**Отец телевидения | Как бежать из России и создать современный мир @Max_Katz — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/father-television-escape-russia-create-modern-world/

The life of Vladimir Zworykin, Russian emigrant and television pioneer, amid Russia's turmoil and his scientific breakthroughs abroad.

## Key Takeaways

- Vladimir Zworykin’s perseverance through political turmoil was crucial to his success.
- Electronic television technology was a significant leap beyond mechanical systems.
- Scientific innovation often requires fleeing oppressive or unstable environments.
- Early telecommunications faced skepticism but paved the way for modern media.
- Immigration can be a strategic choice for pursuing scientific and personal freedom.

## What the video covers

- Vladimir Zworykin was a Russian inventor who survived WWI and the Russian Revolution before emigrating.
- He worked as an orderly and radio operator during WWI, witnessing the chaos of revolutionary Russia.
- Zworykin was fascinated by early telecommunications and studied engineering in St. Petersburg.
- He collaborated with Boris Rosing on early television technology based on cathode-ray tubes.
- Mechanical television systems like the Nipkow disk had limitations, but Zworykin pursued electronic television.
- Zworykin fled Russia to avoid becoming a victim of political upheaval and to pursue scientific progress.
- He continued his work in Europe before moving to the United States, where he advanced television technology.
- The video also touches on immigration advice, particularly regarding relocating from Russia to the UK.
- Zworykin’s inventions laid the foundation for modern television and transformed global communication.
- His story highlights the intersection of historical events and technological innovation.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 WWI and Early Life of Vladimir Zworykin
2. 02:25 Zworykin’s Education and Early Interest in Television
3. 04:42 Mechanical vs Electronic Television Technologies
4. 07:22 Zworykin’s Career During WWI and Revolutionary Russia
5. 11:16 Immigration and Scientific Pursuits Abroad
6. 13:16 Legacy and Impact on Modern Television

Answers

## Questions about this video

Who was Vladimir Zworykin and why is he important?

Vladimir Zworykin was a Russian-born inventor who pioneered electronic television technology, fundamentally shaping modern media and communication.

What challenges did Zworykin face during the Russian Revolution?

Zworykin faced accusations and danger during the revolution, including a summons to a revolutionary tribunal, but was acquitted thanks to a knowledgeable supporter. He eventually fled Russia to avoid persecution.

What is the difference between mechanical and electronic television as described in the video?

Mechanical television used rotating disks to scan images line-by-line but had poor image quality and synchronization issues, while electronic television used cathode-ray tubes for sharper images and longer transmission distances.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:01

Speaker A

World War I, 1915. The Russian army is retreating. One wave of mobilization follows another. Yesterday’s peasants are torn from their plows and sent to the trenches for endless suicidal charges. But one of them gets lucky. He ends up in the rear as an orderly to a

00:25

Speaker A

young officer. However, he soon begins to hate this officer. He does something strange and frightening, tinkering with talking boxes, and forces the orderly to repeat "1, 2, 3" into one of them for hours. The officer utters mysterious words: radio, high-vacuum

00:45

Speaker A

electronic amplifier tubes. The orderly crosses himself, repeating: "Miracles, nothing less." The officer who talks to the boxes is named Vladimir Zworykin.

00:56

Speaker A

Ten years later, he will invent television. But first, he must survive the chaos that is about to collapse on Russia. 1917. The February Revolution.

01:10

Speaker A

Rallies are everywhere, demands to give power to the soviets, revolutionary tribunals where officers are constantly being summoned. After which, many of them disappear. Some are sent to prison, some are executed. Zworykin receives a summons. His former orderly accuses

01:28

Speaker A

him of sadism and bullying. The judge is extremely aggressive, but Zworykin is lucky. There is a man in the audience who understands radio communications. He explains that it is not about sadism or black magic, but about creating a radiotelephone.

01:45

Speaker A

Zworykin is acquitted. He spends another year wandering through revolutionary Russia. Near Kiev, he tries to manage military transport. He jumps from a train at full speed to escape from demobilized soldiers hungry for officer blood. He miraculously avoids execution at the Yekaterinburg

02:03

Speaker A

Cheka and finally realizes he does not want to be a victim of a terrible era.

