page_title: Iconoscope
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Iconoscope / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Screen capture from the film "Magic in the Air" posted at Archive.org, at the 3:57 minute mark. Shows a technician removing the iconoscope and mosaic from an early television camera.
context_page_description: The Iconoscope was the first practical video camera tube to be used in early television cameras. The iconoscope produced a much stronger signal than earlier mechanical designs, and could be used under any well-lit conditions. This was the first fully electronic system to replace earlier cameras, which used special spotlights or spinning disks to capture light from a single very brightly lit spot.
  Some of the principles of this apparatus were described when Vladimir Zworykin filed two patents for a television system in 1923 and 1925. A research group at RCA headed by Zworykin presented the iconoscope to the general public in a press conference in June 1933, and two detailed technical papers were published in September and October of the same year. The German company Telefunken bought the rights from RCA and built the superikonoskop camera used for the historical TV transmission at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
context_section_description: The problem of low sensitivity to light resulting in low electrical output from transmitting or "camera" tubes would be solved with the introduction of charge-storage technology by the Hungarian engineer Kálmán Tihanyi in the beginning of 1925. His solution was a camera tube that accumulated and stored electrical charges ("photoelectrons") within the tube throughout each scanning cycle. The device was first described in a patent application he filed in Hungary in March 1926 for a television system he dubbed "Radioskop". After further refinements included in a 1928 patent application, Tihanyi's patent was declared void in Great Britain in 1930, and so he applied for patents in the United States.
  Zworykin presented in 1923 his project for a totally electronic television system to the general manager of Westinghouse. In July 1925, Zworykin submitted a patent application for a "Television System" that includes a charge storage plate constructed of a thin layer of isolating material (aluminum oxide) sandwiched between a screen (300 mesh) and a colloidal deposit of photoelectric material (potassium hydride) consisting of isolated globules. The following description can be read between lines 1 and 9 in page 2: The photoelectric material, such as potassium hydride, is evaporated on the aluminum oxide, or other insulating medium, and treated so as to form a colloidal deposit  of potassium hydride consisting of minute globules. Each globule is very active photoelectrically and constitutes, to all intents and purposes, a minute individual photoelectric cell. Its first image was transmitted in late summer of 1925, and a  patent was issued in 1928. However the quality of the transmitted image failed to impress to H P Davis, the general manager of Westinghouse, and Zworykin was asked to work on something useful. A patent for a television system was also filed by Zworykin in 1923, but this file is not a reliable bibliographic source because extensive revisions were done before a patent was issued fifteen years later and the file itself was divided into two patents in 1931.  
  The first practical iconoscope was constructed in 1931 by Sanford Essig, when he accidentally left one silvered mica sheet in the oven too long. Upon examination with a microscope, he noticed that the silver layer had broken up into a myriad of tiny isolated silver globules. He also noticed that: the tiny dimension of the silver droplets would enhance the image resolution of the iconoscope by a quantum leap. As head of television development at Radio Corporation of America (RCA),  Zworykin submitted a patent application in November 1931, and it was issued in 1935. Nevertheless, Zworykin's team was not the only engineering group working on devices that use a charge stage plate. In 1932, Tedham and McGee under the supervision of Isaac Shoenberg applied for a patent for a new device they dubbed "the emitron", a 405-line broadcasting service employing the super-emitron began at studios in Alexandra Palace in 1936, and a patent was issued in the US in 1937. One year later, in 1933, Philo Farnsworth also applied for a patent for a device that use a charge storage plate and a low-velocity electron scanning beam, a patent was issued in 1937, but Farnsworth did not know that the low-velocity scanning beam must land perpendicular to the target and he never actually built such a tube.
  The iconoscope was presented to the general public in a press conference in June 1933, and two detailed technical papers were published in September and October of the same year. Unlike the Farnsworth image dissector, the Zworykin iconoscope was much more sensitive, useful with an illumination on the target between 4ft-c (43lx) and 20ft-c (215lx). It was also easier to manufacture and produced a very clear image. The iconoscope was the primary camera tube used in American broadcasting from 1936 until 1946, when it was replaced by the image orthicon tube.
  On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the British team formed by engineers Lubszynski, Rodda, and MacGee developed the super-emitron (also s
caption: Iconoscope and mosaic from a TV camera, circa 1955.
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