Vladimir Zworykin papers, 1924-1976 (bulk, 1954-1971)
Zworykin, V. K. (Vladimir Kosma), 1889-1982
Details
19 linear ft
Series I. Lectures, papers, publications (1929-1971); Series II. Trips and foreign correspondence (1929-1974); Series III. Electronic highways (1953-1969); Series IV. Medical electronics (1955-1967); Series V. Medical electronics (IIMEBE) (1962-1973); Series VI. Patents (1924-1969); Series VII. Letterbooks (1969-1971); Series VIII. Non-Zworykin papers (1956-1969); Series IX. Institutes and societies (1956-1975); Series X. Awards (1948-1969); Series XI. Subject files (1950-1975); Series XII. Personal papers (1946-1974); Series XIII. Television book figures (1954); Series XIV. Oversized items (1937-1950); Series XV. Lab notebooks (1930-1942)
The papers of Vladimir Zworkyin remain much as they were organized by his secretaries at his Princeton office in the years after his retirement from RCA. While they include documents stretching back to his first employment with RCA, the bulk of the papers date from the years after his formal retirement in 1954. They are therefore strongest on his later work on medical electronics and his interest in the idea, popular in the 1950s and early 1960s, of automatically controlling the movement of automobile traffic by electronic systems embedded in express highways. While some of these ideas proved impractical, the research led to devices and systems in common use 50 years later
Of particular note: Series II contains substantive reports by Zworykin to RCA on his trips to foreign laboratories during the 1930s and 1940s. Series V contains copies of the voluminous outgoing correspondence of John F. Davis, director of the International Institute for Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering. Series VII consists of chronological files of outgoing correspondence (1969-1971), most of it personal correspondence with colleagues. Series VIII contains papers by other people about Zworykin and his career. Series XI consists of two series of subject files, topical folders from the 1950s and 1960s, and an alphabetical file from the 1970s
Vladimir Zworykin was one of the leading electronics engineers of the mid-twentieth century. Although best known for his pioneering work in the development of television at RCA Laboratories in the 1920s and 30s, he also worked on the electron microscope, missile guidance, infrared night vision systems, artificial sensors for the blind, computer weather forecasting, the automatic control of automobiles by systems built into highways, and in the last phase of his long career, medical electronics and bioengineering
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin was born on July 30, 1889, to a prosperous merchant family in Mourom, Russian. In 1912, he received an engineering degree from the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, where he was exposed to the early television research of Boris Rosing, and followed this with post-graduate work at the College de Paris under Paul Langevin
Zworykin fled the Russian Revolution and arrived in American in 1919, where he became a research engineer for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company and earned a Ph. D. from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1929, along with other Westinghouse television researchers, he transferred to the Radio Corporation of America, becoming director of their electronics research laboratory, first at Camden, N.J., and after 1942, at the new RCA Laboratories at Princeton. Upon retirement in 1954, he became the only person to be awarded the emeritus position of honorary vice president of RCA, and he continued to work at his Princeton office into his nineties
In retirement, Zworykin's interests turned to medical electronics and bioengineering. He served as director of the Medical Electronics Institute of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (1954-1961), was founder-president of the International Federation for Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering (1961-1968), and chair of the Paris-based International Institute for Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering (1959-1968)
Zworykin authored over 100 technical papers held over 120 patents and co-authored 5 books. He received 29 major awards, including the the National Medal of Science, presented at the White House by President Johnson in 1966. Vladimir Zworykin died at Princeton on July 29, 1982, one day short of his ninety-third birthday
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Some items in Russian, German and Japanese
Unpublished finding aid available at the repository
Part of the Sarnoff Library Collection
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