Deepak Sivakumar

RETIREMENT
After his retirement from RCA in 1954, he served as the Director of the Medical Electronics Center at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. He also continued to do work at his own laboratory and maintained an office at the RCA laboratories too. 5

HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT
He was awarded the National Medal of Science IN 1967 which is highest scientific honor given in the United States.5

OTHER INVENTIONS
He created the Endoradiosonde which is a tiny transmitter that was swallowed by the patient and this helped the doctors in tracking and monitoring process inside the body. He also invented the Ultraviolet Microscope which uses electromagnetic radiation. 9

SWEET SLEEP
Dr Vladimir Kosmo Zworykin left his physical self on July 29th 1982 at the Princeton Medical Center, a day short of his ninety third birthday. 2

CONCLUSION
One of the greatest men who have brought about a change to the way broadcasting is perceived by the world. The world praises him for inventing the television but he turned down the honor and says it was a contribution by hundreds of other people too. Controversies have always been raised and will continue to do so but his name will always stand in time as “The Father of Television".2

REFERENCES
1. "Great Depression." Wikipedia. 10 Oct. 2007. 10 Oct. 2007 .
2. RCA NEWS. 30 July 1982. 10 Oct. 2007 .
3. Television Pioneer. 30 Jan. 2007. 10 Oct. 2007 .
4. New York Times. 1 Aug. 1982. 10 Oct. 2007
5. Wikipedia. 1 Oct. 2007. 10 Oct. 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zworykin
6. Science heroes. 10 Oct. 2007 .
7. Lemelson Mit Program. 10 Oct. 2007 .
8. Adventures in CyberSound . 10 Oct. 2007 .
9. Answers. 10 Oct. 2007 .

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RCA (SARNOFF and Dr ZWORYKIN) VERSUS FARNSWORTH
Philo Farnsworth, an American Inventor was best known for inventing the working electronic image pickup device or the camera tube. Dr Zworykin, during his time of service with RCA as instructed by David Sarnoff made a visit to Farnsworth’s labs in San Francisco. The purpose of his visit was that he was an inventor interested in Farnsworth’s work but he was actually a spy in disguise. He took back Farnsworth’s design structures and copied it for RCA.8

In 1931, David Sarnoff tried to buy out Farnsworth’s company but lost it to another company called Philco. This was the beginning of a rivalry between both the companies and they fought it out in legal offices like the US patent office for control of the dissector tube.8

ICONOSCOPE
With the help of his colleagues, he went on to build the iconoscope which used a photo-cathode composed of discrete globules of photo sensitive to store the electrical values rendered by discrete elements of the optical image. He derived the word iconoscope from the Greek, icon being image and scope being observing. In June 1933, Dr Zworykin, in front of the Institute of Radio Engineers during the Chicago World’s Fair presented his complete description of his television system. 6 7 8

THE ELECTRON MICROSCOPE
The Electron microscope was developed by Dr James Hillier in RCA with the help of Dr Zworykin within a three month period.8

THE SNIPERSCOPE
The Sniperscope or the Snooperscope was developed during the Second World War by Dr Zworykin. He developed this camera which was a hundred times more powerful than the iconoscope. It was also called the first night vision camera and this was used to also measure radioactivity and the tool used for this was called the Scintillation counter.3

Dr ZWORYKIN AND JOHN VON NEUMANN
Since Dr Zworykin was adept with vacuum-tube technology, he worked with the mathematician John Von Neumann on the early development of the computer.6

PERSONAL LIFE
Dr Zworykin was married to Tatiana Vasilieff during the First World War (1914-1918) which ended in divorce. In 1951, he married Dr Katherine Polevitzky who was a physician and was the on e of the first to use RCA’s newly invented Electron Microscope in her research on bacteria which was co-invented by Dr Zworykin.3

contd..

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THE FIRST TELEVISION
In 1923, he demonstrated his first Television system in front of the officials and he filed a patent on Dec 29 of the same year. He called it the Kinescope, which serves as the basis of the television display tubes that are in use today. Since then, all future television systems would be based on Vladimir’s 1923 patent.

