From a technical standpoint, Vladimir Zworykin is the father of television, since he invented an image pickup tube, the iconoscope, which was the equivalent to film for an optical camera. It was able to pick up images outdoors like an ordinary camera, and display these images on a Braun tube. It had 240 scanning lines and was the so-called high-definition television set at that time. Its sensitivity was approximately 1/100th of the current system.
The patent for the iconoscope principle was applied for as an “Method of and apparatus for producing images of objects” in May 1930. It was in December of the same year that Kenjiro Takayanagi submitted his application for a “television image transmission device using accumulation method”. Although Zworykin insisted on his precedence in applying for a patent in Japan, the application was rejected because a patent had already been granted to Takayanagi.