7 Vladimir Zworykin 7healthy cooperation might have arisen between the two
pioneers, but competition, spurred by the vision of corpo-
rate profits, kept them apart. Sarnoff offered Farnsworth
$100,000 for his patents but was summarily turned
down. Farnsworth instead accepted an offer to join RCA’s
rival Philco, but he soon left to set up his own firm. Then
in 1931 Zworykin’s RCA team, after learning much from
the study of Farnsworth’s Image Dissector, came up
with the Iconoscope camera tube, and with it they finally
had a working electronic system.
Zworykin’s television system provided the impetus
for the development of modern television as an entertain-
ment and education medium. Although ultimately
replaced by the orthicon and image orthicon tubes, the
Iconoscope was the basis for further important develop-
ments in television cameras. The modern television
picture tube is basically Zworykin’s Kinescope. He also
developed a colour-television system, for which he received
a patent in 1928. His other developments in electronics
include an early form of the electric eye and innovations
in the electron microscope. His electron image tube,
sensitive to infrared light, was the basis for the sniper-
scope and the snooperscope, devices first used in World
War II for seeing in the dark. His secondary-emission
multiplier was used in the scintillation counter, one of the
most sensitive of radiation detectors.
In later life Zworykin lamented the way television had
been abused to titillate and trivialize subjects rather than
for the educational and cultural enrichment of audiences.
Named an honorary vice president of RCA in 1954,
from then until 1962 Zworykin also served as director of
the medical electronics centre of the Rockefeller Institute
for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in New
York City. In 1967 the National Academy of Sciences
awarded him the National Medal of Science for his