April 20: Boris Rosing, the "father of television," died.
Boris Rosing died on April 20, 1933, in exile in the workers' settlement of Limenda—now Kotlas in the Arkhangelsk region. The physicist and inventor, who created the world's first electronic system for transmitting images over distance, spent the last months of his life in Soviet custody. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.
A St. Petersburg physicist with Dutch roots
Rosing was born in 1869 in St. Petersburg. According to family legend, he was a descendant of a Dutch master invited to Russia under Peter the Great. His father served as an official. Rosing himself saw his origins as an explanation for his passion for the exact sciences: "I see in this background some explanation for the desire and attraction to the exact sciences that I have continually felt within myself from an early age."
At 22, he graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Department of St. Petersburg University. At 28, he developed the world's first electronic method of recording and reproducing images at a distance—using an electron scanner and a cathode-ray tube. He called it "television" and "electric telescopy."
The first patent and the first television program
In 1907, Rosing's invention was officially registered in Russia. He received the world's first patent for an electronic "television"—first in England and Germany, then in Russia. He invariably declined offers to work abroad: "I am a Russian and have no intention of selling my mind to foreigners."
In 1911, Rosing transmitted the world's first image—an illuminated grating—on a kinescope he designed. This moment is considered the world's first television broadcast: "For the first time, a clear image of four parallel light lines was visible." In 1912, he received the gold medal of the Russian Technical Society.
Among his students was Vladimir Zvorykin, the future inventor of modern television.
Revolution, arrest and Krasnodar
After the October Revolution, Rosing went to live with his family in Yekaterinodar (now Krasnodar). In 1918, he was briefly arrested along with his eldest daughter "for collaborating with Denikin." His daughter, Lidiya Tvelkmeyer, recalled: "A very curious person was in charge of the People's Commissariat of Education at the time; she wore a Cossack uniform and carried a dagger in her belt. She supposedly said, 'I need Rosing,' and that sealed our fate."
Rosing became one of the founders of the Kuban State Technological University, the first university in the North Caucasus. He founded and headed the local Physics and Mathematics Society. His daughter recalled that her father "was very pleased and said he never imagined it would be so easy to work with the Bolsheviks: complete understanding and a willingness to accommodate everyone."
Return to Leningrad and new developments
In 1922, Rosing returned to Petrograd. He taught, worked at the Leningrad Experimental Electrotechnical Laboratory, and continued his research. While many inventors championed electromechanical television, Rosing insisted that the future lay with electronic systems: "The field that appears to our eyes, and to which electrical telescopes must ultimately reach, consists of at least a million points."
In total, he created over 120 television circuits and systems, receiving over 25 patents and inventor's certificates. Among his developments was the "reading machine": a photoelectric device for guiding the blind.
Exile and death
In 1931, Rosing was arrested in the "Academicians' Case"—a case fabricated by the OGPU against a group of scientists. He was accused of "financially assisting counterrevolutionaries." Lydia Tvelkmeyer explained: one of his colleagues asked her father to provide financial assistance to a former employee in need. "Papa, who never refused to help anyone, gave the money and signed the subscription form. Thus, he was accused of participating in an illegal fund for aiding former school employees."
Rozing was sentenced to three years of exile. He served it in the village of Limenda. Under pressure from Soviet and foreign scientists, he was allowed to work in the physics department of the Arkhangelsk Forestry Institute. Just six months after his arrest, television broadcasts began in Moscow.
Boris Rosing died on April 20, 1933, of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 63 years old. "I work for the future," he said of his research. He was rehabilitated in 1957.
