studied at the St Petersburg Institute of Technology and the Collège de France in Paris, emigrated to the USA in 1919, and became a US citizen in 1924. He joined the Radio Corporation of America, RCA, in 1929 becoming director of electronic research in 1946 and vice-president in 1947. In 1923/4 he patented an all-electronic television system using a scanned camera-tube ( the iconoscope ). In 1929 Zworykin demonstrated a cathode-ray display ( the kinescope ), and in later years contributed to the development of colour television and the electron microscope. Zworykin is regarded as "the father of modern television".
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin: Cathode-Ray Tube: Patent No. 2,139,296 Most people think of television as a development of the mid-20th century. But as early as 1929 Russian inventor Vladimir Kosma Zworykin was demonstrating a system with all the features of modern picture tubes. Born in Murom, 200 miles east of Moscow, Zworykin at age nine started spending summers as an apprentice aboard the boats his father operated on the Oka River. He eagerly helped repair electrical equipment, and it soon became apparent that he was more interested in electricity than anything nautical. At the Imperial Institute of Technology, Boris Rosing, a professor in charge of laboratory projects, became friendly with the young student engineer and let him work on some of his private projects. Rosing was trying to transmit pictures by wire in his own physics laboratory. He and his young assistant experimented with a primitive cathode-ray tube, developed in Germany by Karl Ferdinand Braun. In 1910 Rosing exhibited a television system, using a mechanical scanner in the transmitter and the electronic Braun tube in the receiver. The lure of theoretical physics drew Zworykin to Paris after he graduated with honors and a scholarship in electrical engineering in 1912. There he studied X-rays under Paul Langevin. Arriving in the United States in 1919, he soon joined the staff at the Westinghouse laboratory in Pittsburgh. On November 18,1929, at a convention of radio engineers, Zworykin demonstrated a television receiver containing his 'kinescope,' a cathode-ray tube. That same year Zworykin joined the Radio Corporation of America ( RCA ) in Camden, New Jersey. As the director of their Electronic Research Laboratory, he was able to concentrate on making critical improvements to his system. Zworykin's 'storage principle' is the basis of modern TV.
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin (b. July 30, 1889, Murom, Russia--d. July 29, 1982, Princeton, N.J., U.S.), Russian-born U.S. electronic engineer, inventor, and the father of modern television. After education at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology and the Collegè de France, in Paris, Zworykin served during World War I in the Russian Signal Corps. He emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a naturalized citizen in 1924. In 1920 he joined the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh, and in 1923 he filed a patent application for the iconoscope, or television transmission tube, and in 1924 an application for the kinescope, or television receiver. These two inventions formed the first all-electronic television system, as all older systems had been electromechanical, involving a rapidly rotating perforated disk or some similar device. Although Westinghouse officials expressed little enthusiasm at the first demonstration of Zworykin's television, an improved system demonstrated in 1929 impressed an official of Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Zworykin was offered a position as director of electronic research of RCA at Camden, N.J., and subsequently at Princeton, N.J., to continue the development of his invention. Zworykin's television system provided the impetus for the development of modern television as an entertainment and education medium. Although ultimately replaced by the orthicon and image orthicon tubes, the iconoscope was the basis for further important developments in television cameras. The modern television picture tube is basically Zworykin's kinescope. He also developed a colour-television system, for which he received a patent in 1928. His other developments in electronics include an early form of the electric eye and innovations in the electron microscope. His electron image tube, sensitive to infrared light, was the basis for the sniperscope and the snooperscope, devices first used in World War II for seeing in the dark. His secondary-emission multiplier was used in the scintillation counter, one of the most sensitive of radiation detectors. In later life Zworykin lamented the way television had been abused to titillate and trivialize subjects rather than for the educational and cultural enrichment of audiences. Named an honorary vice president of RCA in 1954, from then until 1962 Zworykin also served as director of the medical electronics centre of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in New York City. In 1967 the National Academy of Sciences awarded him the National Medal of Science for his contributions to the instruments of science, engineering, and television and for his stimulation of the application of engineering to medicine. He was also founder-president of the International Federation for Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering, a recipient of the Faraday Medal from Great Britain (1965) and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Science (1966), and a member of the U.S. National Hall of Fame from 1977. Zworykin wrote Photocells and Their Applications (1932), Television (1940; rev. ed., 1954), Electron Optics and the Electron Microscope (1946), Photoelectricity and Its Application (1949), and Television in Science and Industry (1958).
