Technikatörténeti szemle 20. (1993)

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

In 1928, having refined the invention, Tihanyi filed new patent applications that would later become the basis for the iconoscope, then left for Berlin, according to his own account, with a suitcaseful of inventions. Although Siemens, Telefunken and others rejected his storage television system, he succeeded in selling patents for his loudspeaker, television receiver, and short wave radio. In the beginning of 1930, Tihanyi moved to London at the invitation of the British Air Ministry to build a prototype of his aerial torpedo, whose plans he had completed in Berlin. Later that same year, he learned of RCA's interest in his television patents. While working on the aerial torpedo and negotiating with RCA, he conducted negotiations regarding various other inventions (wide-screen and stereo film, a reflector for submarines, etc.). At the end of 1931, Tihanyi was invited by the Italian Navy to develop his torpedo for marine use. During the next three years, he divided his time between the laboratories of the Air Ministry in London and the laboratories of the Italian Navy off the harbor of Genoa, on Isola Castagna. In September 1934 he signed the contract with RCA regarding his television patents. In 1935, Tihanyi began to work on applications of hyper-energy ultrasound for rain-inducing Irradiation of clouds and the large-scale eradication of harmful insects. The completed plan described an ultrasound reflector with a range of 5-8 kilometers in the air and 400 kilometers in water. In 1940, Tihanyi returned to Hungary and in late 1941 began construction of the full-scale prototype. At the same time, he became involved with the Resistance and developed an intimate friendship with its leader Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky. In 1941, he was briefly arrested in connection with propaganda material against Hitler and Basch; in 1943 his home was searched. Following Hungary's March 19, 1944 occupation by the Germans, Kalman Tihanyi was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned at the Margit Ring prison. Although he survived five months of solitary confinement, starvation and interrogations, following the failed attempt at armistice on Ocbober 15th by Regent Miklós Horthy and the installation of the Szálasi government, like the rest of the Resistance, he went underground. After the war, during the barely two years until his death in February 1947, he began manufacturing his (vacuum-filled) ballbearings, developed the prototype of a centrifuge which would separate and collect gold and other metal particles from sand, volcanic ash, river beds, etc., and worked on various ideas regarding nuclear defense.