Vladimir Zworykin and John Logie Baird are usually cited as the fathers of TV - but both in the end were unsuccessful, because they missed vital aspects of The Big Picture.
This was literally true in Zworykin's case. He developed a cathode ray tube system that he called an 'Iconoscope' . This scanned images electronically - the right answer - but did so using screens only two inches across - that impressed no one.
As for Baird, he was the first to demonstrate TV - but using a mechanical scanning system that had little room for development. Baird was given many opportunities to change his business over to electronic scanning - but seemed unable to see which way the wind was blowing until it was too late.