02:10

Speaker A

He does not need a social revolution. He prefers a scientific one. The only option to follow his calling is to flee Russia. This was the most important decision in the life of a man whose inventions make the modern world

02:25

Speaker A

impossible to imagine. Today I will tell you about the amazing life of Vladimir Zworykin, the Russian emigrant who created television. And if you are thinking of emigrating from Russia, consider the United Kingdom. This video is sponsored by Coventry Street

02:43

Speaker A

Advisors, which will not only help you relocate but will build a strategy so you can obtain citizenship in the shortest possible time. I will tell you about the company a bit later. But for now, let's begin. Zworykin’s childhood coincided with the infancy of

03:03

Speaker A

telecommunications technology. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, new technologies were viewed with skepticism not just by illiterate peasants. Zworykin, recalling his childhood in an educated merchant family, wrote about the appearance of the telephone. For instance,

03:19

Speaker A

elderly people treated the innovation with great suspicion. I often saw Nikolai, an old servant, head across the square from my grandfather's house to ours to inform my mother of my grandfather’s intention to call her.

03:35

Speaker A

"Be prepared to answer the telephone," he would announce solemnly. Vladimir Zworykin was born on July 29, 1888, in the small town of Murom, in the Vladimir Governorate. At the time, it was assumed that the boy would become the heir to his father's

03:53

Speaker A

business. His father was a first-guild merchant who engaged in wholesale trade and shipping on the Oka River, owned a bank, served in the local Duma, and even served as mayor for a time.

04:06

Speaker A

Vladimir's older brother showed no interest in managing the family empire, and passing the business to his daughters was simply not the custom.

04:13

Speaker A

Therefore, the father began involving his youngest son in the company's affairs from an early age. At first, Vladimir was taught his lessons by his older sister. Later, the boy was sent to a school where the focus was on

04:25

Speaker A

natural sciences and mathematics. Vladimir was a good student. He liked physics best of all. He loved tinkering with machinery and even repaired the electric signaling system on one of his father’s steamships. In 1906, the future inventor became a student at the

04:42

Speaker A

engineering faculty of the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. Initially, Zworykin wanted to pursue theoretical physics, but his father insisted on an applied profession. An engineer would certainly be useful in a business with a large fleet of steamships. At the institute, Zworykin

05:00

Speaker A

met Professor Boris Rosing, who was working on the problems of transmitting images over a distance. Back then, this technology was called "far-seeing." Rosing's ideas captivated Zworykin. He spent all his free time in his mentor's laboratory. In 1911, Rosing managed to

05:18

Speaker A

transmit an image over a distance of 200 meters. It consisted of four black stripes on a white background. It was a tiny step for television, but a giant leap for Zworykin. Before his very eyes, a theoretical technology was becoming

05:34

Speaker A

a reality. In general, the idea of television was not new at that time. Scientists had been working on it since the end of the 19th century. For a long time, the concept of mechanical television seemed the most interesting.

05:47

Speaker A

It worked like this. There is a so-called Nipkow disk, named after the German scientist who invented it. It is a disk with a spiral of holes drilled into it. If you spin this disk and place an image in front of it and a

06:04

Speaker A

photocell behind it, which converts light energy into electrical energy, then at any given moment, a specific fragment of the image will hit the photocell. This creates a form of line-by-line scanning. Then, the captured image can be reproduced by

06:19

Speaker A

sending the electrical signal to a lamp and passing its light through an identical disk. But there is a specific challenge. The disk on the receiving side must rotate at exactly the same speed as the one on the transmitting

06:32

Speaker A

side. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to transmit a signal simultaneously to several such receivers. The resulting image is of very poor quality because the number of holes in the disk is limited, and the mechanically rotating parts wear out

06:45

Speaker A

quickly. However, at the time, this model was considered the most promising, and later in the twenties, devices actually operating on this principle appeared. Rosing, meanwhile, was working on a television model based on a cathode-ray tube. The idea was to

