Sir Isaac Shoenberg (1 March 1880 – 25 January 1963) was a British electronic engineer born in Belarus who was best known for his role in the history of television. He was the head of the EMI research team that developed the 405-line (Marconi-EMI system), the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting when it was introduced with the BBC Television Service in 1936. It was later adopted by other TV organizations around the world. As the head of research at EMI, Schoenberg was Alan Blumlein's supervisor when Blumlein invented stereophonic sound in 1931. Schoenberg was awarded the IET Faraday Medal by the British Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1954 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1962. Biography Shoenberg was born on 1 March 1880 to Jewish parents in Pinsk, Imperial Russia (now Belarus) and studied mathematics, mechanical engineering and electricity in St. Petersburg. With his wife Esther, Shoenberg was the father of the British physicist David Shoenberg, the gynaecologist Rosalie Shoenberg Taylor, the psychiatrist Elisabeth Shoenberg, Mark Shoenberg and Alec Shoenberg. Career In 1905, Shoenberg was employed to design and install the earliest wireless stations in Russia. However, in 1914, Shoenberg decided to emigrate to London and join the Marconi Wireless and Telegraph Company. In 1919, he became a British subject and, in 1924, he became Marconi's joint general manager. He became general manager of the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1928. Early in 1931, Columbia and the Gramophone Company merged and became EMI and he became director of research at their new, Central Research Laboratories in Hayes, Hillingdon. He was Blumlein's supervisor there when Blumlein invented stereophonic sound. Shoenberg's team applied in 1932 for a patent for a new device they dubbed "the Emitron", which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the BBC. In 1934, EMI formed a new company with Marconi with a research team led by Shoenberg which, with access to patents developed by Vladimir Zworykin and RCA, made significant contributions to the development of television including developing the electronic Marconi-EMI system, the world's first electronic high-definition television system. Shoenberg's team analysed how the iconoscope (or Emitron) produces an electronic signal and concluded that its real efficiency was only about 5% of the theoretical maximum. They solved this problem by developing and patenting in 1934 two new camera tubes dubbed super-Emitron and CPS Emitron. The super-Emitron was between