Technikatörténeti szemle 20. (1993)

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

published in the U.S. Patent Office Gazette corresponded to the text of the application as filed. On the one hand, this is accepted practice, on the other, the Zworykin patent and the abstract seems to describe storage technology. The truth, the complete transformation of the original claims section — where practically all claims had been replaced with new ones — despite the obvious inconsistency between them and the narrative description, remained a well-guarded secret for the next forty years. Thus based on the documents which have come to light, it is evident that neither the devices nor the conditions for storage technology were specified in the 1923 Zworykin patent and that these Ideas did not occur to him, even in rudimentary form, until sometime in 1930, following publication of the Tihanyi patents. Paul Vajda's opinion, namely, that what was new in the iconoscope was invented by Kalman Tihanyi and that it was on the basis of Tihanyl's inventions Zworykin developed the iconoscope at the laboratories of RCA, is born out by the documents. Based on these documents it becomes obvious that any survey of television's development is incomplete and distorted without an examination of the Tihanyi patents.