07:04

Speaker A

project an image onto a light-sensitive plate covered with a special layer of silver particles. Depending on the illumination, the charge on it changes, which allows for the conversion of an optical signal into an electrical one through scanning. Much the same as in

07:19

Speaker A

the Nipkow disk, only with far fewer limitations on image quality. Then, the electron beam is also projected point by point onto a screen coated with phosphor, a substance that begins to glow when struck by electron beams. The technology is much more complex than

07:37

Speaker A

mechanical television, but at the same time, it is more powerful. In this way, images can be broadcast much further, and the picture quality is significantly sharper. Of course, in the early 20th century, realizing something like this was technically

07:51

Speaker A

impossible, but both Rosing and Zworykin believed that the future lay in electronic television. In 1912, Zworykin graduated from the institute, but he did not return to his father's shipping company in sleepy Murom. He set off for Paris to apprentice under

08:08

Speaker A

the famous physicist Paul Langevin. From there, Zworykin moved to Berlin. And then the First World War began.

08:20

Speaker A

Russia and Germany became enemies, and Zworykin had to return home, where he was quickly mobilized. Fortunately for the future, the television inventor was not thrown into the meat-grinder assaults for which the First World War was famous. He served in Grodno as a

08:39

Speaker A

radio operator, working almost in his field of expertise. There was plenty of free time, and while radio operators were forbidden from leaving the unit, out of boredom, Zworykin improved the equipment by building a new electric motor with his own money. And he nearly

08:54

Speaker A

faced a court-martial for acting against regulations. Later, Zworykin learned how to interc

09:08

Speaker A

these absurd accusations. In general, Zworykin could never sit still. He enjoyed adventures, both in science and in life. After Grodno, Zworykin was offered the chance to go to Turkmenistan to set up radio communications between cities. Local tribes, unhappy with the mobilization,

09:22

Speaker A

staged an uprising and destroyed the communication lines. Zworykin agreed mostly out of a love for adventure and accidentally ended up in the captivity of one of the Turkmen tribes. Thinking quickly on his feet, Zworykin passed himself off as a government

09:36

Speaker A

representative who had arrived with peace proposals. The tribal leader was pleased, accepted these proposals, and provided Zworykin with an honorary escort. The ability to persuade people would serve Zworykin well many more times. After the Turkmen chieftain, dealing with American investors was

09:52

Speaker A

apparently not so difficult. Zworykin returned to Petrograd just in time for the February Revolution. He taught the craft to army radio operators, quickly became an indispensable specialist in the crumbling army, and established radio contact between the Provisional Government and Kronstadt, which,

10:08

Speaker A

according to Minister of War Alexander Guchkov, saved the revolution. However, as we know, it didn't save it for long.

10:18

Speaker A

After the October coup, the inventor went to his native Murom, only to find that his father had died and his company had been nationalized. The family home had been looted and confiscated for the needs of the Bolsheviks. It was then that Zworykin

10:31

Speaker A

finally decided to flee Russia. The outlines of great catastrophes could already be guessed in the haze of what was to come. The only way to be saved was to flee. Where to run did not matter. As long as I had a laboratory

10:45

Speaker A

where I could conduct my scientific research. And since war was also raging in Europe, I decided to move to America .

10:55

Speaker A

Similar thoughts cross the minds of our fellow citizens even today. After all, it is easier to realize your ideas abroad right now than in Russia.

11:02

Speaker A

Scientists and highly qualified specialists are leaving. If you want, you can leave, too. And you don't necessarily need to know how a cathode-ray tube works to live in your dream country. For example, many consider the UK to be inaccessible. In

11:16

Speaker A

reality, there are plenty of programs for relocation, from work visas to talent visas. There is an option to come and take an intern position for one year, and then you won't need visa sponsorship from employers. You can also graduate from any local master's

11:31

Speaker A

program and work for 2 years without sponsorship or restrictions. Of course, you still need to figure out all these programs. There are many of them. And to find out if you meet the criteria, you would have to dig through a

