Invention Of Television

Kids Learning

A Russian immigrant to America by the name of Vladimir Zworykin is credited with the invention of TV.

He moved to the US in 1919 and got a job at Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Pittsburgh. He first invented the iconoscope (an electronic camera) and a kinescope (picture tube).

In 1923, he unveiled the television, which at time showed a cloudy picture of boats on a river outside his lab. It did not impress his employers. But, in 1929, he obtained the first patent for color TV.

David Sarnoff who founded RCA asked Zworykin what it would take to develop TV for commercial use. Zworykin told him it could be done in a year and half at a cost of $100,000. Well, Sarnoff hired him but in the end, the cost and time were slightly greater: 20 years and $50-million.

Other Zworykin inventions include the electron microscope, electric eye infrared tubes and the first sniperscopes which were used in World War II. Zworykin died in 1982 at the age of 92 – delighted by what he had created in television yet appalled at the programming: “I would never let my children even come close to this thing.”