Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow, born 22nd August 1860 in Lauenburg in Pomerania. While at school in Neustadt, West Prussia, Nipkow studied telephony and the transmission of moving pictures. After graduation, he went to Berlin in order to study science. He studied physiological optics with Hermann von Helmholtz, and physiological optics and electro-physics with Adolf Slaby.
While still a student, he invented a device he entitled the 'electric telescope'. The key component of this invention later became known as the 'Nipkow disc'. Accounts of its invention state that on Christmas Eve, 1883 when he sat alone at home with an oil lamp, he conceived the idea to use a spiral-perforated disk to divide a picture into a mosaic of points and lines. Another important component of his invention was a selenium photocell.