Electronic engineer Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, a Russian immigrant working at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh, files for a patent on the iconoscope. This device, which is based on the use of an electronic analysis procedure, represents the first television transmission tube. The following year, Zworykin applies for a patent on the television receiver or kinescope. Together with the iconoscope, it forms the first truly all-electric television system, advancing beyond the electromechanical systems that operate with such devices as the Nipkow disc. An image is focussed onto a screen inside the iconoscope by an external lens, while a high-velocity electron beam scans it from the other side in a succession of horizontal lines. The picture signal is developed as the beam strikes the photoelectric cells of the screen, causing them to emit differing impulses based on the amount of light falling upon them. The information then is translated into a picture signal, and a similar process transmits the reconstructed image to the receiving screen. Westinghouse does not immediately grasp the importance of Zworykin's inventions, but he will impress RCA officials in 1929 with an improved system. His pioneering work in telecommunications earns Zworykin the well-deserved title "father of television". The kinescope will be used many years later, synchronized with a motion picture camera, to preserve television broadcasts. In 1933, an advanced version of Zworykin's system is used for a transmission from the Empire State Building in New York City. The resolution is 230 lines. Toward the end of his life Zworykin tells members of SMPTE that he is unhappy with the uses to which his discovery has been put.
RCA (Sarnoff and Zworykin) Versus Farnsworth In a bid to maintain a monopoly of the wireless waves, Sarnoff, the President of RCA, knew that he would have to control the patents for wireless picture communication. He learned of a Russian scientist named Zworykin who had been doing some studies in this field. Before Zworykin showed up to work, Sarnoff wanted him to stop in San Francisco and learn of what Farnsworth was doing— "a spy in disguise!" Zworykin never disclosed his real purpose in being there, only that he was an inventor interested in his work. Zworykin learned of the genius of Farnsworth's approach to transmitting pictures through thin air. He took many of Farnsworth's secrets back to RCA's labs.
Concurrent with the start of radio broadcasting, a young Russian immigrant named Vladimir Zworykin was developing a system of transmitting sound and pictures--television. Early conceptions of television focused on a mechanical scanning system with motors and large rotating disks. This type of television generally produced a picture only about one inch square. It was heavy, bulky equipment and certainly not practical for home use. Zworykin, a co-worker of Conrad's at Westinghouse, developed an electronic scanning television system using his inventions, the iconoscope and kinescope, the forerunners of today's television camera and picture tubes. In 1929, Zworykin demonstrated his all-electronic television system here in Pittsburgh, a full 10 years before it was introduced to the public at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
and finally, from the creator of the excellent site The Farnsworth Chronicles... Who Invented What - and When ?? "a totally biased, completely partisan, and unashamedly one-sided interpretation of the origins of electronic video" by Paul Schatzkin, February 11, 1997. Please make a visit to the site and read the whole Farnsworth story
Paul Schatzkin writes... On February 10th the PBS Documentary Series "The American Experience" devoted an entire hour to answering the question "who is Philo T. Farnsworth?" The documentary was written and directed by David Dugan and produced by Alison Trinkl, and is perhaps the first time that an hour of television has been devoted to the origins of the medium and the man who breathed life into its tubes and circuits. The program misinterprets a couple of facts and events, but by and large is effective and well rendered. As far as setting the record straight, the program is truly a breakthrough - but nevertheless falls short of the mark. I was invited to a preview screening of the finished piece at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA on January 30, and made a couple of interesting discoveries at the event. I learned that the production was funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation - the same foundation that funded the research and publication of a new book entitled "Tube: The Invention of Television" by the father-and-son