Invention Of Television

John Logie Baird is famous as the inventor of television, but Baird's mechanical system was absolete within 15 years, and Valdimir Zworykin is considered by many to be the father of television for his inventions of an elecronic system.
Electrical engineer John Logie Baird (Scotland) suffered from chronic ill health, and moved briefly to the West Indies, hoping that the climate would be kinder to his constitution. He returned to Britain in 1992 and settled in Hastings, England, where he devised several unsuccessful inventions and began to research the idea of transmitting pictures. Short of money and still in bad health, Baird invented a mechanical television transmitter and receiver using an improved version of an optical scanning disc originally patented by Paul Nipkow (Germany). He filed a patent for his system on 26 July 1923 (granted 1924) and two years later he produced a working television from scrap materials such as tea chests, biscuit tins, darning needles. Then, in January 1926, he made the first public demonstration of television, at the Royal Institution and at Selfridges department store on Oxford Street, London.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Zworykin (Russia-USA) and Philo T. Farnsworth (USA) were working independently on electronic television systems. Farnsworth was the first to demonstrate electronic television, based around his patented "image dissector", but it was Zworykin's cathode ray transmitter and receiver that led to the development of modern television. Just as Baird's system was based on a n earlier invention, so was Zworykin's - the cathode ray oscilloscope, invented by Ferdinand Braun (Germany) in 1897. In 1923 Zworykin invented and filed a patent for a means of using a cathode ray tube as a television transmitter (granted 1938), and in 1924 he invented a cathode ray receiver: the two essential components of modern television.

At first, Baird's simpler, mechanical system held sway, yielding quicker advances than electronic apparatus, but in 1936 the BBC tested the two systems against each other with alternating weekly broadcasts. Within four months, in February 1937, mechanical television was abandoned in favor of an electronic system based on Zworykin's inventions.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison