On July 3, 1957, Philo T. Farnsworth appeared as a guest on the popular game show I’ve Got a Secret. As none of the panelists guessed Philo’s secret, he won the game, taking home $80 cash and a carton of Winston cigarettes. What was Philo’s secret? At the age of 14, he invented television. During his lifetime, this was his only TV appearance.
Growing up as a farm boy in Idaho, Philo showed signs of genius, becoming an amateur scientist early in life. He developed an interest in electricity after his first telephone conversation with a relative. At the age of 12, he amazed his parents by fixing an old Delco electrical generator on their farm and converting appliances in their home to electric power. He later built an electronic laboratory in the attic where he conducted experiments. After finding a cache of technical magazines and science journals, he began setting his alarm for 4 a.m. so that he could get up and read for an hour before beginning his morning chores. He even won a $25 magazine contest for inventing a magnetized car lock.
During the summer of 1921, when he was 14 years old, Philo was contemplating the prospect of transmitting moving pictures through the air. This idea was fermenting in his mind when, as he was plowing a field with a team of horses, he had an epiphany. As he turned his horses to plow another row, he noticed the furrows behind him. Looking at the marks in the freshly turned soil, he realized that light could be converted into streams of electrons and scanned electronically, line by line. He immediately began designing what would later be called a cathode-ray tube. He drew his design on paper, and shared this with his high school chemistry teacher. It would be several years before he could produce a working model of his invention however.
After a short stint in the Navy, and one year of college at the University of Utah, Philo moved to San Francisco to continue his work.
Philo first demonstrated his invention to the press on September 3, 1928. He had designed and built the first working all-electronic television system, using electronic scanning in both pickup and display devices.
During this same time, big companies like RCA were spending large amounts of money working on what later would be called television. Most of their research focused on mechanical methods of scanning and transmitting pictures. RCA became interested in Philo’s efforts and after allegedly copying his work, offered to buy his patent for $100,000. When Philo refused the money, RCA sued him. Legal wranglings continued for years. Philo eventually earned some royalties from his invention, but he never became wealthy.
During his lifetime, Philo Farnsworth held over 300 U.S. and international patents. Besides electronic television, among his many inventions were the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor (a machine designed to create nuclear fusion), an infrared telescope and night vision devices, the electron microscope, the gastroscope, the astronomical telescope, a baby incubator, a machine used to sterilize milk using radio waves, and various inventions that contributed to the development of radar.
For a time, it is said that Philo regretted his primary invention. He realized that TV had impacted the way families related to one another, and saw that people wasted unfathomable amounts of time watching his invention. However, his wife Pem recounted that as she and her husband watched the televised broadcast of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, he turned to her and said, “This has made it all worthwhile.” Perhaps he changed his mind.
Philo T. Farnsworth died in 1971. Few people today recognize the name of the man primarily responsible for the big-screened electronic contraption present in almost every home. I think he is worth remembering…
© 2023 Jody Dyer
