Kenjiro Takayanagi

Kenjirō Takayanagi
Kenjirō Takayanagi
高柳健次郎
	Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
	Engineering career
Discipline	Electrical engineering
Significant advance	Development of television

Kenjiro Takayanagi (高柳健次郎, Takayanagi Kenjirō, January 20, 1899 in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka – July 23, 1990 in Yokosuka) was a Japanese engineer and a pioneer in the development of television.^[1] Although he failed to gain much recognition in the West, he built the world's first all-electronic television receiver, and is referred to as "the father of Japanese television".^[2]

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

Philo T. Farnsworth demonstrated his first fully electronic system in San Francisco on September 7, 1927, which did not require a Nipkow disk. (See History of television

.)

In subsequent years, Takayanagi continued to play a key role in the development of television at NHK (the Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and then at JVC (Victor Company of Japan), where he eventually became vice president. He was also involved in the development of color television and video tape recorders.^[3]^[4] He died of pneumonia in 1990 at the age of 91.^[5]

Honours

From the corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipedia

Medal of Honour with Purple Ribbon - 29 April 1955
Person of Cultural Merit - 3 November 1980
Order of Culture - 3 November 1981
Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure - 29 April 1989 (Second Class, Gold and Silver Star: 3 November 1974)
Work on development of television named an
IEEE Milestone in 2009.^[6]