Not really. That was Vladimir Zworkin. There really was one absolutely key invention, which was the iconoscope camera. This was the first device that stored up information from photons no matter when they arrived, at every spot
on the picture. Even today they make really good pictures in bright sunlight, for example, in a camera made by a guy in Japan using a solid state preamp.

In broad daylight even my WWII bomber camera make quite OK pictures.

This is a somewhat condensed version of the technical issues of sensitivity. The iconoscope was only 5 or 10 percent as sensitive as a tube should be that stored charge for a full field. This was because of the large secondary emission of charge due to the high-velocity scanning beam. The sensitivity could be increased about 10 times by adding an electron image section in front of the scanned plate. This was done successfully in the "Super Emitron" (image iconoscope) used in Europe. RCA was well aware if this, but didn't use it due to interference of Farnsworth's patents for an image section. It is a blatant example of how RCA's business policies sometimes held back technology instead of advancing it. RCA eventually did use an image section and combined it with low-velocity scanning in the even more sensitive image orthicon, which achieved 100% storage efficiency.

old_tv_nut: well, yes, what you say is important for the history.

But the important thing is being first to get a great idea, get it to work even
a little, and then get it to market.

For example, the Plumbicon works great, but it was an incremental idea.
And it was the trailing edge.

Comb filters were great, but trailing edge.

Digital was a great idea for great pictures. But its big deal is allowing
stuffing 8 channels of utter crap into the space on one, not quality for that one.

I finished recapping the power supply.
That took care of the bends.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...96667cd7_c.jpg

I think all that's left is tweaking the sound and picture centering/linearity.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...f994e48f_c.jpg

The contrast control in this set is really odd. They feed the output of the detector from the back of the set to the front through coax, use a potentiometer to vary the level, and run another coax line back to the video amp.

That's what the tube is running down the middle.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...98e037e8_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...63fbf774_c.jpg

Wouldn't it be much easier to just vary the bias/gain on the amp?

The other way to adjust contrast would be with a variable resistor in the cathode of the video output. But here they needed a full AC bypass (1000 microfarads) to make the video output have enough gain at maximum contrast - so varying the cathode resistor would only change the DC bias and not affect the contrast significantly. So why not have a variable cathode resistor that goes to zero for max contrast? Because it would result in too much sensitivity of bias to video output tube variations.

How about varying the gain of the video output by varying the bias? The problem is that varying gain by changing tube bias only works well when the signal swing is relatively small compared to the bias voltage, as is the case in IF AGC or color level control based on burst level. If the signal itself is large, it runs from the low-gain region of the tube characteristic to the high gain region, so resulting in differential gain, which means non-linear amplification.

I finally finished this set last week. Here are some final photos of it assembled and playing well. The controls take some getting used to, but once it's dialed in, the performance is quite good.

What a strange set :)

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...25987590_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...1a1ea291_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...fb06e451_c.jpg

In a word, "Nice".