The Iconoscope (from the Greek: εἰκών "image" and σκοπεῖν "to look, to see") was the name given to an early television camera tube in which a beam of high-velocity electrons scans a mosaic of photoemissive isolated granules. Some of the principles of this apparatus were described when Vladimir Zworykin filed two patents for a Television system in 1923 and 1925.
A research group at RCA headed by Vladimir Zworykin presented the iconoscope to the general public in a press conference in June 1933, and two detailed technical papers were published in September and October of the same year. The German company Telefunken bought the rights from RCA and built the Iconoscope camera used for the historical TV transmission at the Olympic Games in Berlin 1936.
The Iconoscope was the leading camera tube used for broadcasting in the United States from 1936 until 1946, when it was replaced by the image orthicon tube.