It may have been Scotsman John Logie Baird who changed the world by broadcasting a moving image using his mechanical Televisor device, but a lot of the credit for the fully electronic televisions we watch today goes to Hungarian Kálmán Tihanyi, who pioneered a fully electronic system and the development of the use of cathode ray tubes.
Tihanyi applied for his first television patent in 1926 (page 10 of which is the pic above), the same year Baird publicly showcased his mechanical TV. However his system – which he called Radioskop – was fully electronic, using a cathode ray tube to display the moving images. It used a technology known as the “storage principle” which according to Wikipedia involves “the maintenance of photoemission from the light-sensitive layer of the detector tube between scans. By this means, accumulation of charges would take place and the “latent electric picture” would be stored.”
Initially, Tihanyi didn’t quite have a lot of success selling his idea. In 1928 he took his invention to Berlin to Telefunken and Siemens, who both decided to pursue the mechanical television path. It was only in 1930, when the American company RCA approached him about developing his patents, that the fully electronic television really began to take off. In 1934, RCA purchased Tihanyi’s patents and developed them, showing off their first fully electronic TV at the 1939 World’s Fair and beginning broadcasts at the same time.
And it was at this point, you could argue, that TV really started to take off.
History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.
[Pic from Wikipedia]
Eric Player
Monday, November 23, 2009 at 12:13 PMYou are ignoring the fact that the American Philo Farnsworth conceived electronic television in 1922–a fact proved through his lawyers during their patent fight with RCA in 1934, by the original drawings which were preserved by his high school teacher.
You are also ignoring that he struck out on his own and had a working model patented on January 7, 1927, and demonstrated it on September 7, 1927. This was improved and shown to the press in San Francisco on September 3, 1928. All while Tihanyi was having trouble selling his ideas, until finally getting the attention of RCA in 1930, who had by now become aware of Farnsworth through his numerous press appearances and by Farnsworth’s (now seen as foolish) invitation of Westinghouse/RCA scientists and executives to his lab. RCA was looking for a “way around” Farnsworth and buying up all the patents they could.
In the end it did not matter, and they had to lease from Farnsworth anyway in order to get commercial television off the ground.
See:
Everson, George (1949), The Story of Television, The Life of Philo T. Farnsworth New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co,. ISBN-13: 978-0405060427, 266 pages.
The History of Television, 1880 to 1941 (Hardcover)
by Albert Abramson
Knower
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 5:23 AMKálmán Tihanyi invented the charge storage in 1924, Farnsworth’s Camera was not a reliable work, It is sure that a camera couldn’t operate on the principlines which the boy depicted in 1922. (If his early story is true….) The other problem, the german inventors patented “farsworths idea before the ww1. Thihanyi’s Iconoscope was a more advanced picture tube in 1920′s than the image dissector in the end of 1930′s.
Unlike the Farnsworth image dissector, the iconoscope was much more sensitive, useful with an illumination on the target between 4ft-c (43lx) and 20ft-c (215lx). It was also easier to manufacture and produced a very clear image.
The idea of charge & storage (with various and very different technological solutions) is still remained[40] as a basic requirement for all type of modern image sensors until this day. However, nowadays nobody use the principlines of Farnsworts tube :)))
Katalin Tihanyi
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 5:47 AMA few things need to be added and clarified with regard to the excellent piece written on Kalman Tihanyi and to the previous comment:
1. The date of Tihanyi’s patent application is March 20, 1926.
2. Let us not forget that the he made significant improvements on this first design and filed two patents in 1928: on June 11, respective July 10 1928. He filed both in several countries, including France, England and the US, with 1928 priority on June 11, respective July 10, 1928.
3. The abstract of both were published — as the law requires — in the Official Journal (Patent) published by the British Patent Office on August 8, respective September 4, 1929. French patent was issued on the first of the two on November 28, 1929 and was published in February 1930.
4. Mr. Farnsworth’s Dissector tube has no relationship with the iconoscope. It can easily be established when looking at the drawings of Mr. Farnsworth’s patent no. 1,773.980 that his camera is not housed in a so-called Braun tube: it does not have a cathode ray beam which would sweep across a photoraster and it does not have storage, among many other essential features!