The history of television illustrates the intimate connection of technological development to its socio-economic situation, in particular in Russia. In the development of television broadcasting systems, as in some other areas of science and technology, Soviet Russia followed a distinctive and original path, one especially evident at the initial stage of development, when television devices relied on a symbiosis between radio technology and mechanics. This essay provides information about Soviet scientists and inventors who contributed to the initial stage in the creation of modern electronic television. In general, the «social history of science and technology» has become a widely accepted and popular approach in international, as well as Russian, publications (see, for example, the recent volume Science, Technology, and Society (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), which includes chapters on science and technology in Russia and Eastern Europe. Adding the word «social» to the history of technology may even be redundant, now that the social basis of technological development is generally recognized.