Vidicon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A specialized device in video technology that converts light into electrical signals to produce images for display purposes
2. A particular type of camera tube employed in television and video systems that transforms light into electronic signals for image reproduction
3. An image capturing device used primarily in electronic imaging technology that changes light into corresponding electrical signals to generate video images

Etymology: The name is a compound built from two Greek and Latin pieces. "Video" is Latin for "I see," the first-person form of "videre," and "-icon" comes from Greek "eikon," meaning "image." Together they describe a device that sees and makes images. The name follows the pattern of an earlier camera tube, the iconoscope, developed by the Russian-American engineer Vladimir Zworykin. Its "-scope" ending comes from Greek "skopein," "to look at," so the iconoscope was an image-viewer. The later tube swapped "scope" for "video" and kept the "icon" root, marking it as a new kind of image-capturing tube. The tube itself converts light into an electrical signal. Light falls on a photoconductive target inside a glass vacuum tube, and a scanning electron beam reads the varying charge, producing the signal that a television system then displays.