team of David E. Fisher and Marshal Jon Fisher. Prior to this event, I was familiar with the book, and I have also known for a while about the American Experience production, but I didn't quite see the connection between the two until I received my invitation for the event, and discovered that Messrs. Fisher would be present to lead a "brief discussion" on the subject after the screening. The Fishers' book is a remarkable and stately achievement. It is thorough, scholarly, and quite effectively brings complex technological issues down to a human level without dwelling on technical minutiae. But what is most remarkable about the book is the manner in which it uses the facts to obscure the truth. For me the issue boils down to a simple question: Does any single individual deserve to be remembered as the sole "Inventor of Television" ? Can we create for television the kind of mythology of individual, creative genius that history has bestowed on Morse, Edison, Bell or the Wright Brothers? Not if authors like the Fishers keep re-writing history. During the reception after the screening of the American Experience the program, I eavesdropped on a conversation the elder Fisher engaged with another member of the audience. Fisher was asked directly, "who would you consider the inventor of television," and I listened in as Fisher expressed the frequently expressed notion that "you really have to give equal credit to both" Farnsworth and Zworykin. I think I even heard him use the phrase "co-inventors." This is the hideous misconception that 60 years of Corporate Public Relations wants us to believe - that television was too complex to be invented by a single individual. But close examination of the stories beneath the written record reveal a different record: In fact, there was one inventor of electronic television. Video as we now know it first took root in the mind of Philo T. Farnsworth, and he was the first to successfully demonstrate the principal, in San Francisco on Sept 7, 1927. If you need to fix a date on which television arrived, that's the date. Unfortunately, the historical record is not quite so clear. More often the date that is cited is 1923. Pick up almost any encyclopedia and it will tell you that "Vladimir Zworykin invented the Iconoscope for RCA in 1923." Using that date fixes Zworykin's name before Farnsworth, and usually renders Farnsworth to the status of "another contributor" in the field. That ain't the way it happened. The Fishers' book, sadly, replicates this error. What is even more disturbing is their book extracts liberal and extensive quotes from Pem Farnsworth's book, Distant Vision: Romance and Discovery on the Invisible Frontier. In arriving at the conclusions that they do, they are in effect using Philo Farnsworth's own to lend credibility to Zworykin's dubious dubious record. For example, Chapter Eight is entitled "The Damned Thing Works," borrowing its title from a telegram that Farnsworth backer George Everson sent to his partner Les Gorrell after the first successful Green Street transmission in 1927. But the very first words in that chapter are "On December 29, 1923, Vladimir Zworykin applied for a patent on an all-electronic television system." This positioning is fairly typical. The implication is: Farnsworth had a picture in 1927... but Zworykin had a patent in 1923. What is overlooked can not be understated: in 1923, Zworykin applied for a patent. In 1927, Farnsworth also applied for a patent. Later that year, Farnsworth produced the first successful transmission of a television image by wholly electronic means - and Zworykin's application was still pending. Farnsworth's patent, #1,773,980, was issued in August of 1930 - and Zworykin's application was STILL pending. In fact, the 1923 Zworykin application would be all but forgotten - except that a patent was finally issued in 1938 - a long fifteen years after the original application, and then only after many modifications had been made to the original application. Furthermore, the eventual patent on the 1923 application - #2,141,059 - was not even issued by the Patent Office. It was only issued after a court of appeals ruled in Zworykin's favor - a patent issued by a court, not the Patent Office. The Fishers' book does contain all this in one form or another ....but by including the 1923 date in the manner they do, they lend it credibility that a closer examination reveals it does not deserve. Obtaining the patent in 1938 was pure public relations, an unvarnished - and apparently successful - attempt to influence the historical record, since it effectively fixes "1923" as the date that Zworykin first disclosed electronic television. So, what's wrong with the