[1] Born in Breslau, Korn was the son of a Jewish couple, Moritz and Malwine Schottlaender.

In 1939 he left Germany with his family and moved to the United States, entering via Mexico.

[3][4] At a 1913 conference in Vienna, Korn demonstrated the first successful visual telegraphic transmission of a cinematic recording.

Under heavy media attention in 1923, he successfully transmitted an image of Pope Pius XI across the Atlantic Ocean, from Rome to Bar Harbor, Maine, the picture being hailed as a "miracle of modern science".

From 1928 onwards, the German police used Korn's system to send photographs and fingerprints,[3] though the use of the "phototelegraph" in apprehending a thief from a Stuttgart bank in London was recorded in 1907, as well as the use of the technology by the media, with the French paper l'Illustration contracting for a French monopoly that lasted until 1909.