While at school in neighbouring Neustadt (now Wejherowo), in the province of West Prussia, Nipkow experimented in telephony and the transmission of moving pictures.

Accounts of its invention state that the idea came to him while sitting alone at home with an oil lamp on Christmas Eve, 1883.

Finally, I reached the front row; a dark cloth was pushed to the side, and I saw before me a flickering image, not easy to discern."

[5] From the early 1930s, total electronic picture scanning, based on the work of Manfred von Ardenne, became increasingly prevalent, and Nipkow's invention was no longer essential to the further development of television.

Nipkow's glory was used by Hitler and the Nazi government as a tool of National Socialist scientific propaganda.

Nipkow died in Berlin in 1940 two days after his 80th birthday and had an official ceremony organised by the Nazi government.