Zworykin patent? How about the fact that the original application - the system that Zworykin envisioned and disclosed in 1923 - simply didn't work. It was a nice idea - one that he had gotten largely from his studies with Boris Rosing in Russia before emigrating to the U.S. in 1919. But it didn't disclose a device which could in fact pave the way to electronic video or put a television in every living room or a computer monitor on every desktop. There is scant evidence that Zworykin may have built and tested a system like the one disclosed in his 1923 application. There is one story in particular about Zworykin, who was employed by Westinghouse at the time, attempting to demonstrate his concept for executives of the company in hopes of obtaining more funding for his research. The demonstration was so dismal that, rather than providing him with further funding Zworykin's superiors ordered him to find some thing "more useful" to work on. The usual retelling of this story is cast in such away that we are supposed to believe that the Westinghouse executives who witnessed this demonstration were so short sighted that they dismissed the effort. It really seems far more reasonable to conclude that what they saw showed no promise because it simply didn't work. It's hard to imagine anyone in 1924 seeing a transmitted image on the bottom of a bottle and telling its creator to find something "more useful" to work on. But that's what we're supposed to believe. In retelling this fable, the Fishers are drawing on material that was first published in "The History of Television - 1884 - 1941" by Al Abramson (McFarland, 1987). But a careful examination of Abramson's book only serves to further illustrate the flimsiness of this account. The actual evidence that such a demonstration ever took place is sketchy at best, considering its potential historical significance. There are no lab notes, no direct eye-witness testimony. There are only Zworykin's own dubious accounts, and ONE document on page 80 of his book that Abramson claims to have found in some archives 50 years after the purported event. This document describes a device "using a modified Braun type cathode ray tube for transmitter and receiver...the receiving tube...gave quite satisfactory results...(but) the transmitting part of the scheme caused more difficulties...." That's it, that's all it says about transmitter, that it "caused more difficulties." It's hard to imagine how the receiver could be "quite satisfactory" if the transmitter didn't work, but this is the document that compels Abramson to conclude (in his footnotes) that "Zworykin did build and operate the first camera tubes in the world sometime between the middle of 1924 and late 1925." Zworykin may indeed have built some tubes. And he may have applied current to them. But it's going to take more than a statement that "the transmitter caused more difficulties" to convince this writer that he actually "operated" such a device prior to September 7, 1927, or that Zworykin deserves to be considered a "co-inventor" as a result of this experiment. But wait: you don't have to take just MY word for it. The United States Patent Office arrived at the same conclusions in 1934, in its historic ruling in patent interference #64,027. This is the litigation that pitted Zworykin against Farnsworth over the priority to claim #15 in Farnsworth's patent #1,773,980, which describes the "electrical image." The electrical image is an electrical counter part to an optical image. When an optical image is focused on to a photo-electric surface, the light-sensitive chemicals emit an array of electrons - the "electrical image"-- which can then be scanned one-line-at-a-time to form a fluctuating current. That is the very essence of how an electronic television signal is created, and so it was entirely appropriate that Zworykin and RCA would attempt to appropriate this claim. There is simply no getting around it - you can't create an electronic television signal without first creating an "electrical image." The whole of RCA's research effort - at an expense that David Sarnoff later joked with Zworykin cost more than $50-million - was intended to circumvent Farnsworth's patents, in particular Claim 15. In the 1934 interference, Zworykin went to great lengths in trying to prove that his 1923 application created an electrical image, and was therefore entitled to "make the count" embodied in Claim 15. Remember that, by 1934, Zworykin finally had a viable camera tube -- the Iconoscope -- which used a photo-cathode composed of "discrete globules" of photo-sensitive to "store" the electrical values rendered by discrete elements of the optical image. This "storage principal" was