11:44

Speaker A

mountain of information or turn to the sponsor of this video, with whom this is a joint special project, Coventry Street Advisors, a company that will help you move to the UK. A team of licensed lawyers will not just help you

11:57

Speaker A

get an initial visa, but will create a personal relocation strategy for you, the optimal path to permanent residency and citizenship. The founder of Coventry Street Advisors is lawyer Nikita Khotkov. He personally went through all types of visas during his

12:10

Speaker A

12 years living in Britain. From his own experience, he understands how important it is for an immigrant to build a strategy from the very beginning and knows how important adaptation is. For 8 years now, he has been holding monthly friendly meetings

12:22

Speaker A

for Russian-speaking professionals and entrepreneurs. Nikita has a network of partners personally vetted by him in the fields of educational consulting, accounting, and real estate— everything you will need when moving with your family or business. The company is officially registered in

12:38

Speaker A

London and is ready to guarantee the result. If you are refused, they will help you resubmit your visa documents free of charge. But a refusal is unlikely. The company has more than 300 successful cases of varying complexity under its belt. Coventry Street

12:51

Speaker A

Advisors clients have their permanent residency and citizenship approved in 95%of cases. Opening a company in the UK, obtaining a license for it, and bringing in key employees on a work visa will be much easier with Coventry Street Advisors. And to find out if the

13:05

Speaker A

UK is right for you and how exactly you can move there, sign up for a consultation. And if you do it using the link in the description, you will get a discount. The consultation will then cost 100 pounds sterling instead

13:17

Speaker A

of the usual 250, and 65 instead of 150 with a legal assistant. It is very cost-effective. So, if you want to move to the UK, don't put it off and sign up for a consultation. And we will return

13:29

Speaker A

to Zworykin, who still had to participate, albeit indirectly, in the civil war. Getting out of Russia, engulfed in civil war, was not easy.

13:39

Speaker A

Zworykin managed to get to Perm by steamship, but the path forward was blocked. The rebellious Czechoslovak Legion, which did not recognize Soviet power, had seized Kazan and was fighting its way toward the Trans-Siberian Railway. With great difficulty, Zvorykin managed to reach

13:56

Speaker A

Yekaterinburg, where he was immediately thrown into prison by local Bolsheviks. In a front-line city, a man in a military greatcoat without rank insignia aroused suspicion in the very first Red Army patrol. A Chekist investigator with well-groomed nails listened to Zvorykin talk about radio

14:13

Speaker A

engineering. Understanding nothing, since he was a dentist before joining the agency, he suspected the former military engineer of being a saboteur.

14:21

Speaker A

Zvorykin was sent to a cell packed to capacity with other individuals considered suspicious by the Soviet government. Soon after, in that same Yekaterinburg, the Tsar's family was executed.

14:33

Speaker A

Needless to say, this caused panic among the prisoners. Almost every night , someone was taken from our cell, either one by one or in groups. We didn't know where, but none of these people ever returned. Now it became

14:48

Speaker A

clear that they were simply being shot. However, a few days later, a strange silence fell over the prison. The prisoners, after shouting and banging on the cell door, eventually just kicked it down and discovered that the Chekist guards had fled. The city had

15:02

Speaker A

been taken by the Czechoslovaks. Zvorykin managed to get to Omsk, where the Provisional Siberian Government, which was hostile to the Reds, was located. From this government, he managed to obtain a document stating he was authorized to purchase equipment

15:17

Speaker A

abroad for building radio stations. With this document, he joined a polar expedition led by the famous geologist Professor Tolmachev. It had been in preparation for a long time, and even the Civil War did not cancel it.

15:32

Speaker A

Together with the scientists, Zvorykin reached the Arctic Ocean by steamship. From there, he traveled by icebreaker to Arkhangelsk, which had been captured by Entente forces. Then, traveling alone on passing ships through Norway and Denmark, he finally reached America

15:49

Speaker A

on January 1, 1919. Zvorykin had traveled half the world, full of hope for a new, free, happy life filled with work and creativity, only to face the usual problem for new immigrants: a language barrier, a lack of steady work

16:06

Speaker A

, and the result: poverty. Then he was asked to return. The Provisional Siberian Government was in need of a competent radio engineer. Zvorykin hesitated. This is a very common story.

