Kalman Tihanyi, a Hungarian physicist and engineert, born in 1897, played a key role in the development of modern television, one of the technological achievements of the 20th century. He is renowned for designing the technology known as the "storage principle," which made the technical realization and industrial mass production of television possible.

Kalman Tihanyi was a Hungarian physicist and engineer born on 28 April 1897 in Üzbég, then part of the Nyitra Region (today's Slovakia). He received his education in electrical engineering and physics in Pozsony and Budapest.

At the age of 16, Tihanyi filed his first patent application. A year later, this patent, which enabled the wireless switching on and off of street lamps, was purchased by a company Vienna. Additionally, Tihanyi's inventions between 1912 and 1916 are recorded in a hundreds-of-pages-long notebook preserved in the Manuscript Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

In 1916, he joined the army of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, where he gained radio engineering experience that he later applied throughout his career. Although his interest in television began in 1917, he first publicly announced his research in 1925 with a publication titled "On the Electronic Transmission of Images."

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Kalman Tihanyi's contributions to television technology represent a turning point in the history of early electronic television. Tihanyi addressed a fundamental problem: the low sensitivity of camera tubes to light and the resulting weak electrical output. To solve this, he introduced the concept of charge storage technology in early 1924.

The final design of this work was patented in Hungary in 1926 under the name "Radioskop" (T-3768). Tihanyi's system described a cathode ray tube-based charge storage television system in three distinct concepts: wired, wireless and color. This patent application contained a full 42 pages detailing the design and mass production of the system.

At the heart of the system was the technology later known as the "storage principle." Although Tihanyi's invention shared some superficial similarities with earlier proposals that used cathode ray tubes for both transmitter and receiver, it represented a completely new concept in design and operation.

In 1928, Tihanyi obtained the patent for the final and improved version of this system.

Tihanyi's invention was initially well received by European manufacturers such as Telefunken and Siemens. However, these companies ultimately chose to continue developing mechanical television systems based on Nipkow disks and rejected Tihanyi's electronic system. In response, Tihanyi traveled to Berlin in 1928, established his own laboratory, and with his younger brother electrical engineer, who was also an engineer, produced the first experimental image tube. Subsequently, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) contacted Tihanyi, signed an agreement to purchase his patent, and began laboratory development of the camera tube.

Based on Tihanyi's ideas, the first functional American camera tubes were completed a few months later at RCA by Vladimir Zworykin. RCA named this new television system the iconoscope.

In addition to television, Tihanyi worked in other fields:

• Military Applications: From 1929 onward, he worked on television guidance systems for defense applications, developing camera prototypes for remote-controlled aircraft, and built robot aircraft prototype for the British Air Ministry. He later adapted this technology for the Italian Navy.

• Ultrasonic Radiator: Between 1935 and 1940, he completed plans for an ultrasonic radiator with a projection range of up to 8 km and returned to Hungary in 1940 to construct a prototype.

Kalman Tihanyi's 1926 patent application for the "Radioskop" has been part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme since 2001 and is the first Hungarian document to be included. This document, preserved in the Hungary National Archives, represents the first definition of Tihanyi's television system and the only complete existing collection of Hungarian patent applications. Archive preserves the original patent document separately in a special protective foil to maintain its original condition.

In the final years of his career, Tihanyi sought to convert his expertise in television technology into a commercial enterprise by attempting to establish his own television company in Hungary. However, despite his inventions, these efforts did not succeed. Tihanyi's final endeavors proved fruitless, and the inventor died on 16 February 1947.