The Pioneers (1)

The earliest forms of television were electro-mechanical devices and not what we know of as television today. These early rudimentary systems were not invented by an individual, but were the result of the work carried out by many inventors in various countries with their own ideas and in their own respective fields of expertise and experimentation

In about 1880, inventors including William E. Sawyer in the United States and Maurice LeBlanc in France proposed the principle of image scanning. The German, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the world's first electro-mechanical television system in 1884. The Nipkow Disc as it became known is a rotating disc consisting of a spiral of apertures which first dissected an image, then successively analyzed the variation in light intensity emmited from the scanned image then transmitted it sequentially.

Paul Gottlieb Nipkow

Scientific American published an article on June 5 1880 about George R. Carey of Boston, Massachusetts who had proposed an idea for a television system. Carey had submitted this some months earlier. Text describing the illustrations states that they are "Instruments for transmitting and recording at long distances, permanently or otherwise by means of electricity, the picture of any object that may be projected by the lens of a camera upon its disc"... "The operation of this device depends upon the changes in light in the metalloid selium". Jenkins dubbed this feat as "The first demonstration of Radiovision". John Logie-Baird however had conducted a demonstration of working television two months earlier in London, at Selfridge's Department store.

John Logie Baird at Selfridge's Department Store in London

In 1921 at the age of 14, American Philo Taylor Farnsworth was out ploughing his father's potato field one day when he observed the parallel furrows his plough had made; this observation inspired him to formulate an idea for a means of scanning images electronically, thus enabling the images to be reproduced on equipment elswhere without the need for any mechanical apparatus whatsoever. In 1922 the young Philo T. Farnsworth showed a sketch of his idea for an Image Dissector to his high school physics and chemistry teacher Justin Tolman; Tolman was duly impressed by Farnsworth's idea and kept the sketch (which was later used in the patent interference dispute with RCA).

Philo Taylor Farnsworth

Farnsworth went on to invent and patent the first operational all-electronic television system. On September 7 1927 Farnsworth and a small team of assistants successfully transmitted the first all-electronic television image and in August 1930 patent no. 1,773,980 was issued to Farnsworth, with the all-important 'claim 15', which related to the electrical image. The creation of an electrical image is fundamental in creating an electronic television signal. Claim 15 in Farnsworth's patent would be pivotal when in 1934 legal disputes over patents between Farnsworth and Dr. Vladimir Zworykin's employer RCA, which resulted eventually in Farnsworth winning the patent interference case. Zworkin had challenged claim 15 in Farnsworth's patent, with its description of the electrical image.

The United States Patent Office ruled in patent interference No. 64,027 in favour of Farnsworth and rejected Zworkin's challenge to the claim and the assertion that his 1923 patent application would have met the criteria for producing an electronic television signal, as no evidence was produced, only contradictory verbal accounts given by two of Zworykin's colleagues. Apparently Dr. Zworykin himself had described the 1923 demonstration as "scarcely impessive" After several appeals to the unfavourable decision of the patent office, RCA accepted a licence from Farnsworth in 1939 which enabled them to use his patents and Farnsworth to receive royalties for his patents.

Dr. Vladimir Zworykin

Dr. Vladimir Zworykin, who had visited Farnsworth's laboratory in 1930 whilst working for RCA as an associate research director, had emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1919. In 1920 he joined the Westinghouse Corporation; Westinghouse was one of RCA'S manufacturers. Zworykin had initially worked on the development of radio tubes and photo-electric cells, but later turned his attentions to the development of television. In 1923 whilst at Westinghouse Zworykin applied for patents for the 'Iconoscope', an image scanner (camera) and the 'Kinescope' (receiver), these systems were based on the ideas taught by his former teacher in Russia, Boris Rosing.

At the time Farnsworth was granted his patent in 1930, Zworykin's patent application no. 2,141,059 for the 'Iconoscope' image scanner was sill pending. Fifteen years after the original application, and after undergoing numerous revisions, the patent was finally issued in 1938.

Many eroneous references relating to the 1923 date as the the date when Zworykin invented the 'Iconoscope' for RCA can still be found to this day. Irrespective of the fact that the 'Iconoscope' patent was not issued until 1938, in 1923 Dr.Zworykin was working for Westinghouse, and did not join RCA until 1929. Dr Zworykin continued to work for RCA until his retirement in 1954.