Nature The Times Nature: Video Camera Tube

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Main article: Video camera tube
In 1897, English physicist J. J. Thomson was able, in his three famous experiments, to deflect
cathode rays, a fundamental function of the modern cathode ray tube (CRT). The earliest version
of the CRT was invented by the German physicist Ferdinand Braun in 1897 and is also known as
the "Braun" tube.[29][30] It was a cold-cathode diode, a modification of the Crookes tube, with a
phosphor-coated screen. In 1906 the Germans Max Dieckmann and Gustav Glage produced
raster images for the first time in a CRT.[31] In 1907, Russian scientist Boris Rosing used a CRT
in the receiving end of an experimental video signal to form a picture. He managed to display
simple geometric shapes onto the screen.[32]
In 1908 Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, fellow of the Royal Society (UK), published a letter
in the scientific journal Nature in which he described how "distant electric vision" could be
achieved by using a cathode ray tube, or Braun tube, as both a transmitting and receiving
device,[33][34] He expanded on his vision in a speech given in London in 1911 and reported in The
Times[35] and the Journal of the Röntgen Society.[36][37] In a letter to Nature published in October
1926, Campbell-Swinton also announced the results of some "not very successful experiments"
he had conducted with G. M. Minchin and J. C. M. Stanton. They had attempted to generate an
electrical signal by projecting an image onto a selenium-coated metal plate that was
simultaneously scanned by a cathode ray beam.[38][39] These experiments were conducted before
March 1914, when Minchin died,[40] but they were later repeated by two different teams in 1937,
by H. Miller and J. W. Strange from EMI,[41] and by H. Iams and A. Rose from RCA.[42] Both
teams succeeded in transmitting "very faint" images with the original Campbell-Swinton's
selenium-coated plate. Although others had experimented with using a cathode ray tube as a
receiver, the concept of using one as a transmitter was novel.[43] The first cathode ray tube to use
a hot cathode was developed by John B. Johnson (who gave his name to the term Johnson noise)
and Harry Weiner Weinhart of Western Electric, and became a commercial product in
1922.[citation needed]
In 1926, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Tihanyi designed a television system utilizing fully
electronic scanning and display elements and employing the principle of "charge storage" within
the scanning (or "camera") tube.[44][45][46][47] 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 Kálmán Tihanyi beginning in 1924.[48] 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".[49] After further
refinements included in a 1928 patent application,[48] Tihanyi's patent was declared void in Great
Britain in 1930,[50] so he applied for patents in the United States. Although his breakthrough
would be incorporated into the design of RCA's "iconoscope" in 1931, the U.S. patent for
Tihanyi's transmitting tube would not be granted until May 1939. The patent for his receiving
tube had been granted the previous October. Both patents had been purchased by RCA prior to
their approval.[51][52] Charge storage remains a basic principle in the design of imaging devices
for television to the present day.[49] On 25 December 1926, at Hamamatsu Industrial High School
in Japan, Japanese inventor Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a TV system with a 40-line
resolution that employed a CRT display.[25] This was the first working example of a fully
electronic television receiver. Takayanagi did not apply for a patent.[53]
On 7 September 1927, American inventor Philo Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube
transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San
Francisco.[54][55] By 3 September 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold
a demonstration for the press. This is widely regarded as the first electronic television
demonstration.[55] In 1929, the system was improved further by the elimination of a motor
generator, so that his television system now had no mechanical parts.[56] That year, Farnsworth
transmitted the first live human images with his system, including a three and a half-inch image
of his wife Elma ("Pem") with her eyes closed (possibly due to the bright lighting required).[57]

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