Isaac Shoenberg

Shoenberg was born in Pinsk, Imperial Russia (now Belarus) and studied mathematics, mechanical engineering, and electricity in St. Petersburg.[1]

With his wife Esther, Shoenberg was the father of British physicist David Shoenberg, gynaecologist Rosalie Shoenberg Taylor, psychiatrist Elisabeth Shoenberg,[2] Mark Shoenberg and Alec Shoenberg.

In 1905 Shoenberg was employed to design and install the earliest wireless stations in Russia. However, in 1914, Shoenberg decided to emigrate to London and join the Marconi Wireless and Telegraph Company. In 1919 he became a British subject and in 1924 he became Marconi's joint general manager.[1]

Shoenberg became general manager of the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1928. Early in 1931, Columbia and the Gramophone Company merged and became EMI and he became director of research[1] at their new, joint research laboratories in Hayes, Hillingdon. He was Alan Blumlein's supervisor there when Blumlein invented stereophonic sound.

Shoenberg's team applied in 1932 for a patent for a new device they dubbed "the Emitron",[3][4] which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the BBC.

In 1934, EMI formed a new company with Marconi with a research team led by Shoenberg which, with access to patents developed by Vladimir Zworykin and RCA, made significant contributions to the development of television including developing the electronic Marconi-EMI system, the world's first electronic high-definition television system.[1]

Shoenberg's team analyzed how the iconoscope (or Emitron) produces an electronic signal and concluded that its real efficiency was only about 5% of the theoretical maximum.[5][6] They solved this problem by developing and patenting in 1934 two new camera tubes dubbed super-Emitron and CPS Emitron.[7][8][9] The super-Emitron was between ten and fifteen times more sensitive than the original Emitron and iconoscope tubes and, in some cases, this ratio was considerably greater.[5]

The same year, the British government set up a committee (the "Television Committee") to advise on the future of TV broadcasting. The committee recommended that a "high definition" service (defined by them as being a system of 240 lines or more) to be run by the BBC be established. The recommendation was accepted and tenders were sought from industry. Two tenders were received: one from the Baird company offering a 240-line mechanical system, and the other from EMI offering a 405-line all-electronic one employing the Emitron. The Television Committee advised that they were unable to choose between the two systems and that both tenders should be accepted, the two systems to be run together for an experimental period.

Broadcasting of the resulting BBC Television Service from its Alexandra Palace site began on 2 November 1936, at first time-sharing broadcasts with the 240-line John Logie Baird system; however, in January 1937, after three months of trials, the Baird system was abandoned in favour of exclusive broadcasting with the 405-line Marconi-EMI system on VHF, which was more reliable and visibly superior.[10] This was the world's first regular high-definition television service and became the standard for all British TV broadcasts until the 1960s.[11] It was later adopted by other TV organizations around the world.[1]

The Emitron was used for the first outside broadcasting, at the televising of the Coronation of George VI and Elizabeth by the BBC in May 1937.[12][13]

In 1955 he was appointed to the board of EMI.[14][1]

Schoenberg was awarded the IET Faraday Medal in 1954 and was knighted in 1962.[14][1]

Schoenberg was portrayed by Leon Lissek in the 1986 TV movie "The Fools on the Hill" by Jack Rosenthal which dramatised the events around the first broadcasts by the BBC from Alexandra Palace in 1936.

• History of television

• "Shoenberg, Sir Isaac" from Encyclopædia Britannica (Accessed 4 January 2006)
• "Sir Isaac Shoenberg" from Making the Modern World (Accessed 4 January 2006)