16:20

Speaker A

The stress of moving to a new country sometimes proved so great that the horrors you fled from, seen from a distance, don't seem so terrible anymore.

16:29

Speaker A

I faced a difficult dilemma: leave or stay. On a sheet of paper, I wrote out all the arguments for and against leaving. The case for leaving clearly outweighed the other. At the cooperative, they weren't paying me a salary. Finding work in America without

16:45

Speaker A

knowing the language was unthinkable, and my funds for living were rapidly running out. Despite the advice of my friends, I bought a train ticket to Seattle and telegraphed Omsk with the approximate dates of my return.

17:01

Speaker A

This time, his journey took him through Japan, Vladivostok, and Harbin. It turns out that Zvorykin circled the globe, having left Omsk only to return to it, unable to leave Omsk. Only to be certain. The country where he grew up

17:20

Speaker A

and studied no longer exists. Civil war is raging everywhere. Even in the eastern part, where power formally belongs to the Kolchak government, chaos reigns. Self-proclaimed independent warlords seize entire regions, destroying the civilian population. Zworykin realizes that his attempt to return was a mistake. He

17:40

Speaker A

decides to go back to America, this time for good. Resigned to immigration, Zworykin realizes that things aren't so bad after all. The U.S. is in the grip of real radio fever, and a good radio engineer has plenty to do. He improves

18:14

Speaker A

crystal receivers, which require no external power, by adding a variometer that allows for medium-wave tuning. He makes custom-ordered radios, building them into coffee makers and clocks. In the early twenties, Zworykin is even the first to invent a car radio; he

18:30

Speaker A

builds an experimental model, starts looking for investors, and prepares to finally get rich. But the police ban the device. They claim the radio will distract drivers and cause accidents.

18:42

Speaker A

But all this time, Zworykin’s dream remained television. Many years later, I asked my daughter Nina what she remembered most about our life in Kansas City. Nina said, "The phrase ' electronic beam'. You repeated it 100 times a day."

19:05

Speaker A

Zworykin continued sending out resumes and finally received an invitation from Westinghouse Electric, one of the leading electrical companies in the U.S. Westinghouse is looking for a specialist to work in their research laboratory. All his acquaintances thought it was madness for Zworykin to

19:21

Speaker A

accept the offer. Arriving in an unfamiliar place for a small salary, but the desire to return to his profession outweighed everything. It was in the Westinghouse lab in 1923 that Zworykin constructed the world’s first electronic transmitting tube, which he called the iconoscope. The

19:43

Speaker A

image quality was very poor. The engineer ironically called his creation "barely-vision." But it was a working prototype. Zworykin believed he could perfect it with the proper funding, of course. However, the management did not approve of the inventor’s experiments

20:00

Speaker A

. They switch Zworykin to creating sound recording equipment for cinema. Management believed that the future lay in sound film, not in some sort of television. But Zworykin does not give up. His reputation as a scientist and inventor grows. He earns his PhD from

20:48

Speaker A

the University of Pittsburgh. And at the end of '28, he finally finds an investor. It was David Sarnoff, vice president of one of America's largest broadcasting companies, RCA (Radio Corporation of America). David Sarnoff was also an immigrant from the Russian

21:13

Speaker A

Empire. He was born not far from Minsk. He moved to the States with his family at the age of nine. At 15, he went to work as a telegraph operator. It was Sarnoff who, in April 1912, received the historic radio telegram declaring:

21:27

Speaker A

"Titanic has struck an iceberg and is sinking fast." In the following days, without removing his headphones, he maintained contact with rescuers and reported the news to the press. True, modern historians believe that Sarnoff greatly exaggerated his role back then,

21:43

Speaker A

which characterizes him, in modern terms, as a talented PR man and media manager. It was in these areas that Sarnoff began to build a meteoric career. Sarnoff had a fixed idea: to make money from broadcasting. In those years, radio was used mainly for

21:59

Speaker A

person-to-person communication, like a telephone, but without wires. The idea that radio could transmit information to an unlimited audience was brand new.

