Most of the leading entertainment awards are named for real people. The Tony Awards celebrate Antoinette Perry, while legend has it that the Oscars are named after the uncle of Academy librarian Margaret Herrick. Television’s annual Emmy awards—this year’s takes place on Sunday—would seem to follow.
Except that there was no “Emmy.”
Before the first awards were presented in 1949, the Television Academy debated what to call the woman-with-atom statuette that represents the relationship between art and science. The winning name was chosen to honor the image orthicon tube, an important bit of TV technology. The initial proposal of “Immy” was changed to “Emmy” because it sounded more like a name that might belong to the the woman in the statuette, according to the Academy’s official history of the awards.
Why honor a tube? Immy, er, Emmy, was no mere component. The image orthicon tube revolutionized what it was possible to show on TV.
As TIME explained in a 1945 feature on the new R.C.A. innovation, television cameras before that time weren’t sensitive enough to pick up images in dim lighting, whereas the image orthicon tube could detect even a single candle—and amplify it so that the image on screen would be brighter than the reality it was capturing. For the first time, it was possible to properly televise night-time sporting events, parades on gray days or theatrical performances lit by ordinary footlights.
No wonder the Television Academy wanted to give Emmy some credit.
Even so, the 1945 article lamented, the tube couldn’t single-handedly fix what ailed TV. “The new tube,” TIME noted, “does not solve television’s basic problem: how to scare up enough programs which people will want to look at.”
Read the full story from 1945, here in the TIME archives: Unblinking Eye
See Original Models of the Apple I and Other Iconic American Inventions
Printing Press, 1830: Issac Adams, (Unnumbered Patent)
The style of bed and platen printing press in this patent model inspired Issac Adams’ design of the later Adams Power Press, which was praised by early 19th century printers for its production of quality book work.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryTelegraph, 1837: Samuel F. B. Morse, Prototype.
Samuel F. B. Morse converted an artist’s canvas stretcher into a telegraph receiver that recorded a message as a wavy line on a strip of paper. His telegraph transmitter sent electric pulses representing letter and numbers that activated an electromagnet on the receiver.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryViolin, 1852: William S. Mount, (Patent No. 8981).
William S. Mount proposed creating violins with concave or hollow backs. This patent model represented a design innovation that would minimize the strain on the violin soundboard and avoid interference with the “sonorous and vibrating qualities” of the instrument.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryTypewriter, 1868: C. Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden & Samuel W. Soule (Patent No. 79265).
This patent model was created by the three Milwaukee inventors who made progress towards a viable typewriting machine. Six years later, Remington & Sons produced the first commercially successful machine, bearing the names of Sholes and Glidden.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistorySewing Machine, 1873: Helen Blanchard, (Patent No. 141987).
This patent model for an improvement in sewing machines introduced the buttonhole stitch. Blanchard received some 28 patents, many having to do with sewing. She is best remembered for another overstitch sewing invention, the “zigzag.”
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryCamera Shutter, 1879: Eadweard Muybridge, (Patent No. 212865).
This “Method and Apparatus for Photographing Objects in Motion” was adapted to photographic equipment. As demonstrated with this patent model, it could produce images of subjects in rapid motion. It was used by Eadweard Muybridge in his celebrated animal locomotion photography.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryIncandescent Lamp, 1881: Thomas Edison (Patent No. 239373).
Thomas Edison submitted this model to patent a variation on his newly invented light bulb. Although he never put this design into production, this lamp could be disassembled to replace a burned-out filament.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryHigh-Strength Fiber, 1965: Stephanie Kwolek (Patent Nos. 3819587 and RE30352).
Kwolek’s 1965 discovery at DuPont of strong polymer fibers resulted in DuPont Kevlar, best known for its use in bullet-resistant body armorCourtesy Hagley Museum and LibraryApple I Computer, 1976: Steve Jobs (Patent No. 7166791) & Steve Wozniak (Patent No. 4136359). In 1976 the first form of computer designed by Stephen Wozniak and sold by Wozniak in conjunction with Steve Jobs was sold, and became a leader in personal computing. Originally marketed to hobbyists only primarily as a fully assembled circuit board; purchasers had to add their own case and monitor in order to create a working computer.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryArtificial Heart, 1977: Robert Jarvik, M.D., Prototype.
This electrohydraulic artificial heart is a prototype for what became the Jarvik-7 Total Artificial Heart, which was first implanted into a human in December 1982 at the University of Utah Medical Center. The two sides of the device are connected with Velcro.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American History
