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Philo Farnsworth: Inventor of TV • Vol. 19: #32 • Tidbits of Coachella Valley (8-6-2023)
• Philo Farnsworth was born in Utah in 1906. In 1918, the family moved to Idaho, where 12-year-old Philo was fascinated by the electrical generator that provided power for their rented home. He was a curious child with a gift for electronics and machinery, often repairing the generator and repairing broken equipment discarded by previous tenants. After devouring every page of a stack of electronics magazines found in their attic, he found a way to motorize his mother’s hand-powered washing machine.
• In high school, he excelled in chemistry and physics. At the age of 14, he shared diagrams with his science teacher that would later form the entire basis of the television revolution.
• After graduating from high school in 1924, Farnsworth attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, scoring the second highest ever on their entrance exams. Within just a few months, however, he learned that anything he invented while in military service would automatically be relinquished to the Navy. Farnsworth was already working out the details of television and didn’t want to forfeit his ideas into the hands of the government. After an honorable military discharge he returned to his family in Utah.
• At Brigham Young University, he attended every science class, focusing on radio technology and using their labs for experiments. Here he met Elma Gardner, and married her in 1926.
• While living in Salt Lake City, Farnsworth met up with two philanthropists from San Francisco who agreed to underwrite Philo’s research, setting up a laboratory for him in California. They wisely advised him to patent everything he produced, and he had the foresight to work with a nationally prominent patent attorney who specialized in Electrophysics.
• On September 7, 1927, Philo Farnsworth used his newly invented “image dissector camera tube” to transmit a single simple straight line to a receiver in another room. It was history’s first transmitted television image.
• A year later, he demonstrated it for the press, transmitting an image of a dollar sign in order to satisfy his investors that profits were on the way. Later he produced a three-inch version of his wife, the first transmitted image of a human.
• Several other inventors had previously constructed electromechanical television systems, but Philo was the first to overcome their limitations by inventing the first all-electronic television.
• RCA had been working to accomplish this, but Philo beat them to it. Their top engineer visited Philo’s lab, took notes, copied the design, and then built his own model for RCA. In 1931, RCA tried to buy Farnsworth’s patents for $100,000 (worth $2 million today) and offered him a job, but Farnsworth declined.
• RCA subsequently sued Farnsworth for patent infringement, a court case that dragged on for ten years. Farnsworth prevailed, not only because of his top-notch patent attorney, but also because his high school science teacher was able to produce the diagrams Farnsworth had drawn as a teenager. RCA eventually licensed Farnsworth’s patents, paying him royalties.
• In 1936, his device was used to broadcast the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. By 1939, RCA was selling televisions to consumers coast to coast.
• Farnsworth died of pneumonia in 1971. By then he had seen his invention transform society. He had mixed emotions about it, until he watched the Apollo Moon landing, televised nationwide because of technology he invented.
• Farnsworth held 300 patents that contributed to infrared night vision goggles, the electron microscope, infant incubator, endoscope, and telescopes. He invented a way to sterilize milk using radio waves, a fog-penetrating beam for ships and planes, an early warning defense signal, submarine detection devices, and an improvement of radar technology that served as the basis for today’s air traffic control systems. □
