One of three men credited with the invention of television, Vladimir Zworykin had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and spent years studying sophisticated technology on the cathode ray tube before he fled Russia for the United States in 1919. He tried to patent a design for an electronic television, however no patent was ever granted.

Zworykin already had demonstrated his "iconoscope" camera, based on a 1923 design, and his "kinescope" receiver when he met RCA's David Sarnoff. When Sarnoff asked the inventor what it would cost to continue his electronic scanning experiments and develop a marketable system, Zworykin allegedly replied, "$100,000 and a year and a half." From 1929 on, Zworykin worked for RCA, where Sarnoff pressed to bring the electronic television to market.

Several years and millions of dollars later, Sarnoff's historic meeting with Zworykin set the stage for RCA's success at electronic television transmission and reception. Meanwhile Philo Farnsworth, who held most of the patents on the technology, was submitting his "image dissector" in 1927. Throughout the late 1920s, mechanical television had seemed like a safe option and Logie Baird in Scotland, using a mechanical system, still was being touted as the "first" because he had actually demonstrated his success. Eventually the U.S. Patent Office announced the "priority of invention" went to Farnsworth.