Mark Iosifovich Krivosheev (July 30, 1922 – October 16, 2018) was a Soviet and Russian engineer and academic who made pioneering contributions to the development of television technology as a head of television study groups at CCIR and

ITU-R The ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and is responsible for radio communications. Its role is to manage the international radio-frequency sp ...

. He was a key figure in establishing

Rec. 601 ITU-R Recommendation BT.601, more commonly known by the abbreviations Rec. 601 or BT.601 (or its former name CCIR 601) is a standard originally issued in 1982 by the CCIR (an organization, which has since been renamed as the Internatio ...

and

Rec. 709 Rec. 709, also known as Rec.709, BT.709, and ITU 709, is a standard developed by ITU-R for image encoding and signal characteristics of high-definition television. The most recent version is BT.709-6 released in 2015. BT.709-6 defines the P ...

technical standards for

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...

broadcasting.

Early life and career

Krivosheev was born in 1922 in the Soviet Union. As a student at the in 1945, he participated in broadcasting the first post-war television program in Europe. In 1946, he designed a scanning unit for displaying new standard 625-line television images for the first time. After graduating in 1946, Krivosheev joined the , where he led the broadcast studio since 1947. On September 3, 1948, he broadcast the world's first

625-line 625-lines is a standard-definition television resolution used mainly in the context of analog systems. It was first demonstrated by Mark Iosifovich Krivosheev in 1948. Analog broadcast television standards The following International Telecommunic ...

television programme.

Standardization work at ITU

Krivosheev began his decades-long involvement with the ITU's International Radio Consultative Committee (CCIR) in 1948. He was elected vice-chairman of CCIR Study Group 11 on Television in 1970 and became chairman in 1974, a position he held for about 30 years until 2000. As Study Group 11 Chairman, Krivosheev coordinated the development of over 150 recommendations that enabled the global implementation of digital television broadcasting. Notable achievements included ITU Recommendation 601 in 1981, which established the first digital television standard, and Recommendation 709 in the 1990s, which laid out basic parameter values for the

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

standard. Krivosheev advocated for a "global approach" to developing internationally unified television standards rather than regional or national ones.

Later career and legacy

After 2000, Krivosheev served as Honorary Chairman of the successor

Study Group 6 on Broadcasting. In 2015, he became the first Russian to receive the prestigious ITU 150 Award for his contributions over many decades. Krivosheev authored over 30 books and 90 patents related to television technology and standards. He was honored with many awards, including the

USSR State Prize The USSR State Prize (russian: links=no, Государственная премия СССР, Gosudarstvennaya premiya SSSR) was the Soviet Union's state honor. It was established on 9 September 1966. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, t ...

and the French National Order of Merit. The Rec. 601 digital TV standard has been recognised with an Engineering Emmy award. Krivosheev remained actively working into his 90s. He passed away in Moscow in October 2018 at the age of 96.

Early life and career

Standardization work at ITU

Later career and legacy

References

Further reading