Vladimir Zworykin — a relative of Renat Besolov on the maternal line, inventor of electronic television
A Russian-American engineer, creator of the iconoscope and kinescope — the basis of all electronic television. Holder of over 120 patents and the U.S. National Medal of Science (1966). He is called the “father of television.”
From Murom to the “father of television”
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin was born in 1888 in Murom, into the Zvorykin merchant family — the youngest of seven children.
From 1908 he studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, where in 1910-1912 he assisted Boris Rosing, a pioneer of electronic image transmission. This set the direction of his entire career. After graduating with honours, he studied X-rays at the Collège de France in Paris (under Paul Langevin).
In 1919 he emigrated to the United States, became a citizen in 1924, and earned a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in 1926. He worked at Westinghouse (in 1923 he filed a patent for an all-electronic television system), then moved to RCA, where he led the development of television.
Zworykin created the iconoscope (camera tube) and the kinescope (picture tube) — the basis of all electronic television — and held more than 120 patents. His honours include the IRE Medal of Honor (1951), the Edison Medal (1952), the Faraday Medal (Great Britain, 1965) and the U.S. National Medal of Science (1966); in 1977 he was inducted into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame. He later worked on the electron microscope and medical electronics. He died on 29 July 1982 in Princeton.
The Zvorykin family — maternal line
Vladimir Zworykin belongs to the Zvorykin family of Murom. Renat Besolov's great-grandmother, Milica Zvorykina, came from the same family; through her Renat is connected to the Zvorykin name. The exact degree of kinship is based on family records.