22:10

Speaker A

The first such radio station appeared only in 1912. It was created by American enthusiast Charles Herrold.

22:17

Speaker A

And this radio was listened to by just as few enthusiasts. Sarnoff realized that broadcasting could be very profitable and began to promote this technology. Sarnoff soon proved that his ideas were the future. In '21, he organized a live radio broadcast of the

22:33

Speaker A

heavyweight boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier. Back then, the number of radio sets in American homes was in the thousands, and Sarnoff risked investing his company's money into installing loudspeakers on city streets. Hundreds of thousands of people heard the

23:02

Speaker A

broadcast, which triggered a radio boom . Receiver sales became the main source of income for years for RCA, which previously mostly sold radio equipment for ships. And Sarnoff, who had barely turned 30, became vice president of the company. In the mid-twenties, he

23:21

Speaker A

founded NBC, the National Broadcasting Company. This company started with radio broadcasts. Sarnoff created two broadcast networks. One transmitted music, sports broadcasts, and radio dramas. In short, it focused on entertainment. The other specialized in news, analysis, and educational programs. Today, we would call them

23:45

Speaker A

podcasts. All this was, of course, accompanied by advertisements, making RCA and Sarnoff richer. His ambitions went far beyond organizing radio broadcasts. Transmitting voice information via radio is good, but transmitting images is a completely different matter. That is why Sarnoff's

24:06

Speaker A

meeting with Zworykin became fateful. Every now and then I like to put the calendar back and remember another important occasion when you came to my office. You a good sales and I was a good dreamer. We talked about moving

24:28

Speaker A

images by electronics and I asked you what it would cost to all electronic one hundred thousand dollars. He was taking a big risk again. By the late twenties, mechanical television already existed. A television station was operating in Chicago. Television sets

25:08

Speaker A

were on sale. The broadcast quality wasn't great, but viewers could still see entertainment content. Vaudeville, sketches, and pantomimes, right in their own homes. At that time, electronic television could only boast a small number of experiments and prototypes that had no commercial

25:29

Speaker A

results. Nevertheless, Sarnoff believed in Zworykin and invited him to join RCA . Soon, Zworykin would create the kinescope, a device for receiving television signals. Zworykin set up the first device in his home and transmitted Disney cartoons there from

25:46

Speaker A

the laboratory where the transmitter was. On December 22, 1931, experimental television broadcasting began from the Empire State Building. If you had a kinescope created by the RCA company, and it was located within a 100 km radius of a transmitter, you would have

26:24

Speaker A

been able to receive the first electronic TV signal in history. Fame descended upon Zworykin. He was invited to lecture at the best universities in the United States and the world. Among them, an invitation also arrived from the engineer's homeland. A trip to the

26:50

Speaker A

USSR was a dangerous undertaking. The Soviet government could do anything to keep a talented scientist. For example, physicist Pyotr Kapitsa, who arrived in Leningrad from Cambridge almost at the same time as Zworykin, was denied an exit visa and remained in the Union

27:06

Speaker A

forever. As for Zworykin, he was a former Tsarist officer and had even served in Kolchak's government. A sufficient set of transgressions to expect the direst outcome. However, Zworykin decided to go. It was good for business, as Soviet authorities were

27:24

Speaker A

actively investing in Western technologies. Besides, he really wanted to see his relatives and his teacher, Boris Rosing. In August of thirty-three , Vladimir Zworykin crossed the Soviet border again for the first time in many years. He arrived in Leningrad and

27:39

Speaker A

discovered many unpleasant things. Firstly, Rosing had passed away. Secondly, scientific and technical progress in the USSR seemed to be moving in reverse. Fifteen years ago, there were far more cars on the streets . Thirdly, the people had changed. Now

27:55

Speaker A

they seemed to have been taught to march in lockstep. All my lectures took place in packed halls. They listened greedily, catching every word, and wouldn't let me leave for a long time, showering me with questions. I was struck by the drilled nature of the

28:11

Speaker A

audience. None of the student freedom of the early century. Everyone stood up as one when the lecturer appeared and sat down only at the command of the institute director, who usually gave the opening remarks. But in Moscow, even more shocks awaited Zworykin.

