Semen Kataev

Born Jan. 27 (Feb. 9), 1904, in the posad (suburb) of Elionka, in what is now Starodub Raion, Briansk Oblast. Soviet television scientist, Doctor of Technical Sciences (1951), professor (1952), Honored Scientist and Engineer of the RSFSR (1968). Member of the CPSU since 1964.

Kataev graduated from the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School in 1929. He developed the first high-vacuum receiving television tube in the USSR (1931–32) and invented a cathode-ray transmitting tube having charge storage—the prototype of the modern iconoscope (1931). He proposed and was the first to produce under laboratory conditions a system for transmitting a high-definition television picture on a narrow-band channel—the slow-scan television, or transmission with a frame of prolonged duration (1934–38). He developed a method (1965–70) of transmitting the sound portion of television programs within the frequency band of the video signal. He studied the problems of converting television standards (1964–70). He has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals.