Iconoscope
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The iconoscope (from the Greek: εἰκών "image" and σκοπεῖν "to look, to see") was the first practical video camera tube to be used in early television cameras. The iconoscope produced a much stronger signal than earlier mechanical designs, and could be used under any well-lit conditions. This was the first fully electronic system to replace earlier cameras, which used special spotlights or spinning disks to capture light from a single very brightly lit spot.
Some of the principles of this apparatus were described when Vladimir Zworykin filed two patents for a television system in 1923 and 1925.[1][2] A research group at Westinghouse Electronic Company headed by Zworykin presented the iconoscope to the general public in a press conference in June 1933,[3] and two detailed technical papers were published in September and October of the same year.[4][5] The German company Telefunken bought the rights from RCA and built the superikonoskop camera[6] used for the historical TV transmission at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
The iconoscope was replaced in Europe around 1936 by the much more sensitive Super-Emitron and Superikonoskop,[7][8][9] while in the United States the iconoscope was the leading camera tube used for broadcasting from 1936 until 1946, when it was replaced by the image orthicon tube.[10][11]