28:29

Speaker A

People's Commissar for Communications of the USSR, Alexei Rykov, took him to the Moscow Art Theater, where they were showing Bulgakov's "The Days of the Turbins." The most famous play of that time. Rykov brought his deputy along with him. Throughout the play, Zworykin

28:43

Speaker A

scrutinized this vaguely familiar man and finally realized where he had seen him. It was that very investigator from Yekaterinburg, the former dentist with well-manicured nails. The Deputy Commissar did not recognize the man whom he had perhaps once sentenced to

28:58

Speaker A

be shot. It was not surprising; there were so many like him in his past. And when Alexei Turbin’s monologue began on stage, about not wanting to lead the cadets to the slaughter, an unbearable feeling of bitterness was added to the

29:11

Speaker A

anxiety. How familiar his struggles and doubts were to me; after all, I was also there near Kyiv, and also laid down my arms to avoid a senseless fratricidal slaughter. To watch and listen to this while sitting next to

29:28

Speaker A

the man who, only by a happy accident, did not send me to my death in Yekaterinburg, was unbearable. I gripped the armrests of my chair and couldn't wait for the play to end. But from a commercial point of view, the

29:42

Speaker A

trip proved successful. The Soviet People's Commissariat of Communications signed a large contract with RCA for the supply of equipment to the USSR.

29:50

Speaker A

Until then, the Soviet Union, like other countries, relied on mechanical television. After Zworykin’s visit to the USSR, the concept changed drastically, and the Soviet Union switched to new technology. In the late thirties, the Shabolovka television center began operating in Moscow with a

30:08

Speaker A

broadcast of the film "The Great Citizen." And another thing: love is fine, but don't let girls ruin your life. Besides, if you don't get married , others will. For example, Katz. Why are you laughing?

30:24

Speaker A

Regular broadcasting launched on March 10, 1939, with a report on the opening of the 18th Communist Party Congress.

30:35

Speaker A

The first broadcast was transmitted to 100 TK-1 television receivers intended for group viewing in cultural centers.

30:43

Speaker A

Both the transmitting and receiving equipment were American, built based on Zworykin’s design. Indeed, around the world, the electronic television model had definitively defeated the mechanical one. Zworykin’s technology was licensed by the British, the French , and the Nazis, who in 1936 set up

31:00

Speaker A

live broadcasts from the Berlin Olympics. It was Nazi Germany that first began regular television broadcasting in the world from a station in Berlin. This happened in the spring of 1935. But Goebbels was reserved about television. He didn’t like how he looked on screen, so the

31:17

Speaker A

programs were monotonous. News, speeches by leaders, recordings of plays, and concert broadcasts. The Nazi propaganda machine relied primarily on radio. World War II caught Zworykin in England. The British government recommended the engineer immediately return home to the United States on an

31:38

Speaker A

ocean liner. But Zworykin refused. He didn’t have a tuxedo, which was required for dinner on the liner. He had been in that situation before during his first trip to America and didn't want to be embarrassed again. So he ordered a tuxedo and decided to wait

31:55

Speaker A

for another flight. Perhaps the lack of a tuxedo saved his life. Shortly after leaving port, the liner was torpedoed by a German submarine. Many passengers perished. During the war, Zworykin worked closely with the U.S. Army, developing night-vision devices and

32:13

Speaker A

television-guided missiles. David Sarnoff served as a consultant to General Dwight Eisenhower during the war and was promoted to brigadier general for his efforts in military communications. Furthermore, Zworykin participated in a relief fund for war victims in the USSR and even headed the

32:30

Speaker A

New York branch of the foundation. Later, this almost caused him trouble. The inventor was suspected of collaborating with the Bolsheviks, which was dangerous during the McCarthy era. Zworykin was left without a passport and became effectively unable to travel abroad. FBI agents kept him

32:46

Speaker A

under surveillance. His phone calls were tapped and his mail was opened. Only the intervention of General Sarnoff saved the engineer from reprisals. While working on military contracts, Zworykin did not forget his main brainchild: television. In 1946, the first mass-market television under

33:07

Speaker A

the RCA brand finally hit the market. Its screen diagonal was only 10 inches. Today, even iPads have larger screens.

