Iconoscope
Iconoscopio
- Date
- 1931 · confidence high
- Place
- Westinghouse Electric, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
- Credited to
- Vladimir Zworykin
- Field
- Communication
What it is
The iconoscope was the first truly practical television camera tube: a silvered mica plate with photosensitive granules that accumulated electrical charge instead of reading it instantly, producing a much stronger signal than earlier mechanical systems and working under normal ambient light.
Zworykin filed his first patents in 1923 and 1925, but the design did not work practically until 1931, when a technician (Sanford Essig) accidentally left a silvered mica sheet in the oven too long, improving its sensitivity.
What it led to
- Fully functional electronic television
- The standard camera tube in the US from 1936 to 1946
- The broadcast of the 1936 Berlin Olympics