was a Japanese engineer and a pioneer in the development of

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

. Although he failed to gain much recognition in the

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

, he built the world's first all-electronic television receiver, and is referred to as "the father of Japanese television".

Career

In 1925, Takayanagi began research on television after reading about the new technology in a French magazine. He developed a system similar to that of

John Logie Baird John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly dem ...

, using a Nipkow disk to scan the subject and generate

electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

signals. But unlike Baird, Takayanagi took the important step of using a

cathode ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), ...

to display the received signal, thereby developing the first "all-electronic" television set. On December 25, 1926, Takayanagi successfully demonstrated his system at Hamamatsu Industrial High School, where he was teaching at the time (the school is now the Faculty of Engineering at Shizuoka University). The first picture he transmitted was of the Japanese

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

character made up of 40

scan lines A scan line (also scanline) is one line, or row, in a raster scanning pattern, such as a line of video on a cathode ray tube (CRT) display of a television set or computer monitor. On CRT screens the horizontal scan lines are visually discernible, ...

. This was several months before Philo T. Farnsworth demonstrated his first fully electronic system in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

on September 7, 1927, which did not require a Nipkow disk. (See

History of television The concept of television was the work of many individuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first practical transmissions of moving images over a radio system used mechanical rotating perforated disks to scan a scene into a time-var ...

.) In subsequent years, Takayanagi continued to play a key role in the development of television at

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

(the Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and then at

JVC JVC (short for Japan Victor Company) is a Japanese brand owned by JVCKenwood corporation. Founded in 1927 as the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan and later as , the company is best known for introducing Japan's first televisions and for ...

(Victor Company of Japan), where he eventually became vice president. He was also involved in the development of color television and

video tape recorder A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio material from magnetic tape. The early VTRs were open-reel devices that record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide (5.08 cm) tape. They were u ...

s. He died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...

in 1990 at the age of 91."Kenjiro Takayanagi, Electrical Engineer, 91"
''New York Times,'' July 25, 1990.

Honours

''From the corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipedia'' * Medal of Honour with Purple Ribbon - 29 April 1955 *

Person of Cultural Merit is an official Japanese recognition and honor which is awarded annually to select people who have made outstanding cultural contributions. This distinction is intended to play a role as a part of a system of support measures for the promotion of ...

- 3 November 1980 *

Order of Culture The is a Japanese order, established on February 11, 1937. The order has one class only, and may be awarded to men and women for contributions to Japan's art, literature, science, technology, or anything related to culture in general; recipient ...

- 3 November 1981 *Grand Cordon of the

Order of the Sacred Treasure The is a Japanese order, established on 4 January 1888 by Emperor Meiji as the Order of Meiji. Originally awarded in eight classes (from 8th to 1st, in ascending order of importance), since 2003 it has been awarded in six classes, the lowest tw ...

- 29 April 1989 (Second Class, Gold and Silver Star: 3 November 1974) *Work on development of television named an IEEE Milestone in 2009.

References

External links

Kenjiro Takayanagi: The Father of Japanese Television
- A tribute to Kenjiro Takayanagi at the NHK website {{DEFAULTSORT:Takayanagi, Kenjiro 1899 births 1990 deaths Japanese electrical engineers Television pioneers Television in Japan People from Hamamatsu Recipients of the Order of Culture 20th-century Japanese engineers