One of the earliest inventors in the field of television. In 1907, he envisioned a TV system using a cathode-ray tube as a receiver. Rosing filed a patent application in Germany on November 26, 1907 (and on the improved version of his system on March 2, 1911). He followed up with a demonstration of which a report was published in Scientific American with diagrams (see below) and a full description of the invention's operation. Rosing's system employed a mirror-drum apparatus as scanner to transmit black-and-white silhouettes of simple shapes. The cathode-ray tube had been developed a decade earlier by a German, Karl Ferdinand Braun (in 1897). Rosing's system was primitive, but it was one of the first experimental demonstrations where the cathode ray tube was employed for the purposes of television. Vladimir Zworykin (before emigrating to the U.S.A.) was a student of Rosing and assisted him in some of his laboratory work.
Rosing continued his television research until 1931 when he was exiled to Arkhangelsk by Joseph Stalin. Rosing died in exile in 1933.
