Technikatörténeti szemle 20. (1993)

TANULMÁNYOK - Tihanyi Glass, Katalin: The Iconoscope: Kalman Tihanyi and the Development of Modern Television

On studying the Zworykin patents, it becomes clear that these plans do not contain practically viable proposals. For reasons yet to be clarified, Prof. Schröter, you at one time declined to develop the image storage tube according to my plans." Tihanyi's correspondence with Schröter and others continued throughout the war (17). In a 1942 letter to Prof. Viktor Babits, the inventor indicated he was planning to demand proof of authorship from Zworykin „once the war is over and there is overseas mail delivery to the U.S.A. again, chiefly on the grounds of the covert plagiarism Zworykin has committed by publishing as his own the practical solution RCA had purchased from me". However, he was prevented from the execution of this plan by his death in February 1947, just as, following the wartime blackout on all civil manufacturing, RCA resumed television development. The process of clarification began anew when Dr. Paul Vajda, historian, took up the issue regarding the genesis of the iconoscope for reevaluation in a number of books and articles (18). His assessment of Tihanyi's and Zworykin's contribution to storage technology was entirely at odds with the canonical view. Thus in his guide to a 1973 exhibit entitled „Great Hungarian Inventors" and mounted by the Hungarian Museum for Science and Industry, here is what Dr. Vajda had to say: „Based on the study of the patent and technical literature, it can be unequivocally concluded that the Iconoscope, the first television transmitter which embodied the storage principle, was Invented by Kaiman Tlhanyl in the 1920's. It was on the basis of Tihanyi's Inventions Zworykin developed the Iconoscope, the transmitting tube based on charge storage, at the laboratories of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) which bought Tihanyi's inventions. In his patents not only did Tihanyi formulate clearly the storage principle, but described its practical solution as well. Tihanyi was the first who in his 1928 patents employed an adapter tube at the transmitter, making scanning on the picture side possible, which in turn was the fundamental condition for modern transmitters" (19). Beginning with the mid-seventies the Zworykin legend became the subject of scrutiny and serious investigation in America as well. Questions were raised regarding Zworykin's contributions and, persuaded by the previously unexamined documents which had come to light, a number of authors suggested that Zworykin may not be the inventor of the iconoscope after all, and that the invention of storage television should be attributed to the Hungarian physicist, Kaiman Tihanyi (20). As a result of the debate regarding Zworykin's contributions, a certain confusion can be detected in more recent popular writings on the subject,