Vladimir Zworykin

Vladimir Zworykin

1889-1982 Vladimir Zworykin was a Russian-born inventor and engineer who pioneered the development of modern television.

Zworykin’s early experimental work on television began while he was a student at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology in Russia. Zworykin joined Westinghouse Research Laboratory in Pittsburgh following World War I. In 1924 while at Westinghouse, Zworykin invented the kinescope, a device that scanned pictures onto a cathode ray tube. Westinghouse was reluctant to continue his television research so he moved in 1929 to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) where he became research director of their electronics laboratory in Camden, NJ. At the New York World’s Fair of 1939 RCA showed off their all-electronic television system. Zworykin’s contributions to imaging science also included the development of infrared imaging tubes for night vision and the electron microscope.

Zworykin was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering and received the National Medal of Science in 1966. He was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1977.