The first contract of his life was signed with a Viennese company, which purchased his equipment for the central, wireless switching on and off of road lights.

At that time, he continued his high school studies in Vác, he graduated here as well, and the following year, in 1916, he entered the Hungarian Royal Army as a volunteer.

He designed a remotely controlled igniter for timing and detonating underwater shafts, and his land mine was credited as a distinguished military invention.

Luckily, he found a friend in Professor Imre Pöschl, who recognized his talent, while he could sell more and more patents and inventions, he could enjoy an increasing income, thus he could support his widowed mother and nine siblings.

[3] Though it bears certain similarities to earlier proposals employing a cathode ray tube (CRT) for both transmitter and receiver, Tihanyi's system represented a radical departure.

Like the final, improved version Tihanyi would patent in 1928, it embodied an entirely new concept in design and operation, building upon a technology that would become known as the "storage principle".

In 1928, Tihanyi went to Berlin, where the development of mechanical television involving Nipkow disks had already been begun by the German Post Office and the larger manufacturers.

[12] Then he was approached by the American Radio Corporation of America (RCA), contracted with him to purchase his patent, and began laboratory development of the image resolution tube.

After a few months, the first well-functioning American camera tubes which based on Tihanyi's ideas were completed by Vladimir Zworykin at RCA, and the new television system was named the iconoscope.

In 1929, Tihanyi patented his new military invention under the title: "Automatic sighting and directing devices for torpedoes, guns and other apparatus" (See: British patent GB352035A) In 1929, he moved to London, where he was invited to work on television guidance for defense applications, building prototypes of a camera for remotely guided aircraft for the British Air Ministry, and later adapting it for the Italian Navy.

[12][13] The solutions of the technology what Tihanyi depicted in his 1929 patent were so influential, that American UAV producing companies still used many of its ideas even half century later, until the mid 1980s.

On April 11, 1944, he was taken from Hadik Barracks to Margit Boulevard Military Prison, where he was held in probation for five months, in solitary confinement, he was accused of high treason as an alleged British Agent and member of MI6.

Already in June 1945, he took steps to found a Hungarian television company, build a transmitter station and organise a picture tube factory.