Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

1884 patent application for an ‘Electrical Telescope’, which
in turn offered a practical solution to scanning an image
line by line so that it could be transmitted. This mechanical
approach, used both in transmitters and receivers, led
to the first practical television sets – it was this system that
John Logie Baird, for example, used to build his television
system which he demonstrated in 1926. Although most
work focused on the electro-mechanical system, ideas for
a completely electronic system were also being considered,
making use of the recently invented cathode ray tube.
The ideas were most clearly laid out in the proposal
of A.A. Campbell Swinton, who published his first brief
outline in 1908, and a detailed description of his cathode
ray transmitter and receiver in 1911.
However, Swinton knew that there were many practical
problems to be solved to make his ideas work. Tihanyi
sought to find a comprehensive solution. He spent nearly
nine years up to 1926 on work to develop the ideas laid
out in his two Hungarian patent applications – the second
being a forty-three page description accompanied by
seven sheets of drawings containing fifty-five diagrams.
He saw the future of television in the cathode ray tube as
both transmitter and receiver, and introduced nearly all
of the key solutions that would make television using a
cathode ray tube a viable instrument. The first commercial
television using this system was produced in the 1930s and
the electro-mechanical system was consigned to history.
The use of cathode ray tubes in televisions, based on
Tihanyi’s ideas, continued until the advent of flat-screen
televisions at the start of the 21st century (a development
that Tihanyi had predicted in a groundbreaking paper
in 1936).
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