He followed up by a second application of essentially the same content but with changes like color transmission and reception. He said that the cathode ray tube could be used as both a transmitter and a receiver, the main operation being to prevent the emission of electrons between scansion cycles. And so each time a cathode ray swept over an image point or a pixel, a small number of electrons would be released which would produce the television signal.5 7

Westinghouse was impressed but was not prepared to invest largely in this matter and he was told by the management to “devote his time to more practical endeavors”. He paid no heed to these words and he kept working off hours and there where times when the laboratory guard would request him to leave at 2.00 in the morning if he saw the lab lights still turned on. This was obviously because of the instructions of the company who thought that Vladimir was wasting the company’s and his time.

He became a citizen of the United States the next year after which he wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1926 and this earned him a PhD from the University of Pittsburg. Armed with a PhD, he started working on his Cathode ray television project in June 1924. The Westinghouse Laboratory was now into the project and they made his project their highest priority. This made Vladimir’s life easier since he could now purchase all the equipments he wanted and could hire any number of people too. However he wasn’t happy for long since Westinghouse took away the project from him and he learnt an important lesson: Commercial Research required Profitability. 5 6 7

THE GREAT DEPRESSION
David Sarnoff, the president of Radio Corporation of America, transferred Vladimir who was now Dr Zworykin to RCA in California in 1929. He was given his own lab and Zworykin designed the color television and filed for the patent later that year. This was the year of the Great Depression when the stock market crashed and all business plummeted. RCA was no different and many departments and offices were shut down but David Sarnoff was prepared to give Dr Zworykin as much money as he said he needed and RCA ended up spending $50 million on the department of television during the 1930s and 1940s.1

contd..

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FIRST WORLD WAR
In 1914, Vladimir had to put an end to his studies due to the war and he eventually returned to Russia. During the war, Vladimir was enlisted and served in the Russian Signal Corps. His expertise in wireless transmission got him a job with the Marconi Company. This was a wonderful opportunity for him since he gained complete access to the latest in radio equipments and high-vacuum amplifying tubes. He met his wife Tatiana Vasilieff during this period.6

POST FIRST WORLD WAR
In early 1917, Vladimir wanted to join the Russian Branch of Marconi but a series of world events forced him to change his mind. After the great civil unrest, the Russian parliament acquired power and the world saw the civil war coming, Vladimir avoided signing up for the Red Army and an immediate arrest was announced. But Vladimir escaped with the help of his friends. 6

USA
Vladimir struggled to get to the USA and he finally did on January 1st 1919. On his arrival, he worked as a bookkeeper for the financial agent in the Russian Embassy. In 1920, he went on to work for the Westinghouse unit of the Radio Corporation of America and soon bought a nice house. 4

WESTINGHOUSE UNIT
Based on their pioneering effort in radio, Vladimir convinced Westinghouse to do research in television and they agreed. He turned down a big offer from Warner Brothers so he could work day and night in the labs designing his very own Television system. 4

contd..

Posted by Deepak Sivakumar at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hate what they've done to my child...I would never let my own children watch it.

Dr Zworykin on feelings about watching Television

EARLY LIFE
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin was born July 30, 1889, in the small town of Murom, Russia on the Oka River. He was the youngest of the seven children born to Kosma and Elana. Murom was a rich center of business and Kosma who is Vladimir’s father was a well educated, well-to-do merchant who owned and operated a fleet of riverboats on the Oka River. His father frequently went away on business, leaving Elana to take care of the family business. Vladimir had a carefree childhood which he spent hiking, playing practical jokes on people and of course doing well in school too.5

CAREER
Vladimir began his career in electrical engineering at the age of nine, repairing equipments on his father’s riverboat. Since his older brothers showed no interest, Vladimir’s father took him on trips to learn the family business.
His formal career began in 1908 when he studied at St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. Boris Rozing, the Director of the school’s labs allowed young Vladimir to work in his private labs in 1911. Boris Rozing introduced Vladimir to the cathode ray tube which he used to build the first television device and Vladimir helped him with lab experiments related to this. This is when Vladimir’s father insisted that Vladimir help him run the family business but Vladimir convinced his father to let him study further.7

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The Russian revolution stopped the duo from working together and Rozing went into exile and died. Soon after this incident in 1912, Vladimir left to Paris to study at the College de France where he studied X-rays under Professor Paul Langevin. Prof. Paul Langevin was French Theoretical physicist who had won the Nobel Prize. 6

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