the primary difference between Farnsworth's Image Dissector and Zworykin's Iconoscope. Zworykin's defense in the interference revolved around testimony that this form of photo-cathode some how performed the required task of creating an "electrical image," and so qualified Zworykin to priority over Claim 15. Zworykin's attorney's introduced testimony by two Zworykin colleagues, Metcalf and Tyckociner, but their interpretations of Zworykin's (now amended) patent application were confusing and contradictory. Largely as a result of this contradictory testimony, the examiners ruling in Interference #64,027 concluded that "Zworykin has no right to make the count because it is not apparent that the device would operate to produce a scanned electrcial image unless it has discrete globlules capable of prodcuding discrete space charges and the Zworykin application as filed does not disclose such a device." It doesn't get any clearer than that, folks. The damned thing DIDN'T work. Claim 15 was awarded to Farnsworth. The case was appealed and RCA lost all the appeals. And yet, here we are 60 years later with a patent that was awarded by a court of appeals in 1938 that validates a patent applied for in 1923 that was ruled inoperative in 1934. Are you following me here? What we have is an application for a patent in 1923, a failed demonstration in "1924 or 25" with no conclusive documentation and an interference in 1934 that rules the device inoperative. Nevertheless a patent was obtained in 1938 which compels an otherwise scholarly observer on the subject to conclude that Zworykin and Farnsworth must be considered "co-inventors." The way this writer sees it, Zworykin didn't have a clue how to create a high-resolution television signal by wholly electronic means until he visited Farnsworth's lab in 1930. As soon as he saw what Farnsworth had achieved, he got busy, not only duplicating Farnsworth's equipment, but using all the legal might of RCA to claim Farnsworth's achievement for his own. He failed in that effort and RCA was left with no choice but to accept a patent license from Farnsworth in 1939. But still we read time and again that Zworykin made modern television possible when he "invented the Iconoscope for RCA in 1923." (In fact, this litany is repeated in a PBS website companion to the American Experience broadcast, but you'll have to bound and gag me to get the URL.) I did find some very interesting details in the Fishers' book about the work that was done at RCA in the mid-to-late 30's, in particular the variations on a couple of RCA's camera tubes, the Iconoscope and the Orthicon. Both tubes had problems rendering detail and subtleties of shading, until some enterprising engineers hit on the idea of combining certain features of the Farnsworth Image Dissector into those tubes. The resulting devices were known as the "Image Iconoscope" and the "Image Orthicon." It is interesting to note that neither of those devices became truly viable until the Farnsworth "Image" component - most likely a utilization of the concept embodied in Claim 15 - were added to those tubes. Remember, too, that the "Orthicon" (or Orthiconoscope, as it was originally dubbed) was descended from Farnsworth patent #2,087,683 which was the first to disclose a "low velocity" method of electron scanning. Add the "Image" component to the "Orthicon" component, and what you wind up with is an entirely Farnsworth invention, which is nevertheless credited to RCA. Legend has it that the US Patent Office was so irritated with RCA's handling of all these patent matters that they would have liked to give the very name "Orthicon" to Farnsworth, but that was trademarked separately and never was a point of contention between the two companies. There is no question that RCA engineers were instrumental in refining all aspects of television technology. Refinement is not invention - but that is precisely what the proponents of the "co-inventor" theory of the origins of television would like us to believe. The American Experience program on PBS really doesn't delve into any of these details. That is left to the Fishers' book, which succeeds only in regurgitating the Corporate PR Myth. What a pity that the first - and perhaps the only - broadcast attempt to portray Farnsworth's accomplishments fails so dramatically to "set the record straight." Paul Schatzkin closes... Thank you for reading this material. New material is being added to this site on an irregular basis, so please sign our guestbook so that we may keep you apprised of future developments in the Farnsworth saga. Feel free to share any pithy comments you might care to add to the subject.
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