33:15

Speaker A

This TV cost 375 dollars, about a tenth of the average annual salary in the United States. But in just a few years, 3.5 million of these television sets were sold. By the early fifties, they were in almost half of American homes,

33:31

Speaker A

receiving signals from a hundred stations, while hundreds more entrepreneurs awaited their turn for broadcast licenses. The next step was color television. The principle behind it is the same as black-and-white, only instead of one electron gun, there are three—one for red, green, and blue.

33:53

Speaker A

The screen where the image appears is a mosaic of these three colors, the combination of which can create any color. Zworykin began working on this technology back in the mid-twenties, but it only became a reality by the fifties. In essence, RCA had created a

34:11

Speaker A

new market once again. Soon, the color television would become as common a household item as the radio or the telephone. As for Vladimir Zworykin, in the fifties he would focus on medical technology. Back in the thirties, he invented the electron microscope, his

34:29

Speaker A

second most important invention, and now he created an endoradiosonde system . The patient swallows a special sensor , and the doctor can see what is happening inside their stomach.

34:38

Speaker A

Zworykin held 120 patents. He wrote 80 scientific papers and was an honorary doctor at many famous universities. An important engineering award was named after him. Zworykin spent the final years of his life in his home in the suburbs of Princeton, which he designed

34:56

Speaker A

after his parents 'house in Murom. He died on his birthday, July 29, 1982, when he turned 94. Zworykin had a complicated relationship with the main achievement of his life: television. On one hand, he was happy about its success, even crying during the

35:19

Speaker A

broadcast of the astronauts landing on the Moon. On the other hand, he criticized it mercilessly. In one conversation, he admitted: "I created a monster capable of brainwashing all of humanity." Zworykin worried that television was drawing people into chatter about nonsense. I would never

35:39

Speaker A

let my own children even go near a television. It is terrible what they show on it. Although, of course, there are parts of it that I succeeded in particularly well. The best of them is the off switch. What would have

35:57

Speaker A

happened if Zworykin had stayed in his homeland? There is no need to even guess about that. It is enough to compare his fate with the biography of his teacher, Boris Rosing. After the October Revolution, he went to his

36:07

Speaker A

family in Yekaterinodar and found himself at the epicenter of the Civil War. In August of 1918, the city was taken by the troops of Denikin, one of the leaders of the White movement. Two years later, the Red Army drove them

36:19

Speaker A

out, and Rosing returned to Petrograd. However, the new authorities treated Rosing with suspicion as a possible collaborator of the Whites. The professor continued working on electronic television, but his reputation hindered him greatly. He had neither the money nor the experienced

36:34

Speaker A

engineers to bring his dream to life. And he did not progress very far in his experiments. Shortly before Zworykin's triumphant arrival in the USSR, Rosing was arrested on charges of financially aiding counter-revolutionaries and exiled to Arkhangelsk, where he passed

36:49

Speaker A

away. Most likely, a similar fate awaited Zworykin in the USSR, but fortunately, he left just in time and was able to make his dream a reality.

36:59

Speaker A

See you tomorrow.

Topics: Vladimir Zworykin television invention Russian Revolution WWI Russia electronic television Boris Rosing Nipkow disk telecommunications history immigration advice scientific innovation

Study this video

- [Flashcards from this video](https://sozai.app/tools/ai-flashcard-generator/?from=transcript&id=79288)
- [Quiz on this video](https://sozai.app/tools/quiz-generator/?from=transcript&id=79288)

Free, made by AI from this transcript. No signup.


---
This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/father-television-escape-russia-create-modern-world/ — the same content, without the markup.
Published by SozAI (https://sozai.app). Reuse and quotation are allowed with attribution and a link back.
Machine-readable index: https://sozai.app/llms.txt · data API: https://sozai.app/api/